The Assembly Finance Committee met on February 4, 2026, to hear presentations from key partner organizations, discuss the return of a $2 million grant from Gastineau Human Services, review the FY27 assembly grant process, and consider placing the 3% temporary sales tax and bond propositions on the October 2026 ballot. The meeting was called to order by Chair Wall, with all members present except Steininger and Hall; Atkinson attended via Zoom.
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.