I call the February Fourth Assembly Finance Committee meeting to order.

Miss Wendell, do you note the role?

Thank you, Chair Wall.

We have all assembly members present in chambers besides assemblymember Steininger and Hall who are absent and assemblymember Atkison who is available on Zoom.

Thank you.

That brings us to item C approval of minutes.

You have the January 7th Assembly Finance Committee meeting minutes.

Any changes to those?

See none of those are so moved.

That brings us to agenda topics.

And these microphones work similar to our old ones.

You will just press the button and it'll turn green, and then you can speak.

Thank you, Chair Wall.

I would like to also introduce Serene Hutchinson who is co-chair of the Travel Juno Board.

She is in attendance with me tonight.

As a priority partner to CBJ's Travel Juno is proud of its efforts on behalf of the city promoting Juno as an entire destination for visitors for year-round fund.

And over the years, the organization has taken on an enhanced visitor programs that benefit Juno overall, including Crossing Guard program, tourism best management practices, otherwise known as TBMP.

We are pass-through administrator for those important local programs, and we believe we have demonstrated the effectiveness of those programs, and they are always under continuous improvement.

We have a number and of meetings in our pipeline.

So these are uh organizations that we have found, uh we have prospected.

Also, these are some organizations that have contacted us directly and said we're interested in doing a meeting in Juneau.

How do we even start?

So uh that list is in your packet.

Um, and we have meetings uh that are into 2028, and we also have some planners who are actually starting to look into 2029.

Uh so planners are looking to really get things secure several years ahead of the proposed meeting.

Um it's very different when you're on the other side.

If you're an attendee, for example, uh, we have found that attendees will tend to run up until almost that last minute uh to get their hotel spaces.

So we so we have to work with that on both sides, both the long run for the planner and then that kind of short run, making sure that attendees have the information that they need to get to Juno and have all the hotel information so forth.

Um we secured uh 19 meetings for fiscal 26 uh so far with an estimated economic impact of over three and a half million dollars.

We in the pipeline, we've got about 8.3 million dollars worth of business that were it is either secured or we're looking to secure again over the next three or so years.

I would ask you to maybe refer to the page uh page 15 of 73 in your packet um to note the media audience size.

Um you will see that we were able to reach um over 10 million people uh for those audiences, and that would include uh anything that's video basically.

So if it's a TV program, if it's a mention, uh, if someone has done uh a video on our behalf or we have partnered with videographer, uh that is included in that audience.

We also um just over for this fiscal, uh we've already got about 126,000 dollars just in media publicity.

So when Juno is mentioned, when travel Juno is mentioned, that registers as a dollar value.

So this is return um on our efforts that we may or may not even have had to pay for.

A lot of times media will call and say, hey, I just need some information, or can you back up these facts and do some fact checking?

And we're happy to do that because we want good information out there.

Doesn't cost us anything with some staff time, but then Juno gets out into the into the domain with with accurate information.

Um we are seeing a really sizable increase in the number of folks uh on our website who are looking for information or who are uh inquiring to get our guides.

I will point out the travel planner and the guide that I have for those of you who are not in attendance at the Lands Committee.

These are two publications that we have done for the last couple of years.

You're probably familiar with the planner, which is the thicker, heftier version.

These are designed for people who are looking to travel to Juno.

They haven't decided what it is that they're wanting to do, and maybe they haven't even decided how they're going to get here.

So this is to inspire them, to show them what's available, and really get them down into that funnel to make that final purchase.

The smaller publication, more magazine-like, is a welcome guide.

It is basically the last half of the planner with no attendant context with it or additional content.

And we use these for meetings, conventions, and we have them available at our visitor information sites.

So they're highly popular, and this is our second summer for doing that.

I'll also mention that these pieces are available to the public at any time.

All they have to do is call the office and request one.

You can request one at the website.

We have them available outside of our office.

We will have the plan the welcome guides available at all of our visitor sites as well.

So readily available to anyone who wants one.

Looking ahead to the 26th season, we are going to undergo a number of initiatives.

The board just met in retreat last Thursday and discuss these items.

So we're moving ahead.

We are aligning the organization to become not only destination marketing, but destination management.

And that helps that helps us in the realm of the management pieces like the crossing guards and TBMP and also sitting in with other organizations who, for example, want to bring in an event.

How do they want to grow that event?

Is there an opportunity for us to provide, for example, some seed money to grow that event if you know when they have demonstrated that there is a huge potential to get outside visitors in a big way.

So we have a whole matrix that we use to gauge that level of support so that we're being being fair with that, fair with that money.

As I have spoken with many of you over the last several years, especially post-COVID, we have seen a reduction in volunteers, and we've seen a reduction in the number of volunteers who are willing to sign up for a regular shift at those visitor centers.

That has made scheduling a huge nightmare for for our office.

And truly, staff has had to go out a couple hundred hours a season to cover call-outs to cover just missing people missing in shifts.

More accountability with how information is delivered at those centers and how they and how these staff engage with visitors.

When you have volunteers, you don't always have that level of accountability.

But we do now.

So I think this will be an improvement in our ability to get education and get information to our visitors.

We can manage their expectations, working really closely with CBJ and with the Forest Service, for example, when we have a GLOF and making sure we're rolling out communications as desired for everybody, and so that our visitors know that they either will or probably won't be impacted.

We don't want to scare anybody, but we also want to make sure that people have the information they need before they get into town.

And we plan to deliver and deliver extra partner education as well, more uh B2B meetings for them, more opportunities for them to engage with each other and get some valuable marketing education as well.

We're of course highly localized.

We are dedicated to uh promoting Juno specifically, and our team is just heads down getting getting that done over the winter.

Uh we want to, and we'll be you know, just we want to address the visitor experience.

We want to make sure that visitors are having the best genome experience they can.

They have gotten again correct information, they have not been led astray, they have some place to go if they have questions or concerns.

That's part of our role as well.

Uh, one of the things we need to do in the near future is to assess the Juno brand and assess the travel Juno brand as it resonates with inbound visitors.

So this will be something we take up probably in the next year, year and a half toward a new website, for example.

We need to have that information before we can start planning a site and planning all of the imagery and the layout of that site, um, which will be a two to two to three year process.

We want to make sure that uh Travel Geno is participation, I'm sorry, participating in discussions on workforce development, employee housing, and other state or citywide issues that impact that visitor experience and or our partners' businesses.

Uh I think this body uh fully you know understands the the critical need for housing all the way across the board and certainly workforce housing and workforce development are things that we're keeping an eye on, working with other economic development organizations in town as well as the Alaska Travel Industry Association as they they approach these these issues.

So uh with that, I believe I will um open the floor to uh questions from the group, and I'm happy to answer any questions that uh you may have regarding our our request or our password.

Thank you, Miss Perry.

Questions.

Very well then.

We'll start with the softball ones first.

How many employees do you have?

Seven.

So Mr.

Smith.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, thank you, Ms.

Perry.

I I know in recent years there's been a lot asked about you know tracking of metrics and you know, independent visitation.

I don't know if it's actually nobody's in your mission, but nonetheless, I know it's a goal of yours.

Um have you I I know that can be a tricky thing to track.

Um I'm just curious on you know your tracking capabilities and if you're if if you're seeing any trends in in in that you know independent visitor sector that we we do care about.

Thank you.

Um thank you, Mr.

Smith.

Uh, through the chair, uh we are we are subscribed to Placer AI, which is a huge data set, and we have spent the last several months developing reports and laying out our geo fences so that we can see who's visiting inside various areas of town.

There are of course areas that we do not have access to.

So, for example, uh Bartlett is considered a sensitive area.

So we do not have access to information in there.

We don't have access to the legislative building either.

So there are areas in town that uh are kind of taken off the grid, if you will, that we don't.

However, what we are doing right now is carefully geofencing, for example, the water where the ships are right up next to the dock versus upland of that and along Franklin and into the downtown area where we can see where people are off of the ship and actually moving around.

So I anticipate very shortly being able to deliver regular reports to this body to our board, to our partners about the numbers of people who are actually coming through town and providing something that looks like a heat map to show where they are going once they are here.

That information will also be uh accompanied with some demographic data so we can see where they came from, some fine, you know, some basic economics about how what their spending is and uh their capacity.

So I hope to be able to deliver that to the body very, very soon.

Ms.

Hughes Gandhi is thank you, madam chair.

That sounds very cool about the geofenc.

Um thanks for being here.

Following up on that same question, that is that'll show I can see that tool as being super useful and uh in several facets of um managing the behavior.

I know we've talked about in the past our hotel stock, and you already referenced the challenge of having something planned, but people don't like to book their rooms right up until the last minute.

And in my mind, uh the other piece besides seeing where people are is us having a good sense throughout the year of what is the I guess vacancy rate, or I can't think of the correct industry term for that, but what is our percentage capacity that we're using our hotels and how often are they over?

So could you speak about that where we are and having that data thank you Ms.

He Scandis and through the chair uh I deliver to CBJ uh pretty much monthly and certainly it's in our quarterly report a report called um it's from CoStar and it is a hotel occupancy report.

Hotel occupancy has dropped um over the last several years continues to drop uh average daily rate has remained stable over the last five years um and as everyone in this room knows um you know those those rates have been high they've been high across the state they're high uh they're high all over the US but I think it's exacerbated here in Alaska uh that said um the hotels are in a precarious position because they have staffing issues just like everyone else does so um I think they are um they're having to work that revenue game of how many how many rooms do do we actually have available and what is it gonna you know what's going to take to turn those rooms over so um at this point I I believe we've hit a spot where um occupancy and daily rate are starting to kind of balance out rates are beginning to drop so I'm hoping that we can actually increase occupancy um as they uh as they drop those rates and we're able to get more people in travel Juno is also um working with the hotels with the understanding that uh especially downtown many of the hotels have a lot of their rooms contracted out during the summer for uh cruise shift changes so that is for cruise crew crew uh cruise entertainment entertainment for example um and for our small ship turnovers so folks who are coming in to take an uncruise or um american dream you know that they they stay overnight on one end or the other or both of those so uh those contracts impact our ability to for example bring in um a 200 person meeting in the summertime we may not be able to get rooms for that okay sure so just I'm not sure about procedure okay um I did also want to add to that um it's always a challenge right when you're marketing not sales right and and uh I think that Liz does a really good job trying to track numbers and trends and things like that.

But as a marketing person, um I see I go to a lot of trade shows I'm down south a lot promoting my business um and through that I hear what people are hearing about Juno.

And it just like gives me chills about how important Travel Juno is because what's what's leading on the news right now and I just came back from a trade show in New York City and I lost track of how many people came up to me and said Juno oh I thought you don't want people anymore.

That's what we're hearing.

And so it is so important that we don't rely on regular news we don't rely on cruise ships Hall in America whoever to tell the world about Juno we need to be the ones telling people about Juno.

So that's a big sort of upstream battle that we're swimming it against right now.

Thank you.

Mr.

Brooks Thank you madam chair and thank you for joining us and you know giving us all this wonderful information and working hard for the community I am curious I know that both assemblymember Smith and uh Hugh Scanji's here were talking about the tracking metrics and uh I don't know if this would be something that's part of what you're looking at having that AI get into but is there uh any metrics or uh kind of bracketry for seeing how many of those um media hits and engagements are translating into a a booking or a purchase of any kind that relates to the community thank you for that uh through the chair to Mr.

Brooks um if I had an answer for that question if I had a calculation that would work I would be retired in living in a big house in Bermuda because that is the question that every destination marketing organization tries to get answered.

The the and the way that you know course marketing actually works is that it's a rather regular um touch to the inbound visitor.

How many times did they see an ad?

How many times did you know were they, you know, did they see something across come across on social, for example?

What is word of mouth?

All of those things compound it are what drive people to make the decision.

So our job is to put out as much positive and you know, and great imagery, be realistic about it.

I mean, one of the things that this organization has come under fire for is that we we have have been printing too many sunshiny pictures.

So purposely, uh, you know, and we say that you know that was false advertising, and it ain't every day I was here.

Um so we have by design switched to moodier images in almost everything that we're doing.

Yeah, the sunshiny stuff is still in there, but we are purposely making sure that people get a realistic view of what it's like to be here.

So um so to that end, it's our job to make sure that um everybody who is looking at Juno for whatever reason, whether they want to visit here or they want to move or maybe come in and do some remote working, um they have the correct image and they have the correct Juno story.

Ms.

Hughes Candice Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is all great information.

Thank you for this.

And I found the uh chairwall tracked and made to my hotel.

Um it feels like a good, there's so many aspects of the work you do that we could dig into as an assembly just for other policy reasons.

Um but since we are in the finance committee, uh I'll transition to the more of a bummer uh line of questioning that we've been having with all of our partner agencies.

So obviously you're both um well aware that that's been kind of the tone and tenor of the assembly, probably as we've talked about cuts.

Um you have your two side by side uh the budget years there and uh just your fiscal I don't I lost my page, but I'm hoping you could start off by just talking about maybe before I get into more specifics.

You just had your retreat.

How if you could both characterize how at this present moment you are approaching that as an organization and an agency and what the board is thinking about um without getting any numbers from the assembly if through through the the chair um and to Miss Yu Scandy's, um if I understand the correction the the question correctly, um what is the board's position on with the with the understanding that um that this is gonna be a very difficult year.

I'll I'll distill it.

Okay, I didn't get much sleep last night.

If I could hear from you what work you've done already without getting further detailed direction from the assembly, and then if um Ms.

Hutchinson, I'd love to hear characterization of what that conversation was like at the board level.

Oh, thank you.

Um again through the chair to Miss Hughes Candies.

Uh we were advised back in October that we would be held to a flat budget again this year.

So we have had three fiscal years uh with the same grant amount of hotel bed tax, and that is the uh 1.267 million dollars that you see for previous fiscal.

Um and to make that number work, we have uh we have X'd out some contracts.

We have also X'd out a number of initiatives uh to stay in there.

I believe in an um I Ms.

Hutchinson can um attest to this, the board at the retreat wants to be in a position where we are preserving staff as much as possible, uh, but continuing to get the work done.

So we will make you know, we'll make the cuts that would be you know necessary to to make that happen.

Um we have a small staff, it's uh have one person who does uh work remotely, but um they are all professionals of what they do, and um it's not a job that can be done by one or two people and be effective.

So I think effectiveness is what we need to think about here.

And I will uh reference some case studies that um ATIA has used and that I have used in the past of what happens when marketing is reduced significantly or cut all together, and that is you lose market share very quickly, you know, usually within a year, year and a half for a DMO.

Once funding is restored, um, if it's restored, it takes almost a market cycle to regain the market share.

So I I don't believe Juno is in a position where we want to be behind the eight ball, and as Ms.

Hutchinson said, bad news travels fast.

So if we're not welcoming people into town, if we don't have the ability to do that in an effective way, uh people will stop coming.

We'll stop getting inquiries uh from meeting planners, inquiries from inbound visitors because they will not feel like they are welcome in town.

And that happened in Colorado, it happened in Sonoma.

Um Sonoma completely cut their budget several years ago, and then um their partners, their businesses started complaining.

So, where is everybody?

Well, you know, they were overcrowded at one point, and then suddenly there was no one, and they finally restored funding, and it took them two to three years minimum to get to get their folks back coming in through the Sonoma Valley.

Um so I will I will leave it there.

We again we have made uh cuts in contracts, we have made cuts in our other programming that you should be able to see reflected on on budget itself for this year.

Mayor Weldon.

Uh thank you, Madam Chair.

And on that note, just so you know we're gonna be asking this of everybody.

Uh, would you present um give staff a budget that looks has a cut of 30 percent when you get a chance to come up with a budget that cuts 30 percent?

I'm not asking it for now.

I know what your answers are now.

I want to see where it shows up in your spreadsheet.

Through the through the chair to uh Mayor Weldon, a 30% cut, and and I I would also ask um for clarification from Ms.

Flick, the uh finance director.

Um I was advised uh when we met with the um when we met with the deputy city manager uh that there was an opportunity perhaps to use marine passenger fees as as opposed to hotel bed tax for a chunk.

I I received an email that that was no longer the case.

So my question is 30% of what number 30% of 30% of the number you get from us not including the marine passenger fees.

Okay, because those are more of a pasture for you.

30% of that number would I'm not asking for it now.

I want you to go through and figure out where you'd have to cut, but probably a program is what I'm looking for.

That's um that would represent almost a whole department.

I understand that.

I just wanted to see what you guys came up with.

And like I said, nothing against travel, Juno.

You're doing great, but we're gonna be asking hard questions of everybody.

So thank you.

Um, Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam chair.

On the expenditure list, can you uh just give a brief description of what the uh partner expenditure is, please through the chair to Mr.

Brooks.

Uh partnership services is a self-funded department.

So anything that is an expenditure under there has is all earned income.

There is no hotel bed tax assigned to that department.

So those expenditures are directed to partner education, they are directed to um to getting partners in.

So um, you know, partner recognition.

Um we we do host an annual you know event for them, uh, but again, this is all earned income.

There is no hotel bed tax attached to that department.

I'll jump in with a related question.

Um maybe you could just walk through those those just at a high level, the difference between those five expenditure departments.

I I mean I know what administration is, and you just explained partner, but the other three just for us, so we that we make sure we understand.

Thank you for that, Chair Wool.

Um EGS stands for event group sales.

So this is the person uh that is currently staffed by Heather Collins, um, who is a longtime Gino I.

Um this department brings in events, meetings, groups, handles the services for those.

Um this department provides uh services like getting catering bids, getting hotel bids, putting bid packages together for organizations.

Uh we we regularly bid on meetings with organizations.

So that's part of that process as well.

So that is a sales job.

And that ROI is reflected in the economic uh impact that we bring in for those meetings.

So when I mentioned earlier, for example, that we have brought in meetings with a three and a half million dollar economic impact.

That's just for this year for that for that department.

DM stands for destination marketing, so that is exactly what it stands for.

Christy Switzer heads that department.

She uh attends trade shows, she talks to media, she arranges arranges for media fans, uh familiarization tours, if you will.

She hosts media in town.

Uh she helps tell the Juno story.

She works with partners like Ms.

Hutchinson to get them out on excursions so that they can experience the same things that they're uh that their readers are going to uh experience.

We uh have food writers in.

I uh you may remember that CD chef Paddy Yinich uh from Pabuse Mexican Table was here last May as part of her uh her TV tour and new book tour.

So we worked with her production company to get her in to do the Juno section of that um of that series, and that is the type of work that Destination Rocketing does is you know, they they will bring in TV shows, videographers, um, just travel writers, travel agents, training travel agents is a huge thing.

That isn't uh we thought three or four years ago that travel agents were just gonna go by the wayside because of you know, expedia and the internet and all of that, and actually people are taking them up because they love having a real person to talk to who knows what it's like, you know, to be in that to be in that community.

Um VIS is visitor information services.

Um this historically has been funded partly through hotel bed tax and marine passenger fees.

Their job is to ensure that the visitor sites are staffed, open, ready to go, full of information, full of correct information.

They handle all of the inbound inquiries, whether by email or by phone, making sure that guides get sent out, uh, that you know, people have what they need.

They may call and request additional information.

Um, hey, send me some stuff on whale watching too.

All of those pieces so they can answer 150 questions a day or so.

Uh it's a very, very busy department during the summertime.

Uh PS is partnership services, which I I just described that is dedicated to to our uh partners and services that they need for for their accounts and so on.

And then there's admin, which is you know primarily myself and our operations manager, and we're a little bit of the glue that kind of holds the whole thing together.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam chair.

On the uh the savings accounts been growing over the last couple of years.

Through the chair uh to Mr.

Brooks.

Um, yes, uh that we have two savings accounts uh that you should be aware of, um, that they are on the summary sheet for our finances.

Uh we have a savings account over at First National, we have a savings account at Wells Fargo that is associated with our checking account.

Um they have grown for through earned income.

And the other thing this the this group should be aware of is that there are unspent marine passenger fees associated with the crossing guard program inside of that.

Close to, I think we calculated about $515,000 that has grown since post-COVID.

So since the previous vendor had difficulty delivering that service and then didn't bill all of that out.

We you know we we were double checking all of that.

That reserve has grown.

For this fiscal year, Travel Juno did not receive marine passenger fees toward that program.

So we are drawing down from this reserve to pay for the crossing guard program from July 1st forward.

So that that is our our goals to get that spent down and use those reserves for the crossing guard program.

The other uh the remainder of that is the um the rest of our earned income plus the hotel bed tax grant that we receive from the city as that builds up.

Historically, we spend most of our budget, the last quarter and a half of the fiscal as we had the run-up to the season.

That's when we have our big trainings.

That is when we do a lot of trade shows.

Um, and we we just naturally expend more of our revenue in springtime than we do in the fall.

Mayor Weldon.

Uh thank you.

Um looking at the page, um page four of your thing, looking at the tiers, how much does it cost to be part of each tier?

I'm sorry, uh I'm sorry, through the chair to Mayor Weldon.

I do not have that particular sheet in front of me.

Base tier to belong to Travel Juno is $400.

That is our tier four.

And that will include listing on the website, it includes a listing in the planner.

Um, and then the other services that travel Juno provides.

Uh, we have tiers above that that include items like uh ads in the planner.

Uh, I believe that one is about 15 to 1800.

There is a tier two, which is in the $3,700 range.

Each tier of course has um additional benefits that line up with that.

Uh, a lot of that is the ad in the planner.

So rather than purchasing all of these items a la carte as we were doing many years ago, we package them up as a tier, so it's one stop shopping.

You sign up for tier two, and you know exactly what you're going to get and what those benefits are.

Ms.

He's Candice.

Uh thank you, Madam Chair.

My question was it was uh helpful knowing what sorts of things you cut back on uh contracts, programming initiatives, et cetera.

The um destination department is where I would imagine you would find something like trade fairs, and I know that's one way that especially in the other seasons you're getting out and having those conversations.

So I'm wondering if there's been if you also reduced the number, how much you enjoy, you know, I can see a number that it's a smaller number, so I know there's some reduction, but uh if you could talk a little bit about reductions to travel and and what you think the impact of that uh through the cheers um to Miss Huscandies, we systematically went through and uh working with the different department heads, uh, we did reduce the number of trade shows that we're going to.

Uh we have reduced the amount that is resourced to those trade shows.

Uh we have also uh reduced um print ads.

Uh we're we're not really doing print ads anymore.

So that is pretty much out the um that is pretty much out the gate at this point.

Uh we are very strategically letting some contracts just expire and cutting out some subscriptions.

We're constantly looking for cost savings.

Um the uh big cuts would come from the two primary marketing departments, so event group sales and destination marketing, and I would work with both of those managers to identify the items, and it'd be a mix of things because we know if we get rid of all the trade shows, that will be huge missed opportunities.

We can't get rid of all of one thing, basically.

So it's going to be the shuffle of uh finding those cost savings across the board, knowing that we're gonna have to eliminate some things.

Any other questions?

Uh Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um I know that you're saying that the print has kind of gone out the door, but as far as uh, you know, visitor information and in that realm kind of, you know, you're talking about it a little bit earlier with you know, changing the the scheme of the visuals to reflect what people are to expect a lot more.

Um wouldn't necessarily have to state anything, you know, false, but as far as the spirit of planting a seed, is there ever been any mention of like, you know, things like uh why why it's a good idea to move to Juno in any of that kind of outreach and uh trying to just you know plant a little inception seed of like, hey, maybe consider it, you know, because people get in that uh, you know, um that feeling when they come and visit their enchanted by the place and those seeds can take root a little quicker in that environment.

Um I think one of our best recruiting tools is our seasonal staff, and uh that's where we we've seen uh real every year we have seasonal staff that decide not to be seasonal.

And again, referencing my uh travel on the road with trade shows.

Once Travel Juno cut out their trade shows, I also additionally joined Visit Anchorage and even Ketchukan has invited me along for some shows.

And all of us in tourism, we all came up here for seasonal and we all live here now.

And uh as a company that houses a lot of my staff, about uh 50% of my staff are housed in our employee housing.

Every year we've got people staying long, staying longer, asking to stay year-round in our employee housing, and then eventually making Juno their residence.

So I think that's one of the best recruiting tools as well.

And people and also reaching out to desert communities because they want to see rain.

Thank you.

If I may also uh to address uh Mr.

Brooks's question, um JEDC has a program called Choose Juno, and that is we were we refer folks to choose Juno when they um have a question about moving to Juno, working remotely in Juno, and so we we share those resources are referenced on on both websites.

The other piece is that um, and this has been borne out by again, you know, Longwoods and some um other research that they have done.

They're a big company that does a lot of destination research.

Uh, there's a halo effect with destination marketing, to the effect that it really uh it it benefits communities in that people who are looking to move, you know, change locations, again, work remotely and and just kind of want to you know start something new, they're looking for a new a new adventure.

The halo effect that destination marketing provides to those people can be a key factor in that decision to to move to that destination.

Uh this has been borne out um in a number of states, including Michigan with their pure Michigan campaign.

Um they saw a lot of you know, a lot of uh good feedback from that.

And uh it's no different with Juno.

So I think you know, sharing images, sharing resources among um other organizations.

Uh, we're doing um a lot more with video and social um because that's where people are.

And so we're all you know, we're looking for um, we're looking for our markets uh on those sites specifically.

Um and we have found that Facebook is a great place for people to find events.

So we're we're pushing events on Facebook that are uh open to the public.

Uh and we have our own events page.

So all of that wrapped together are ways for people to find out what's going on in town.

Would they be having a good time there?

They can see that we're having folk fests, they can see that we're having you know, the jazz festivals getting ready to happen.

They can see when gallery walk is.

Uh all of that is available on our website, and our website is probably our primary tool, and that's why we we need to keep that website up and up to date and very navigable um just for that reason.

Thank you.

All right.

Um, thank you.

Oh, sorry, you had one more question, Miss Heese Candies.

Thank you, Madam Chair, just one more.

Um that was great.

And you just mentioned uh Ms.

Hutchinson talking about the trade shows.

So that leads into uh I guess a thought exercise.

You mentioned Colorado and Sonoma and um what they saw, and I'm sure that if you were a seasonal or a tourist industry business in Sonoma or Colorado, you had big feelings about uh wherever it was actually fully cut.

In looking at these tiers and looking at the actuals of partners and the goals for acquiring new partners.

Do you feel like you know what the universe of possibility is for Juno?

Like just if the city was to stop providing funding, um I guess do you feel like this accurately reflects how many you think are out there or how that might influence behavior?

Because I can imagine if you're a tourism business and you're gonna say, well, we still need you to exist, even if the city is not gonna find you.

Do you think that would expand your universe?

Uh through the cheer to Missuse Candies.

Um in the I and I believe we're talking about the universe of inbound traffic.

Of partner, potential partners.

Oh, potential partners.

Who else could, you know what that universe looks like.

Well, um, I'm happy to say that several years ago, um, under a different city uh manager, uh, we agreed to represent every business that wanted to be represented on the Travel Juno website, uh, whether they are paid or not.

Unpaid partners are called non-partners, um, but they still get a contact listing.

So if you would want to go, you know, search for and we're adding to this all the time.

Um, and partners who, for whatever reason, maybe one year they can't pay to be a partner.

We still keep them on this in the system as a non-partner so that they will register on the website.

So maybe, you know, Aunt Minnie from Birmingham visited this company when she was here five years ago, and maybe that company just wasn't able to join Travel Juno.

She could still go to the website and find them because they're still in our system.

And that way we are we have just a ready prospect list for uh partnership as well.

Um, our partnership services manager, Tammy Hanson, is always uh scoping out new uh possibilities.

She's got you know a great prospect list, and uh this is one uh avenue for her to expand that list.

We we feel that uh philosophically, every business is actually part of the visitor industry because by rating, you know, just that level of spending, everybody gets a little, you know, gets a piece of it, whether you're a plumber or you're doing wiring or whatever it is that you're doing.

Um also philosophically, every business that is inside the visitor industry should become a member of Travel Juno one way or another, so that we can let our visitors know everything that is available to them here in town.

Great, thank you.

All right, thank you both uh for being here.

I know those aren't easy questions.

We don't like having to ask them, and that's where we're at right now.

So really appreciate the time and um we'll probably follow up with more questions.

Thank you for being here.

Oh, Miss Hutchinson, do you want to say something?

Go ahead.

Um, I'm learning these procedures, so I appreciate it through the chair.

I would like to, if I may close as a representative of the board, I have so much respect and sympathy for the painful cuts that we're all having to do and uh really appreciate the time the mayor has given us uh to keep us updated and regular communication with us.

Um, but once again, from a marketing perspective, I know many of you are also business people, and there I would just plead that at a time when the budget is so precarious is the the last time the the time that we don't want to make huge cuts on an industry that is thriving in Juno.

And we have many things in the tourism industry right now that are leveling us off.

Um many of us businesses have seen flat lines over the last three years, still profitable, still great, but those booming years are gone.

So there's a lot of management going on right now.

But I would just plead that at a time when Juno needs the inflex, we need the thriving businesses right now that I hope that we would take good care of our tourism industry.

Thank you for that.

All right.

Um Miss Skillbred, we will bring you up for our next presentation here on the Juno Community Foundation.

There you go.

When you sit there, you get to know the hard question first.

I'm not gonna answer it first.

Um, just a quick overview.

I think um Adrian's gonna put up the um spreadsheet that you have in your packet.

I don't have any slides per se, um, but the spreadsheet sort of gives you information about how much has gone out from the Juno Community Foundation and our our just our Juno Hope Endowment Fund and um the City and Borough of Juno.

Um, in addition to that, we give out probably 400,000 more that go to Serves Social Services.

So I'm gonna back up and start at the beginning here.

2020 FY26 was our 10th year of combining the Juno Hope Endowment with the CBJ Social Service Grant program into one.

Over the years, we've given out 22.6 million dollars, which is pretty impressive, with about 11.8 million of that being from the city and 10.7 from the Juno Community Foundation.

We've given it out over the years to 46 different organizations, some of which are still with us and some of which have come and gone.

So we have a process every year that began with the first year we started giving out the funds before we were even connected with the funding from the city.

And that was to go out to all the organizations in the social service and health areas that we give out funds and bring them together under the different areas where we give out funds, including homelessness, mental health suicide prevention, substance misuse, hospice, domestic victims of violence, and then when we joined with uh with CBJ, we added education in there, adult education.

Um through that process, we identify what the gaps are and what the needs are in our community for funding for social services.

Um process includes a letter of interest.

We have a professional advisory committee that is made up primarily at this point of other funders.

Um, so people who represent the Rasmussen Foundation, the Alaska Mental Health Trust, the Suduk Foundation, the Alaska Community Foundation, uh, so several other foundations.

Um we find that doing that um helps in a number of ways.

They have experience in giving out grants and in reviewing applications, and so they raise good questions that we are able to get back to our grantees and have them provide answers to after they reviewed the letters of interest.

Um, they get to know Juno's needs and we're able to leverage more funds from them to support um the needs in Juno.

So then after the PAC reviews uh the letters of interest, we discuss the um what their questions are that they'd like to see answered in the um application, and we um tell nonprofits where they stand, um, how much money is being requested and how much money um we think that we will have.

We we know what we have right now from the Juno Community Foundation because we're we figure that out based on December 31st of the year before.

Um we don't know what the city has until uh usually May, um sometimes October.

Um and um then we just let those nonprofits and other applicants know if it's unlikely that we'll be able to meet their um request this in a particular year, just so that they can decide whether to write a grant application or not.

They're always welcome to write one, but you just want to be able to let people know where to spend their time and what might be most fruitful.

We have the listen and learns, um, those are coming up actually later this month, and um there's six of them scheduled and covering all those different areas.

We tend to get anywhere from five people for hospice to 35 people for homelessness, um, mental health, substance misuse, things like that at any one of those.

Uh applications are due in March.

And then our advisory committee reviews those applications and um with their input, we figure out funding levels and the grants are approved by my board, and then um let's see, then the grants are awarded once we have funds from the um city and borough of Juno in addition to our funds, and then we give them out.

So usually they're going out end of July, early August, something like that.

Um we also have reporting process because we really look at um information to ascertain a couple of things.

Um our reports are an interim report and a final report for each um awardee every every time there's an award, because some of these are substantial awards of 400 to 600,000.

And so um as with all larger grants, meaning anything from 10,000 um or 30,000 and above, having a good reporting process on it is important to us.

Then the um final reports are due on August 31st of um every year.

You all are on a fiscal year.

We're on a calendar year so I'm always juggling the year year dates.

And that's the the process that we use um let me see in addition yeah to the hope funds I talked about additional funds that we have um and our additional funds go to things like um when you see feeding Juno kids so they go to the weekend backpack program.

They go to activities and trades scholarships and um they go to housing for people who have less than 30% area median income and for hospice.

So we provide funding in a lot of areas some of the funding because this is a combined grant some of the funding does go to other or agencies that are associated with the um city and borough juno like the school district or the hospital in the past the fire department the police department and others have requested funds specific funds.

And so in front of you I pulled together um a report on the FY26 grants those are the grants that we gave out I guess the second half of them went out end of September early October this year.

No I guess it must have been October and um you also have a copy of the award um notice that we sent out the press release and then I pulled together funding um grant funding and outcomes so those are based on the August 25th final report so that's for the FY25 grant period.

Reason I didn't do FY26 interim reports is those are not due until January 31st and these packets were due before I had those reports.

But what I did was go through and pull out reports for all of the organizations that we provided CBJ funds to this year.

And so you'll see in here the first paragraph on each organization details you know how many people they worked with how many meals they um gave out how many bed nights there were that people stayed in those facilities or other sort of factual and statistical kind of information about organizations and what they were doing.

And then um we do ask people to try and provide us with a story of um uh success and someone who came to their agency to receive services and how that went for them and what happened.

So there's several of those in there and I don't know if people have questions about any of these but I tried to it personalizes it a little bit more than all right there were 200 of these people and 3000 bed nights and these and what does that all mean um but um what it all means is that this is the social service delivery of our community to our community um and in 20 the year 2000 CBJ closed a social service and it might have been health health and social service but it was definitely social service department at the city and um was giving out a little over 8000 at that point where it was going out in grants and so that grant amount has steadily increased um stayed the same for several years and then we've asked for increases as everybody has increased needs especially after salaries and insurance and all the things that increase when you are staff intensive and you can't put robots in the place is sort of what I'm saying.

And so um that's the basic picture I did include our um a very summary of our budget to actual um and what our um approved budget was for 2026 we use $50,000 a year of this money to support the work that it's basically my program since it started when I was the only staff person at the foundation and so supports about half of the expenses of running the program um and so that's in there and then it's much easier to read that I think in your packet or it's a little easier to read it in your packet maybe not much so I don't know I'd be happy to take any questions that you have questions for Miss Skillbread.

Mr.

Thank you, madam chair, and thank you for being with us here today and uh giving us all this great information, doing great work in the community too.

I had a question on the Big Brothers Big Sisters, and I was just reading the little testimonial there about the program.

Um, and it's just unclear to me.

It did has that always been operational for the last handful of years, or is it just getting restarted, or what what's um what's the operations going on there?

Yeah, Mr.

Brooks through the chair.

Um they are getting restarted, and this is the third year of their restart.

Um they uh Big Brothers Big Sisters had a Juno chapter that was active and um doing a lot of work here.

I think like Mark Wheeler, who is on the assembly was the head of it uh for some time and um people were very active.

What happens when agencies collapse their administrative to one area, which means everything became anchorage, big brothers, big sisters, is that um those were when you're further away and when you're in Juneau, they lose a lot of connection with the local community.

And so even though there were really good advocates for Big Brothers Big Sisters here, when that happened, um, they saw a real diminishment in the amount of income that they received, um, the amount of people that knew what they were doing.

And so they got uh just three years ago, I think they got a new executive director.

She was looking for $50,000 for a position to be in Juneau, and um it was an off year.

We try and do anytime we fund a position, we're looking at funding it for three years, and this year right now is the first of three years, and they are off by a year because I told her, well, we want to see what you can do, and then we'll okay 50,000 a year for the next three years, and this is the third year for them.

So I'm hoping to see both from their interim report and from what they do through the end of this year, sort of what happens and how they're doing.

They've had a lot of turnover in staff.

It's been hard because the office is in Anchorage, I believe.

So yeah.

Thank you for that.

So has the program been offered and uh children participating in it here since 2021.

Oh, yeah.

There's been children participating here since it began.

It's just the you know, they had an office of five people here or something, four or five people.

Um I did some contract for work for them, so knew about it, but um, that's no longer exists.

So thank you.

Well done.

Uh thank you.

So on your page that you talk about your budget.

Where is your revenue coming from?

Where is our revenue coming from?

So our revenue comes from several places.

Um, our revenue comes from fees on the funds that we have.

We are grown from being when I walked in the door, a 1.6 million dollar foundation.

We're now a hundred and ten million dollar foundation.

So there's some fees on that that come through the door.

Um, we also have um some earnings, yeah, earnings on other on other funds.

We had a uh sustainability fund um that was started the year before I got there, and we've developed a and then not developed, but we got a second sustainability fund um when we got a very large donation uh in 2015 2014.

Um we get contributions, all of our board members contribute considerably.

Um at this point, most of them are considered when they contribute are contributing more towards different funds of the foundation or different projects that are um we're putting forward, but all board members contribute.

We get contributions from the um community as well.

We tend not to um do any big push for, especially right now, because you can see we're in pretty good shape, and so we tend not to um really push for donations to the community foundation and just um tell uh people to donate to nonprofits that um they really that they really care about and have been involved with and want to make a difference there.

So we gladly accept donations.

So I know this goes out in other places than right here, but um, that's how we look at it is um those would be the main areas.

Oh, in addition, there's the 50,000 from the city.

Um we have a funds, a fund that was established at the Alaska Community Foundation that gives us some money.

And every now and then, like this year, we'll go to Rasmussen Foundation and see if we can get a grant to help us with our move to a new space.

Sorry, there's a laptop screen between me and you, Mr.

Kelly.

So if you are raising your hand, please do it a little higher.

Mr.

Kelly.

Uh thank you.

Um first of all, um, thank you for your support for Big Brothers, Big Sisters.

My wife is a big and uh gets a lot out of the program.

So I appreciate that.

Um I was curious about any criteria that you may have or any trends that your bent board tends to follow in in choosing which projects um you're going to support.

I would say that they um selecting what we support or where the grant funding goes really grows out of those listen and learns.

Um there is a certain amount of operational money for several of our larger um nonprofits here um in town, um, especially those that do not have um Medicaid or other ways of supporting that organization.

Um the Navigator program came out of specifically it comes out of discussions that we have at those meetings where they say, here's a here's a gap.

Um we need somebody, we need something.

Can you help pay for a person for these three different organizations that can go out and you know, take a person from here to there to go and get his picture taken or her picture taken and get their birth certificate so that they can get an ID so that they can then get assistance, you know, or things like that where it's not covered by Medicaid or something else, or not covered by another program that they have.

So that's one example.

Another example was um assistance that we provide um for uh developing nonprofit housing.

Um we don't use this money for that, but that's another big area where we have been putting money recently to develop housing for less than 30% AMI.

And um that whole housing first came out of um that you know, it already been talked about a bit, but really move forward at one of our first uh listen and learns where um Quinkin Haida Regional Housing said we'll give you the property at the meeting, and then the whole thing started moving forward.

Um so I think I've got to say it's um it was uh it was very interesting the first years when you went to organizations and said, I really want you to tell us what you think is needed.

And several says, no, no, no, you don't understand, Amy.

You decide what the parameters are of the grant, and we write the grant application and you tell us who wins.

And I said, Well, that just doesn't make sense because I don't work in this area.

So I need you all to tell us, you know, how that how that's going and what's needed.

And it's um resulted, I think, in a pretty a very fair way of being able to allocate funds.

We've also gotten funds that have come to us subsequently from the city.

So some of the big increases have come because they were a line item in the budget, and you all decided let's just move that in with the community foundation.

So I'd say there's over like 600, 700,000 that's come in that way.

So some of that big increase has simply been moving it from one line into a different line in your budget.

So I'll uh jump in with a question.

Um, maybe I'll ask the mayor's question a little differently.

Um the hard question.

You know, uh you heard us in our last meeting.

We're we're in a tough place.

We're looking at everything line by line.

Um, and we don't expect people of answers to this question, but if we were to come back to you with you know less money than we have traditionally given you as a partner organization, you know, our our theory has always been that that's ongoing um, you know, steady revenue, but in our current situation, we may be looking at reductions.

What what process would you go through, or do you have a sense of how your board would um react to that?

You know, to approach that.

Um it isn't quite my board's sense as much as the organizations which we fund.

And um, I think that's you know, we are the intermediary who has said, okay, we'll bring a million sum, a million and a half dollars to this.

And um, and that became new money in you know 2014.

And so we'll help support it.

Um at that time I thought, oh, we'll be able to do new things because the money the city's putting into it is covering what's actually being done, but that wasn't wasn't the case.

So I think it would just result in cuts.

Um, you know, if it is a 30% cut, um, that's $500,000, $600,000.

And so, you know, there's what do we cut, you know.

Um, and I think that would take a lot of hard conversations.

I think we'd lose some organizations, perhaps, because you're also looking at organizations where it's um we have seen, I think, um, I don't know the numbers, but a decrease in the number of people who have signed up for Medicaid and other benefits.

And so um, it's uncertain what Medicaid is going.

I always mix up Medicaid and Medicare, which is why I'm stumbling, what Medicaid reductions um in our state will have an effect on those who actually have earned into income.

So that's one thing.

We don't know what's going to happen with the um continuum of care funding and other federal funding for housing people who are homeless and others.

So that's another one.

So I think that it will be a snowball effect um if we have to decrease the amount of funding that the community is putting towards resources that really build resiliency and help those folks who are most in need in our community.

Um, you know, what do we take out?

Do we take out, you know, helping to support an additional additional time at the teen health center for mental health?

Um, they just lost three mental health providers at the um in the school district, not just but at the end of last year.

Um, all of these things will have an effect on youth through people who are you know been homeless for years and um now have have housing somewhere.

So I I can't really tell you.

Um I just know it would be, you know, we came in last year and asked for $500,000 more.

And thankfully the um assembly gave us 250,000 for the year.

So that's going away.

Um, you know, we haven't we have agreed not to ask for that.

Um unless um, you know, we have agreed to take what what what we had last year that was continuing.

Um I'm not a sole voice here.

I've got 30 agencies behind me, and what do they say?

I am looking at about I think it was about 400,000 more in letters of interest requests than there's funding for.

So um, you know, yeah, more than hard conversations, I think we'll lose organizations for sure.

Thanks for that.

Um, Mr.

Brooks, then Mayor Weldon.

Thank you, madam chair.

Uh, this is like a kind of two-part question, but do you know how much uh you guys have in savings?

And if so, how much interest gets collected on that savings annually, if any.

Um, yeah, we have reserves uh the community foundation.

Yeah, we have reserves, and that's um the interest on that is some of what was um what's part of our income.

I don't know exactly how much um uh um we are we we figured we I'll just tell you what I do know.

We determine our reserves based on um a 25% drop in the market um because so much of our funds are dependent on what the market's doing.

They're invested in endowments or in long-term institutional investments, and so they're in the stock market and the bond market, and if there's a 25% drop in the market, we looked at we look at how long are we to a five-year um coming back within five years, and so we have reserves that will help us through that won't cover everything, and I think that's about 600,000.

And that's the total uh savings and investments that's holding assets that aren't being used.

Well, we're you know, we have a hundred and ten million dollars.

That isn't accessible to us to take that to operate, and so what I'm what I'm talking about here isn't our reserves and isn't our funds.

It's we manage a grant system for CBJ and ourselves and have combined it.

And so that's what that's what we're doing here, and um being able to determine um, you know, it's it just takes our time.

Um, but really what we do is we look at what's the fiscal health of the organizations that we're giving funds to.

Um I don't know if that helps.

Mayor Weldon, thank you, madam chair, and yes, uh Ms.

Wall probably asked my hard question a little differently, but uh 250,000 is halfway to 500,000.

And I'm not trying to be a jerk.

I asked the same amount of travel general, but realistically when we ask the public what things are they're gonna cut, social grants may be on the shopping block.

I say may, but that's not my question.

My question is looking at your Alaska AIDS Assistance Association.

Um, I think I've talked to you about this before, but you get they gave out 107,000 sterile syringes and only got back 23.

Is there any way we can put it more of a exchange rather than just handing out syringes as we seem to have a huge syringe problem in the city?

Yeah, they have been working on that.

I know that.

And um, they I know that their own staff goes out and helps collect some of those.

Um I think what I hear when I ask for about them, like can you do a one-for-one while you bring one back and you get a new one?

The results of that is a lot of people sharing needles and um getting diseases and infections.

And so that isn't the way that they're they're doing it, but I understand the problem.

Um it's a it's a problem, especially out towards Teal Street Center, but it all over town, I would imagine.

So yeah.

If you have a suggestion, I'm open.

So Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam chair.

This is kind of tailing on to what the mayor was just saying.

Do you know if the search clinic down from Teal Street is also providing clean syringes for folks.

I I'm I'm looking to charm the chair who works for search.

Um I don't know.

I don't know the answer to that.

I would imagine that they do that they do provide syringe clean syringes.

I don't think yeah.

Yeah.

Right, right.

You're gonna test my knowledge of 30 different organizations, which is you know, it's pretty good, but it's not it's not everything.

All right, seeing no more questions.

Um, Ms.

Skillbert, thank you so much for being here again.

We may have more questions for you as we go through this.

We really appreciate um your time.

Great.

Well, thank you all for doing this.

And I will um I'm gonna give us a 10-minute uh recess.

Um in 10 minutes, we'll come back and hear from the small business development center.

We will bring the Assembly Finance Committee meeting back to order.

We are going to be hearing from the Small Business Development Center.

Thank you, Miss Hussein, for being here.

And sounds like you got some slides, and we will ask you some questions after the fact.

I prepared twenty-nine slides.

I promise you, I will not bore you with twenty-nine slides, and you'll probably hear me say next slide, skip over a lot of information just because we're limited in time.

So the SBA does not fully fund SBDC centers on its own nationally.

There are over a thousand centers nationally.

Federal funding is designed to work with the state and local investment.

And that local participation is what allows a full-time community-based center like the Juno Center to exist.

This model is important for a few reasons.

It links federal, state, and local government funds towards one goal, supporting small businesses.

It allows Juno and CBJ to have buy-in to support their small business community and gives the federal government a reason to invest further in Juno's community because they know that cooperation exists.

It's almost like when Uncle Sam decided to create the SBDCs, it wanted some local oversight.

It knew it couldn't manage a thousand centers on its own.

So it decided to get buy-in locally.

That's why this model exists, and that's why it works.

Notably, the Juno Center is not a standalone nonprofit.

We're not like the other nonprofits that uh presented here today.

We are federally accredited, and as such, we're held to rigorous guidelines, sometimes so much so they drive me crazy during the day.

What this means is that the Juno Center is part of a model that is proven and tested year after year across thousands of centers in the US and for decades.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Uh next slide.

And next slide.

Okay, so I want to get straight to the data.

There are a lot of things, uh, a lot of programs, a lot of services that the SBDC offers, and and the Juno Center rides along with the Alaska SBDC, but at the core of the Juno Center is one-to-one business advising.

It's the core of the SBD services that we present here at the Juno Center.

It is absolutely free to business owners and it is confidential.

We cannot share the business information with other businesses or with the government.

We do, however, collect a lot of anonymized data, a lot of data.

And this chart represents some of the data that we collected last year.

This shows some of the topics that I consulted on heavily in 2025.

And there are a few things that we can glean from this chart.

The data shows that Juno businesses struggle with financing, planning, and managing growth, and they seek support in these top three areas.

Number two, this is a broad range of topics, guys.

This isn't just like, hey, I need a business plan, hey, I need a financial model.

It's pretty much running the gamut across all functional areas of business planning.

And what does this mean?

What do I see anecdotally?

Typically, the majority of business owners either don't have the ability to upskill in every single area to manage their business.

And that's where the SBDC can provide that additional support and guidance necessary to get over their hurdles.

A quick story you see a lot of businesses in Juno in Alaska that come in.

Let's say it's a dude, he has a big white truck and he does roofing, he does decking, he does flooring, he does sheetrocking.

He's a jack of all trades.

His wife does the bookkeeping and the secretary and managing of infant invoices and all of those things.

And even with this two double power couple, they still need support in what they're doing.

There are still areas of need.

I see this time and time again.

Last, with regard to having local presence, if you look in the upper right-hand corner, you'll see capital and finance.

I can touch upon all the, you know, the financial models that I've done to get millions of dollars of funding and conventional loans or SBA loans, but I won't talk about that.

What I'll talk about here under capital and finance is the topic around tax planning.

There was something pretty interesting that I found uh last year during my first year of advising Juno businesses.

And that is that almost all of the businesses had confusion around CBJ sales tax.

Whether they were starting a business or in business or behind on their taxes, they didn't know what to do.

While it's clear on the CBJ website, or if you email the sales tax office, there's a lot of fear when it comes to talking to the tax guy, whether it's the IRS or CBJ.

And so what it what became clear to me was that I had to address this issue front on right away with all the business that I advise.

I say this not because I want credit from you guys because you're CBJ and I'm here pounding the pavement to collect tax dollars for you.

I say this because this was uh a nuanced observation that I was able to have about local businesses that had I been in Anchorage, had I been in Matsu, had I been in Fairbanks, I would not have been able to determine that and see this pattern across every single business that I talk to during the uh, you know, all the hours that I'll talk about.

Next slide.

Um, this is some of the top industries.

The most important thing here is if you look at the top three, it really reflects Juno.

But I also want to say that those top three, they really slide.

You know, you can you can see uh two or three businesses come in and say, um, remember when like the food truck um court was opening up, you can see that that it changed.

So there's a lot of fluctuation here, but it still is reflective of Juno businesses.

Next slide.

Okay, this is the this is um a chart that shows our budget.

Um, and I have to say, embarrassingly, that salary and benefit number is not reflective of what I get paid, um, but it is reflective of taxes and all the things that go into salary and benefits.

As I mentioned earlier, the Juno Center is funded through cooperative agreements with SBA, with the key requirement being non-federal matching funds to accompany the federal funds.

In this case, CBJ funds 28,500 for the center, and these funds are strictly used to help close the funding gap with regard to salary and benefits.

The state also steps in and provides the funding necessary for all other costs, including office space, internet, and Wi-Fi.

Next slide.

Okay.

Uh, this is a really important slide, and it's probably one of the most important slides I will show uh tonight, aside from the impact slide.

Uh, if you if you look at this pie chart, you'll see here the distribution of funding that comes from these three sources.

If you look at the yellow piece of the pie highlighted in red, you'll see the CBJ's portion, 18%.

This slide is extremely important because the CBJ investment is a catalytic.

It is not duplicative and it is not additional.

What does this mean?

In other words, the 18% that you see here anchors the federal and state dollars to Juno.

Without that CBJ investment, you do not get the federal and the state funding of 130,000.

Next slide.

So, in what in other words, CBJ's support uh for every $1 CBJ invests, it leverages roughly $4 in federal and state funding to ensure that the Juno center stays open.

It's how we maintain a full-time locally based staff person, which allows us to ensure those federal and state dollars stay focused on Juno small businesses rather than being diluted statewide.

That's really important right there.

Okay.

Next slide.

But if you look at slide 11 through slide 19, you will see a lot of the additional statewide and national resources that are leveraged by the Juno SBDC Center.

And actually, um you do me a favor and uh go to slide 14, because that one is important.

Uh, but slide 11 through slide 19, you'll see a lot of the resources programs.

This doesn't even do it justice, to be quite honest.

The important part to recognize about this is these resources, these programs are able to be interpreted, disseminated, distributed to Juno businesses that seek guidance or that seek resources.

Otherwise, they would probably lay stagnant with someone in Matsu in Fairbanks, et cetera, because they might not be getting the attention that they need.

And the last thing that I want to say about the slides for these additional resources, we are not funding them locally.

So these are statewide resources.

These are national resources.

These are things, you know, market research reports, programs, tools, sometimes that cost businesses three doubt, $3,000 a pop.

They get them for free, and they're funded by the state.

And we're able to access them through the Juno Center and provide them directly to Juno businesses.

Okay, I want to skip straight to slide 20.

And I want to focus on impact.

Okay, so here we are.

The SBDC core funding is awarded through a competitive cooperative agreement.

It's not entitlement.

So SBA evaluates the Juno Center on a few key factors, financial stability of the program, strength of partnerships, including local partnerships like that with CBJ, ability to meet match requirements, and capacity to deliver services consistently.

Next slide.

When viewing these numbers, please keep in mind we are audited and go through multiple desk reviews every year, both from SBA and the University of Alaska.

The numbers you see here are reported by clients.

We have to obtain both attribution and affirmation from clients who see success from our services.

So in 2025, this is what the numbers tell us.

Overall, we served 114 small businesses, of which 70 were new.

We expect that number to increase in 2026.

We topped out at 891 advising hours, and we are tracking to top this record in 2026 as well.

Even with Snow Mageddon, today on February 24th, less than a month in, we are at 137 advising hours in 2026.

In 2025, we helped raise 2.6 million in funding, including grants, equity, and business loans.

And as I mentioned earlier, we are likely sorry, I missed that slide and I should have mentioned it.

But we are likely at 1.5 million in 2026 with less than a month in.

And we supported 142 jobs.

This would not have been possible without CBJ local investment.

The part that I did miss was SSBCI.

It's actually a pretty important uh component of the SBDC.

Um the local funding doesn't uh support it, it's an incredible program.

Um if you go to slide 14 quickly, Adrian, I'll just touch upon it very quickly because it's one of those things that number one is very complex.

Um number two, it's one of those things that people don't know about.

Um essentially the Alaska SBDC is the only organization in the country managing both state and a tribal SSBCI program.

My layman terms interpretation of SSBCI is think of it as um with you know FHA mortgage loans, treasury-backed loans that support riskier lending to um underdeserved communities or smaller, you know, homeowners.

This is the equivalent for small businesses.

And the SBDC is one of the only SBDCs in the country to manage both tranches.

Um this morning I got uh word that a very well-known company uh that I'm sure you guys know of that has been seeking capital to keep itself alive, was able to uh get sign off on SSBCI funding through the Alaska SBDC here in Juneau.

Ms.

Hussein, I'll have to ask you to wrap it up here.

Okay, great.

Sorry.

Okay, I will stop here.

Um, but there are several success stories in the deck along with testimonials.

As you review them, I'd like to impart one thing.

Impact takes time and bills year over year, and continued local funding ensures progress is not reset each year.

You'll see in some of the success stories in the next few slides that these businesses took time to get to where they are, and others are just getting started.

And the advisory work that the Juno Center provides in partnership with CBJ, the SBA, the state of Alaska, and UAA will be there to assist through each phase of the business.

I sincerely thank you for your time this evening, and I look forward to answering your questions.

Sorry, I had to speed through that.

Um, Mayor Weldon and Mr.

Kelly.

Uh, thank you, and thank you for presenting uh today and advising all of our local businesses or a bunch of our local businesses.

Um your clients have to pay anything, is my first question.

And then do you track how long they stay in business?

Got two in there.

Sorry, Madam Chair.

Um, first question, um, they don't have to pay anything.

Every once in a while, there are workshops offered uh where there's a small fee uh required.

I have successfully for all the workshops that I've offered, been able to leverage sponsorships from uh lending partners like um Key Bank and Hayaku here in in Juneau.

So the I I've been able to find sources of funding to make sure everything is free.

And in terms of the longevity of businesses, I think that there is some data with regards to that.

I don't exactly know how it's collected and where it's stored, but I believe that I've seen some data with regard to that.

I and I and I hope that I'm not wrong, but I I'll put a star next to there.

Not certain, but I think that there is.

Thank you.

You've mentioned that this is a statewide program uh that receives some some federal support, and you mentioned that some of the benefit to having you here in Juno is that we receive more personalized attention in our community.

I'm curious for the for other communities in in Alaska, it probably draws on support from people in in Anchorage Fairbanks.

I'm wondering does that also draw on support here?

Do you spend some of the time um helping other businesses that aren't in Juneau?

And if so, um, would you have an estimate of how much?

My time is dedicated to Juno businesses.

There are two businesses outside of Juno that have requested to specifically work with me because of my background.

Uh, one is in Yakutat, and another one is in Anchorage.

And I very rarely advise them.

Uh, it's been limited to one or two meetings here or there.

But uh the purpose of me being here is to drive the Juno Center and to be dedicated to Juno.

Ms.

Hughes Candice.

Thanks, madam chair, and thanks for this.

It's great slides.

My question is about the partnership, this federal state local partnership and that 18% Catalyst catalytic piece.

Is there a minimum amount?

I see the you know, $1 to $4, and you can always like figure out what you're leveraging, but is there a minimum amount that CBJ needs to contribute, or it would lose disproportionate amount and state or federal support?

Um it's not an answer that I have or that I know, partly because um our budget and funding is essentially established by UAA from my understanding.

I do know that the 28,500 is the amount that we have always requested, and we've never increased that amount.

Um so it I honestly don't know the answer to that, and I apologize.

That's okay.

Thank you.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam chair, and thank you for being here with us and uh giving us all this valuable information and as being a business owner in town.

I'm I really appreciate you helping all these other uh business owners and entrepreneurs.

I am curious about that uh that match is the match only associated with funds that come from the municipality, or is the match granted to just any funds that are privately uh raised?

It's a good question.

It gets more complex outside of CBJ.

So we are not your typical 501c3.

The way we raise funds is very different.

We don't roll over funds.

For instance, I can preemptively answer your question about savings.

That that's not an option.

Um also once you start going beyond the city government.

The essentially UAA steps in and then it becomes a different animal that I'm not privy to.

Oh, let me just say one other thing.

Uh, on top of that.

It also would mean that the dedicated service to Juno businesses may be protracted.

All right, seeing no other questions.

Thank you so much for uh being here and and teaching us a little bit more about what you do.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right, that brings us to agenda topic three.

Um, gas no human services assembly grant update.

Who is this?

Manager Kester.

Thank you.

If you recall, in 2024, Gas No Human Services came to you with a request to fund uh $2 million to support a very good project.

51 uh permanent supportive housing units.

Um, they needed the uh the support of the assembly at the time because the assembly dollar needed to be the first dollar to leverage additional funding, and we had to also um you know provide them with some letters of support.

Uh they were successful in uh leveraging uh federal dollars.

However, due to the changing federal landscape for uh funding, uh those those grants are no longer available to them.

So now they have the two million dollar CBJ appropriation that's kind of sitting there waiting for uh the the project to get additional grant funding.

They still very much are committed to the project.

They just see it instead of a timeline, which was supposed to break ground this summer as a five to a 10-year timeline horizon.

So what we are requesting from you in uh this memo is just to have staff work with gas no human services to bring that $2 million back into uh CBJ.

Uh so you can you know either use it for uh more rape uh funding needs, uh, you know, put put it in your uh your reserves, uh, what have you and you know, let gas no human services know that they can come before you when they do need that funding and request it again.

So happy to answer any questions you have.

Um is anyone from Gas No Human Services available?

Okay.

Um well, if we have questions.

I know the mayor and I sat down with them, but I would you know encourage others to um if you're got more questions for the project that they can answer to seat them out.

I'm sure they'd be happy to answer them.

Any questions for our manager on this?

Miss Yescandies.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Maybe as I maybe it's a question for guest no human services.

I'm just wondering if how much you got into.

That's nice to know they're still committed to the project.

It sounds like they're still committed to that size, that many units.

It's just gonna take them longer rather than downscaling.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

Mayor Weldon.

Well, um, are you ready for my motion?

Yeah.

Um, and it was a good conversation with them.

And then um, I think Ms.

Wall and I both said we support the project.

The timeline just is such that other people can make use of that money while we uh work on uh getting them more funding through the federal and the state somehow.

Anyway, I moved to direct staff to work with the gas non human services to return the assembly's two million dollars grant um and come back to finance committee with a future funding request for the project when they're closer to being developed.

And ask for unanimous consent.

Any objections?

Thank you, madam chair.

Objecting just for one more question.

That is a staff question.

Um I don't trust the top of my head.

Whereas this from the general fund or was it from the affordable housing fund that we granted them?

I feel like it was general fund, but I don't remember.

Through the chair, um, something over here Scandy's, we believe it's through the general fund.

Great.

Thank you.

Ms.

Adginson, do you still have your hand raised?

Uh no, that was a mix up on my part.

Sorry.

All right.

Um, any objections?

Seeing none that is so moved.

Uh, we will go on to item four, FY27 assembly grant process and deadlines.

Ms.

Flick.

Thank you, Chair Wall.

Um, this is just an informational piece for all of you in working with Chair Wall on the budget process.

We know there are many, many hard decisions before this body.

Um, however, in wanting to preserve process that's available to the assembly and to community members, we're going to keep the um community grants process as a process that um the community organizations can avail them of.

Um, basically the way that works is a community organization has an idea, they need some funding.

They need to find a an assembly member who will sponsor their idea.

And so if you decide to say yes, I'm gonna sponsor your idea.

Um, you let us as staff know, we get you the um the form that has information about their project and their amount and their request.

And um we will um help you get that back from them.

Um we've created a deadline of March 15th so that we can compile that information and uh bring it to you on our April 1st AFC meeting, at which time uh what has typically happened is that uh sponsoring assembly member introduces the idea.

Um assembly members can say, oh, if I'm gonna make a decision on this, here are the questions that I have.

We gathers those questions and then get that information back um for you.

So we just wanted to make sure um you knew that that was um still a thing that um you know that will go in a long list of decisions that you all have to make um this spring, um, but that the deadline is March 15th.

Um the website is fantastic.

So if you want to go to the Juno.org slash grants, um, you'll see um this great graphic that's in your packet about how the process works, but there's also a history button.

So if you hit the history, you get a beautiful um excel chart of who's gotten grants and how much over a long period of time.

So it's a great website to just kind of answer the questions that you might have about the history of who's been funded and how much and when.

Thank you.

Questions on that.

Um, I'll just add in one piece of commentary, which is um that I think one of the places we often get tripped up is you know, one of the decisions we make when we consider community grants is whether we want to um fund that organization if they have operational needs one time or into the future.

And so as a reminder, if we said into the future, it will be in the city manager's budget.

If we voted one time, it will not unless they get a sponsor again.

So just want to make sure people check that list so that if you're expecting to see something and you don't, it's because you know it wasn't sponsored or because it was a one-time request.

So just make sure if there are things that you're hoping show up, um, that you double check that you're doing that that work.

All right.

Um brings us to item five, 2026 ballot, 3% temporary sales tax and bond propositions.

Is this Ms.

Flick?

Yes, thank you, Chair Wall.

Um, the purpose of this memo is not to solve all of the world's problems tonight, but to get out in front of you that um this coming October, um, if there is a desire to continue the temporary 3% sales tax, it needs to be on the ballot.

Um, the uh question that uh we have for you is you know, in the past we've allocated that 3% um and communicated our voter um intent language around 1% going to operations, 1% going to projects, grants, and other services, which is mostly operational, um, and then 1% going to infrastructure type projects.

And so um the the basic question along these lines is um you know, just validating we want to put that on the October election and um to get a sense of really like that allocation, we don't need to talk about it anymore, or we want to talk about that allocation and what's included in that intent language.

And you'll see at the very bottom, um the last date to introduce an ordinance on the regular schedule for something to be on the October election is June 8th.

And the last day for public hearing and action is July 27.

So it the timing fits in well.

And certainly the the sales tax is financial.

So we if there's discussion on uh wanting to figure out a different allocation, um, we can we don't necessarily have to tackle that tonight.

We can work with Miss Wool to figure out when we can put that on our our crowded schedule of budget topics for the spring.

And then can I just go to the other one too, or do you want to take them separately?

Let's take them separately just because I sorry saw some hands.

Um Mayor Weldon.

Uh thank you.

And um, I'm just confirming this.

I should know this, but uh I'm assuming the temporary 3% sales tax for the October 2026 ballot will have to move to the full assembly.

Correct.

That is correct.

It will have to go um through the norm.

Yeah.

You can recommend it as the AFC, then it goes to the full assembly.

Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

Um I'll start with um, I guess you have a couple of questions, but I'll start with the one that I kind of previewed to you earlier, Ms.

Flick.

I I was kind of curious, you know, because the sales tax exemptions uh do have an impact on how much each of these 1% will actually fund in the budget.

So if we wanted to uh, for example, hold harmless um the 1% for operations, like we wanted to bring in like the same amount of money for 1% of operations, and we wanted to bring in the same amount of money for for infrastructure projects.

Would you be able to tell me how much we'd have to uh reduce the the other option, the the the 1% for projects, grants and other services in order to keep that at 3%.

Thank you.

Um, assemblymember Kelly and and through the chair.

So um in looking um at this question, um two pieces that I looked at was if we assume that our our revenue um that comes in for each one percent of sales tax before there was an exemption on food and utilities, it was about 14 million dollars every one percent.

So if we look at um reduced sales tax coming in, but we want to still put 14 million towards infrastructure and 14 million towards um operations, that would mean that our 3% sales tax would be allocated as 1.2% of the 3% goes to operations.

1.2% of the 3% goes to infrastructure projects, and that would leave um 60% or 0.6 of the 3% that would go to um those um other projects, grants and other services.

And so it'd be about 14 million for the operations and infrastructure CIP, and it would um allow that um other projects, grants and services um would drop to about 7 million, taking into account the exemptions with our as we've frequently talked about it, anticipated revenue loss.

Um Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam chair.

On the three percent there, uh the the first percent is for operations.

The last one is for infrastructure projects, but then the middle one is projects, grants and other services, mostly operational.

So what are the types of projects and operations covered in that middle one that aren't in the one percent for strictly operations or the one perfect one percent for infrastructure projects?

That's a great question question, assembly member Brooks.

It can be um it is intentionally vague.

So it can be other capital projects that um, so the infrastructure projects are really your roads, drainage, retainable, sidewalks, stairs, and we've been doing some utility work um in that realm as well.

So it could be other capital projects that are high on the priority list um of the assembly, um, other projects that that again are high priority um for the city to accomplish.

Um we uh have in the last round put money towards the um restricted budget reserve through that.

And then, you know, sometimes there's grant match, sometimes there's just other um operational needs that can get addressed through that one percent.

So it's just not as prescriptive as as the first two groupings.

Thank you.

It it says uh in parentheses at the end, mostly operational.

Can you elaborate on that just a little bit?

Certainly.

So the last couple of years, um, the that last one percent has fallen to mostly operational type things, whether it's been um oh, I'm on the spot and I'm not gonna be able to come up with really good examples off the top of my head.

Um child care is actually on the one percent temporary sales tax.

Um I'm gonna get you a good list.

Uh it it is um detailed in the CIP.

So the CIP book and the CIP resolution does go through what the different uh what the different um categories are used for if you want to dig into that a little bit more.

I'm gonna jump in with a quick follow-up on that.

Uh and it in terms of, you know, it's vague here, but in the ballot language, like, do we actually will the assembly like provide direction?

Like, I don't remember if this is one that we like list out projects, or it's it is this the same language or it's that we use in the ballot.

You elaborate.

Thank you, Chairwall.

So um the last time, so in 2021, when this was on the ballot, this grouping just listed capital improvements, emergency budget reserve, other general public services.

Um, I have Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

Um, a question to, I guess, both the manager and Ms.

Flick is the draft FY27 budget that you are uh currently working on anticipating um this three percent being put before voters as is and passing.

The um assembly member Kelly, the 3% that was approved by the voters in October of 2021 expires June of 2027.

So we have a full fiscal year left.

FY27 is fully covered by what the voters approved in um October of 2021.

If we want that to continue starting the first day of FY25, we have to get voter approval this fall for it.

Thank you.

And you meant FY28.

I did mean FY28.

Thank you.

Sorry, it's you know, almost past my bedtime.

I'll ask another question, not seeing some um given, I mean, I think this is a question for Miss Kester.

Um given the changes as a result of the election, in order to have kind of maximum flexibility to fund city services.

Would you recommend you know, sticking with this ratio or tweaking it?

And it's okay if you don't, you know, you know exactly how we would do it, but from your in your opinion, um is is this worth spending time altering given we're in an alternate reality or alternate state than we were before?

Thank you for that question.

I think that the um flexibility in uh projects and in that that spending um allows us to do what we need to do.

The challenge really is in the reduced revenue.

So I mean, you certainly could try to address uh you know certain capital projects differently and direct more funds towards operations, but that doesn't really the question you asked is if if you change the allocation of the 3%, would it help you respond more flexibly?

And I think we have that flexibility within how it's allocated right now.

We still just have a revenue issue that we'll we'll need to address.

Um I'll get Miss Huscandies first, then Mayor Weldon.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

This is gonna tie back to um knowledge that should be firmly rooted in my head that may not be firmly rooted in my head.

So when I look at this and I think, yes, do I want to do this again?

Yes.

Do I want to mess with these allocations?

Maybe this is helpful hearing these answers.

I feel like right after the election, we in public works or in some committee, we ask, you know, what are the things that you can pull out and bond for just looking at all the different ways we can move the switches on the board.

Um, and I'm wondering with the one percent with the special one percent, we do the projects and we know what those are, but with this where we have one percent for those like really roaded ditches, all the things that you named.

How if you could give me a refresher, I guess, how that fits into that, because that would be one of my first thoughts is do we put that in more of that in bonds and use more of this for operations?

Thank you for the question.

Assuming member Hughes Scandies.

So um, certainly capital projects you could bond for.

So when we talk about doing road improvements, um, the utility work with them, those things that have a long lifespan.

You we certainly could bond for them.

They would be general obligation bonds.

So they that question would have to go to the voters.

Um, it could be for a large amount.

Um, but one of the tricks about municipal bonding is that once you issue bonds, you really should expend all of those funds within three years.

So when we're talking about just we'll do easy math because it's later in the evening.

If it's 10 million dollars of road work a year, and we go to the voters and say, hey, we want to get 60 million dollars worth of bond approval for the next six years, we might have to issue that in a couple of bond issuances, which has a cost to it, but then we would stay clean on like how municipal's um tax exempt bonds really should be expended.

Um, but we would have to go back to the voters to get that authority, and then that um comes back to the taxpayers as a debt service mill rate question.

Okay, thanks.

That's helpful.

Uh Mr.

Smith.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um, you know, should this finance committee move forward to introduce this?

Would you would the staff's plan to be to like introduce this at the last possible meeting, or would you like introduce it right now?

Uh assembly member Smith, um I don't know that the timing matters from a staff perspective.

Um, if if there's a dire desire from the body tonight to say yes, we want the 3% on there, and we want you to introduce it on June 8th, we would do that.

If you say we want you to introduce it at the next meeting, um, we would do that.

So I think that the timing, we know the latest we can do it.

Um, but from a staff perspective, drafting the ordinance.

Um, I don't I mean, I don't want to speak for the department of law in our county or our city attorney, but um, I I would think the drafting of the ordinance would be relatively simple and could be introduced whenever you're ready for it.

The question um tonight is uh partially a scheduling question.

How much time throughout the budget process do we need to allocate to this particular question?

Mayor Weldon, do you want to get us started with with a motion?

Certainly.

Um the last piece of it uh we can decide differently.

So I move um for staff to draft a ordinance um to go use to put the temporary 3% sales tax on the October 2026 ballot using the allocation that's in the memo.

And I would move to bring that ordinance back to the finance committee so we can discuss those allocations before we move it to the assembly.

Any objections to that motion?

Um, Mr.

Brook Brooks.

Thank you, madam chair.

And it would just be an objection for the purpose of a question since we're looking at the grants as being potential areas to reduce spending.

Should we get a better idea of what you know what we're kind of looking at as a rough idea on that number?

And if one percent equals around the 14 million, subtract it from that and see what that gets us instead of the 1% and go with that.

Sarah Wall, if I could answer that.

The idea was to bring it back to the um finance committee, because I would hope that the staff would provide us with much more detailed uh information that what's on this memo, and then we can make our decision.

These aren't uh assembly grants and those kind of things.

Yeah, mere weld and often they are um the match side of a grant that the city needs to put forth Miss Use Candies.

Thank you, Chairwell.

I don't think I have an objection for this to come back to committee and I will work with Ms.

Flick offline to kind of sharpen what information that is, because in terms of scheduling, then you know, I think a little bit, but I need to know more to know.

Am I gonna try to argue that we should spend, you know, more than a little bit, a quarter of it.

Um so no objection.

I'll remove my objection too.

All right.

Um so we have no objections on that.

Um seeing none that is so moved.

Um I'll echo what Miss Hugh Scandis just said that you know uh unless you're wanting us to spend many meetings on it, go do your homework and come back ready to make a decision at that meeting.

Um or if you think there's a big discussion ahead, let us know so we can plan for that.

Okay.

Oh, go ahead.

Sorry.

Madam Chair, just a question.

Um, we expect to see that added to like the calendar at some point.

Is it already on there that I'm just not seeing the words?

It's not on there because we wanted to figure out whether how fast track people want it.

So we'll try to figure out a time to do it.

Very good.

Thank you.

Maybe not right away.

I not that you want all the opinions, but seems like a little time would be good, but not maybe waiting until June 8th either.

But somewhere somewhere printing there.

Um, okay, we'll move on to the second part of the memo, Miss Flick.

Thank you.

So um the other um outstanding question for this body is regarding bonds that um you may or may not want to have on the um election ballot in um 2026.

Um, you may recall we spent um a fair amount of time in the last budget process looking at um two particular um bond groupings, if you will.

One um resulted in ordinance uh 2025-33, which was eight million dollars for water and wastewater utilities.

When that came to the full body, a motion was made to postpone it until this cycle.

And so um we would want to um work towards adjudicating um what the body wants to do on this um budget cycle.

The other one that we worked on a bit was um just over 10 million dollars of um geobonds for um uh capital improvement at various schools, and um when that came to the full body, it failed to gain approval um at all.

So those those were the two bond questions that were considered last year, and really again in the same kind of context of um do you a wanna just say we don't want to complicate the ballot?

I want to decide today, we don't want to put any bonds forward.

Do we want to allocate time within our budget schedule to look at bonds?

And if so, is it just revitalizing um what was done last year, or if there's some ideas of hey, we also want to look at these.

Um, it does take um a fair amount of time for staff to gather good information to bring back to you if you want to consider other bond packages.

So um that's the the basic question.

Like if if you know now that um you really don't want to put anything on the ballot other than the three percent, then we could make that decision tonight and move on.

Um, if you want to um put some time on on our calendar to make sure we talk about bonds, we'll do that as well.

Questions, Mr.

Smith.

Thank you, madam chair.

The one percent temporary is up when again the one percent temporary sales tax needs to be on the October 2027 ballot, so not this October, but the next one.

Thank you.

And that that one percent specifically funds capital projects for the most part.

So they're one time in nature, which is a little bit different than the three percent temporary sales tax, Mr.

Smith.

Thank you, madam chair.

If no one else has one, I guess just more of a maybe it's not philosophical question, but other communities do fund more like recurring infrastructure and maintenance through geobonding, whereas it seems like Juno, maybe I'm wrong.

Whereas it seems like Juno, maybe I'm wrong.

I mean we did the wastewater clarifier a couple years ago or whatever.

The most part it seems like we do like big upgrades through our geobond.

I don't know, maybe my history is is off, but like the you know the in the the you know radios and anyway I guess like would you characterize us as typically like doing more like project specific things through geobonds is versus like just we're gonna have a 10 million dollar you know geobond per year to do wastewater streets water anyway.

And I I can I can get some more history with you too but anyway just a thought.

I think generally um characterizing um bonds that CBJ's done I'm just gonna go back to to the year 2000 because those are the bond payments that I've I've seen in the bonds that I've been familiar with.

Typically um to your point they've been um you know uh a construction of a pool or construction of um you know something big but there's also a large um we have we have had a large number of bonds that were related to school building upgrades and so that's not necessarily building a new school but um going in and replacing boilers and HBAC and um roofs and things like that.

Um as far as other communities um I think there's I there's a mixed bag across the state so there's not a a single right answer of a way to do it.

Um you know having the ability to have a regular inflow of funding that we can dedicate to reworking parts of our city road system I think is a healthy way to do that because we're gonna need to work on sections of road every year.

And so having that as a recurring funding source that funds specific projects I think is healthy.

If we wanted to move more towards a bonding kind of um nature and say you know we're gonna do six years worth of streets and here's our list of streets and put that out to the voters I I don't think that that's a bad way to do it.

It's just different from what we've done Ms.

Hughes Candice Thank you madam chair now at risk of going into the weeds and I'll go right back out based on your last if we did move towards that and I agree that what is my feeling as well as how we bond versus sometimes how others bond if we said this is our six year plan of we're doing all these roads and it's Dudley Street and G Street and long run and we so I'm just embarrassing myself here tonight with things I should know.

When we do that you know we have other funding sources and we're doing transfers all the time because we did Dudley Street and it was a lot cheaper than we thought it would be with bond proceeds if we move to that model what is our flexibility like then because you spoke about because they're tax exempted we there's procedures we have to follow that's a great question.

So in some ways that flexibility doesn't change so it's the question that you put out to the voters that govern what you can spend those bond proceeds on.

So if you say we're gonna work on roads and the things under the roads so roads and utilities and here's our plan and other streets that may fit into that and we say okay Dudley Street's gonna be a million dollars oh it actually is only 8000 as long as we move those bond proceeds to another project that fits what the voters approved we have that flexibility great thank you.

Okay seeing no other questions I think maybe what I'd like to do is just to go down the line our favorite activity just I'd love to hear where everyone is on um do you want to consider putting bonds on the ballot if so do you want to revisit um the ones that we already put together or do you want to be looking at new ideas and um then we can go from there based on kind of where people are at I'll start down there mayor weldon pick on me first sure why not um I don't know yet how about that answer I haven't decided yet you haven't decided yet okay let's get and both of these bonds are things that we need um I'm worried about the um putting the three percent and more stuff on the ballot but as Mr.

And um so if you're worried about the 1% next year, and both of these I would think would be worthwhile projects.

Um I haven't made up my mind on this one.

Mr.

Smith.

You did because I can now say the same thing.

Um I'm I'm not totally ready to say either way, I guess.

Um, I I'd probably need to spend a little more time looking back at um water wastewater rates and those type increases, and you know, remembering that we still need to put a chunk of funds not from rates into the system.

Um, and I can't remember how much and exactly when, but um anyway, looking at looking at that and um uh yeah.

And and you know, I have thought and been I people have asked me, like, you know, if we do move to a system where we are geo-bonding for potentially more, I'll just call it regular maintenance and upkeep streets and and water and things.

Um, I mean, I that would I think I will say I think it maybe creates a little headroom and in you know, in money that we can spend on operations, but we also have bond capacity limits that we have to consider, and we have obviously large or potentially very large things that maybe needed to be paid for with bonds, you know, outburst flooding match and that type of stuff.

So keeping those things in mind.

I mean, obviously all of these things are priorities, but um, we have a lot of like just operational pencil sharpening with the budget.

So um so I don't know yet.

And just for clarity, um, are you when you say you don't know yet?

Are you still considering this would be helpful?

Other bonds, not on this, just because that's gonna take a lot of time.

So that's why I'm trying to get if if it's just we don't know whether we're gonna put these on or not, that's helpful if it's we don't know if we're gonna put these on or we're gonna create new bonds.

That feedback will be good if you know it.

I wasn't looking at anything beside these two.

I don't think I am either.

Okay.

Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

Um I can answer that at this time.

I would support the general obligation bonds for the capital improvement projects for the schools.

I am undecided.

I think I would like to have something that does help with our our wastewater utilities, but maybe I'd be willing to explore changes to to that bond.

So yes, I am interested in putting uh at least one bond on the ballot.

And I'm interested uh for sure in the general obligation bond for schools.

Thank you, Mr.

Kelly.

Ms.

Atkinson, are you still with us?

I am, yes.

Um I would say I'm I'm kind of in a similar position to the mayor, where I've been going back and forth on whether I think bonds make good sense this year, or if I want to be really cautious with the three percent.

Uh I know for certain I don't want to look at anything other than the two bond packages we looked at last year.

I think those were well thought out, and I would lean more towards the utilities, though I I also think you know, maybe there's some looking at the rates we could do in light of everything that's happened, though that may be a can of worms we don't want to reopen.

But um, regardless, I I'm undecided, but I definitely don't want to um look at bonds aside from the ones we looked at last year.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um I wouldn't be uh uh in support of these as they stand currently.

I think they're both extremely important, but we know that the wastewater utilities, even with the rate increase is gonna need a substantial amount of more funding to really address core issues.

Um in a similar vein with the um school districts, there's still a lot of unknowns with their budget and structuring.

So I'm I'm uh I'm supportive of the the spirit of these two, but as they stand currently not, and I you know, going back to what the mayor and assemblymember Smith was saying about do we look at you know trying to get more undergo bonds?

Um I I think that would be worth discussing further.

Ms.

Candice.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I think yeah, it's not surprising.

It's February that I feel similarly, like I don't know.

We need to get further in the budgeting process for me to say or nay.

But I would say yes to keeping the door open, and I'm trying to figure out how to convey that in a way that's helpful to you and to staff as far as scheduling goes.

I am interested potentially in exploring other bonds than these, but I need to do a little homework to know whether I would support that or not.

Um I think like Mr.

Brooks was just saying, I think there are things that are similar iteration that could be revised, like revising the numbers up potentially.

Sorry to put words in your mouth, Mr.

Brooks.

That's not exactly what you said, but for the utility is one, a drum alke beating.

And then I don't love that model of putting our reoccurring maintenance on the geobonding, but I do think it is the companion piece to what passed as a potential tool, and it's not a tool I like, but again, I don't like the property tax gap.

So I think they're if I explore it with staff and I say that's definitely not something I want, then I'll be happy to let this committee know.

But for now, I think it's potential that we might want to explore it as we sharpen our pencils.

I'll go um last.

I think I may maybe in a slightly different place than you guys.

I'm I'm feeling pretty um confident that I would like to put bonds on the ballot.

Um I definitely agree that you know, looking at these two closer again, you know, is a good idea if we're to do it.

I'd stick with these um because they're things that we need and they're we did the work.

Um and I think at the end of the day, why we put things on ballots or to give voters the choice.

If they don't want to fund these things, then they won't.

We don't lose anything because of that.

Um and I will also say that it because I have been sitting down with and trying to get everything we want to talk about into our calendar for the next three months, you know, I understand why you guys are all where you're at and where I'm at, I don't see how we do it all.

And so I'm you know, gonna need some help prioritizing.

I probably said that same thing last year, but but it's just you know, without having more we can't add more meetings without people, you know, stopping doing this anymore.

So um just be thoughtful, I guess, on where your priorities are and and we'll keep putting these things on the the agenda, but um it's gonna get real tough for us, I think.

So I I feel like I know where we're at, so we'll um, you know, definitely plan on revisiting these two.

Um not so that you know we'll make a decision at some point whether to put them on.

And if there are people who still want to think about other things, they can do that homework and try to make a pitch to spend some more time as a group on that.

Does that sound good?

Mr.

Kelly, go ahead.

Yes, I I think I can agree with that plan.

I was also going to suggest uh if the uh school uh capital improvement bonds is it's gonna be scheduled at some point that perhaps before we have that meeting, maybe the uh joint facilities committee with between the school district and the assembly might find some time to meet.

I think that's a great idea.

Who's the chair?

Is that you?

That would be I believe it's assembly member Steininger.

Okay.

Mr.

Brooks.

I do all the school board stuff, and uh, you know, that that's where my comments are spawned.

They're still getting, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty in there.

So, you know, they're even light discussion, don't know if there will need to be further consolidation or not, depending on what they figure out with the budget.

So, you know, it it could be a very different picture after the funds get approved.

Yeah, I think that's an important context.

So I like the idea of um getting that committee back together um and getting some school board feedback on that.

Um if it's still relevant.

All right.

Um Mayor Weldon.

I'll jump in right now so you don't forget me.

Um I had two items that had nothing to do with the agenda, but um, first of all, I'm just um hoping the assembly will humor me on this, but um I've asked staff to look at our partner agencies and just ask them what the cuts they would make to the partner agencies because they're a little more familiar with them than we are.

So um just letting everybody know about that and uh and just so you know that uh we would it would be totally up to us, but it would just be interesting to see their take on that.

So Mr.

Barr and I talked about that.

Don't worry, manager Kester.

Um and then um I'm just letting everybody know that tomorrow um I'm testifying um on the governor's budget.

Um we do have a resolution in place, so I'll just um take the high points off that.

Um thanking the governor to put something on the table because our resolution says uh broad base tax.

Um, but it does hurt municipalities with sales tax.

Um a little bit on local control, and we'd just like to learn more about it, but I'm just letting people know that I will be testifying.

Wow, at 5 30, I believe.

So I'll ask uh Ms.

Adkisson the right time later.

And uh Mr.

Jardale will be joining me, of course.

Manager Custer.

Just to clarify, I do know um Mayor Wilton, I was there.

I'm sorry, I had misunderstood your request, but I want to clarify for the body so that you understand what we have been asked to do.

We have been asked to give a staff recommendation uh forecut.

So not to reach out to those partner agencies.

I think you guys are doing that through the course of having the meetings with them, but for staff to uh take a look at that at CBJ staff to manager's office to take a look at that and and uh report that back to you.

Miss Euskandis.

I have thank you, madam chair.

I have a bit of confusion still, but you also might note my skepticism.

Um so where in the process, because so you're saying uh the mayor has asked you as asked to F to do something that is not going to be what you recommend in the manager's budget, but this is something I can expect to see at a future finance meeting.

Question mark.

Yeah, you can't nod at me because you're not the chair.

That's why I'm asking tonight if this if the assembly will humor me on that request.

Apologies if I didn't make that clear.

I just wanted to see what they had to say.

But they are presenting their budget or the manager is presenting her budget, and then just some discussion with Mr.

Barr about some of his experience on a couple of these things.

I just said, well, that'd be interesting to hear what your guys' take were.

So and we do not have to follow it uh at all whatsoever.

Um we'll be listening to all of them, and you can hear me tonight say, what does it look like without 30%?

So um just I figured parallel pathways, it's always interesting to get more information.

But you guys can say forget it if you want.

Um just a point of order here.

I we can talk about this as long as I say we can, is like today tonight.

Is that is that correct?

We're off agenda, so I'm just trying to remember.

Does anyone remember?

Mr.

Kelly does.

I I I I believe we I believe you do have a little bit of leeway.

I would I would of course defer to Miss Wright if she were here.

I I believe the chair does have a little bit of leeway.

I think it would uh probably venture into maybe hazardous territory if we started to make formal decisions.

Uh um that weren't on the agenda.

Chair, well, I can wait till Monday when we talk about comments and questions also.

Okay.

That'd be easier for you.

Sorry.

No, no, no, it's okay.

It just came up because we were talking to partner agencies, so I can wait.

I I was with kind of Mr.

Kelly in my brain that, you know, I'm happy you're letting us know what you're doing.

And then when it became a question back to us, I was just um getting nervous.

So maybe we if you want to ask us a question, you can do that on Monday.

But thanks for giving us a heads up, Miss Euscandies.

Oh, thanks, madam chair.

I just want to say thank you.

Uh I appreciate that.

And I do like sometimes we trip over our our own feet, and I don't think the public realizes how hard it is for us to get together and have more freewheeling conversations.

And so I do appreciate hearing what people are talking to staff about and what all of these things.

So should have led with gratitude for that, um, mixed with my skepticism.

All right.

Um that brings us to item six.

Um, there's an updated AFC budget calendar in your packet.

Um, and then there is also a red folder item, which the only change is we added an assembly listing session on April 22nd.

Um we are still working on this, and we'll keep coming back to you in different forms as we go, but that's where we're at right now.

Anything else I missed on that, Miss Flick.

So um, this actually has changed a lot since you saw it in January.

So just know that it's it's a lot different.

Um, we do have joint meetings scheduled.

So the next AFC meeting is actually a joint meeting with the airport and BRH on February 25th.

Different, not the first, it's the last Wednesday.

Those are gonna look like um the manager of so Mr.

Um Delgado and Mr.

Warner presenting their respective budgets, just like we would have normally done on that full Saturday retreat, and then shifting into a joint meeting.

So that's happening on February 25th.

We are um having a similar discussion presentation just with Eagle Crest on March 4th, and then on March 18th, um, which is not a normal AFC meeting, we'll be doing the same thing with Doxton Harbors and the Board of Education.

So you'll hear a presentation from those um from the superintendent schools from the the port director on their particular budgets and then shifting into that um joint meeting.

Any questions on schedule?

Miss Euskandis.

Thanks, madam chair.

Just a quick one on and knowing this is all fluid and continues to change um as things change.

The gondola is scheduled right now for April 1st.

I think the last time we talked about this, we expected we we were out for bids and um I'm just wondering if we're gonna get in a different committee, maybe, but if we're gonna get an updated either numbers or something on gondola, or if this is when I would expect to see the gondola the next time in the assemblies process, minus of course March 4th, where I'm sure we will talk about it.

The bid award for the GCC contract is scheduled for your February 9th meeting.

And that's the document we've been waiting for to provide some clarity to uh cost estimates on the gondola, but I want to caution that there is still no by no means an accurate cost estimate because we're still at 35% design.

We just now have a firm selected that will bring us uh to 100% design, and then of course there will be an assembly decision uh whether or not to proceed.

So that's a long way of saying you were gonna get better information, but still incomplete information.

You will be making decisions based on incomplete information, which is the challenge of uh your profession.

I know.

And right now, um April 4th is when we are scheduled that is when the body is next scheduled to talk about uh the gondola, and that is when we plan on you know giving you a uh presentation on both the business plan and cost of the gondola and some pass forward.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

Um brings us net to next meeting date, as we discussed.

We're having some joint meetings on February 26th, and with that, we are adjourned.