Maybe of the whole meeting to order for February 23rd.

Um Ms.

Hall, would you do the land acknowledgement, please?

Yes, and thank you.

We would like to acknowledge that the city and borough of Juneau is on Clinkett Land and wish to honor the indigenous peoples of this land.

For more than 10,000 years, Alaska Native people have been and continue to be integral to the well-being of our community.

We are grateful to be in this place, a part of this community, and to honor the culture, traditions, and resilience of the Clinkett people.

Madam Clerk, will you call roll, please?

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Ms.

Hughes Candies.

Here.

Ms.

Wall.

Present.

Mr.

Kelly.

Here.

Ms.

Adkisson.

Here.

Mr.

Steininger.

Here.

Ms.

Hall.

Here.

Mr.

Brooks.

Here.

Madam Mayor.

Here.

And for the record, Deputy Mayor Smith is absent.

You have quorum.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Ms.

Hughes Candies.

Did you have your hand up?

No, I don't think so.

Sorry if I did.

Okay.

Ms.

Atkinson just wanted to hear your lovely voice, apparently.

So without any changes to the agenda.

Seeing none, we will consider the agenda approved.

Mr.

Kelly, approval of minutes.

I move that the committee of the whole approve the 2026 January, January 26th, the 2026 assembly committee of the whole minutes and ask for unanimous consent.

Any objection?

Seeing none, they are approved.

So we'll move right on to agenda topics.

Number one, Madam Clerk.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Update on Gloff enduring solution and phase two flood fighting.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Madam Manager.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Wilden.

I would like to invite uh Director Cotchup to give a presentation.

She's got a uh uh PowerPoint in your packet that's an update on our work on the enduring solution with Army Corps of Engineers and the Charette.

I would ask that um we have Director Koch give her presentation and then I have some late breaking updates to inform the public about before questions because I suspect they will uh I want to make sure everyone's on the on the same page.

So um if you could hold your questions till then, uh that would be great.

All right, we will do so.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Uh and I'm assuming uh Madam Clerk will be able to advance this the slides.

Um before I get started today, I want to acknowledge the gravity of what I'm gonna present in this presentation.

It's um sobering, I think is uh a term that comes to mind.

And I'm gonna start uh talking about the enduring solution and uh the charrette that the Army Corps of Engineers um put on in mid-December.

Then I'm uh that'll be the majority of the presentation.

Then I will uh pass the the presentation over to uh deputy director Nate Rumsey.

He's gonna talk a little bit about HESCOs because HESCO construction is gonna start soon.

So um it's very timely for him to give an update on that, and then we'll end uh with handing it back over to uh city manager Kester.

So next slide, please.

So uh first we're I'm gonna talk about the estimated GLF severity.

Um, and then in terms of the considerations for the enduring solution, I'm gonna discuss items that were discussed during the charrette.

Uh the charette is uh was a three-day meeting that the US Army Corps held in Juneau uh with a whole host of uh consultants for the Army Corps uh from AECOM, uh a lot of a very deep level of expertise as well as UAS uh participated, so did the National Weather Service, so did CBJ, so did the Forest Service, so did Clinken and Hyda.

So it was a really broad group of people who participated.

And then as I mentioned, Nate will talk about phase one and phase two and the plans as they relate to preparing for this year's GLOF.

Next slide, please.

All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about this slide.

This is going to be a slide that I'm gonna uh pause and take my time on.

There'll be other slides that I'll go through much more quickly.

But this is really significant information.

Um I start with some of the information uh from the past that we have more uh surety on, and then uh lead into the future.

So I think it's important to start with the past because it gives a sense of the magnitude uh when we're talking about these CFS numbers, right?

So in August of 2023, when we had our first uh majorly destructive GLOF that was primarily a river erosion event that was at 14.99 feet lake stage.

Um, and more importantly, I'm going to be focusing, I think, a little bit more on the CFS piece.

So we had this 34,000 CFS, and that impacted, I'm gonna round a little bit just to give a sense of of magnitude, not exact numbers, but it impacted about 30 homes.

Then the next year in the August of 2024, we jump up to this 42,000 CFS, and just that change in that 8,000 CFS, we wound up uh with a very different type of event.

It wasn't as much of a riverbank erosion event, it was more of an inundation event.

It impacted about 300 homes.

So just get a sense of that.

That's what that eight, roughly 8,000 CFS did in terms of the magnitude and how destructive it was.

Then, as we all know, um, between 20 uh 4 and 2025, uh CBJ, along with help from the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers, uh, constructed HESCO barrier phase one.

Um, and then in August of 2025, we had an even more severe GLOF.

Uh, we were the HESCO barriers were largely successful in protecting the areas that they were designed to protect.

Um, we know that they weren't designed to protect every area.

For example, they were not designed to protect View Drive.

Um, and there was some seepage uh around some of the the HESCO barriers, but we think without HESCO barriers in 2025, we would have had anywhere from 750 to 1,000 homes would have been impacted if there wasn't phase one.

So just to give you a sense of like how much more severe each one of these GLOFs is getting.

So that number, that 51,000 CFS, I'm gonna think about uh what could have been without HESCO barriers, you get a sense of how shocking that 118,000 CFS number is.

So I want to talk a little bit about that.

Um, because it's uh it's a scary number to be honest.

It's really scary.

Um in terms of the work that went into this number.

This is uh a peak value.

Uh so this is a worst case scenario.

It takes into account uh Gloff issues, and I'll talk about the GLOF issues in a minute in a moment, as well as non-gloff contributions, so that's things like atmospheric rivers and you know precipitation events, those are also that makes up about 20,000 of that of that 118,000 CFS.

Um in terms of the Gloff portions of this that contribute to this this number, the vast majority, um this was a really complicated number to get to this number.

So this number uh was a result of primarily US Army Corps of Engineers engineering in consultation with uh their large number of subject matter experts, hydrologists from AECOM, and they had on sub uh they were subcontracting with UAS.

So a lot of the people that uh that this assembly and everybody in this room is familiar with was part of these discussions.

Um this number took into account the USGS uh monitoring data, National Weather Service information.

It took all of that into account.

As I know the UAS scientists have come before this body in the past and have talked about there's these competing elements of portions of the basin expanding as they are melting, but there's also the there's a height of the ice dam is also a uh an important consideration.

And there's this dance between you know how much melting is going to happen with with the ice dam, which would minimize the volume, versus how fast is the volume expanding and melting.

And then there's another consideration, and that's in uh in glacial uh storage.

That's uh that's a big component.

And another component is how much more efficient gloffs tend to get over time.

So in some ways, if you think of it as like gluffs tend to, as they mature, get to be more look more and more like flash floods.

They uh whatever the exit mechanism is, and nobody knows exactly for sure what the exit mechanism is.

We don't know if more exits have developed to make the gluffs more serious, or if there's really just one exit and it's just getting bigger.

Nobody knows that for sure.

But from uh the scientists studying other glaciers in Alaska, they're pretty confident that the um the mechanism gets more and more efficient at uh at conveying that water.

So that those are all the elements that went into USACE coming up with this 118,000 CFS number, which is a scary number to look at.

Um another thing to think about is when you look at the numbers up uh above.

So when we look at the past where we have uh more, we have uh more certainty.

There is no guarantee that uh each glof is going to go up by approximately every year is going to be approximately eight to 10,000 CFS per year.

It's not necessarily linear.

Um we there is a high level of certainty that over the next decades, the GLFs are going to get bigger, but there could be individual years where you could have a particular year that is the same magnitude as the year before.

Um so it's not it doesn't go up in the stepwise progression, but I can tell you that, and and and I won't go deeply into it because um Mr.

Rumsey will talk about HESCOs.

We are uh in terms of our preparation for HESCOs for the 2026 GLOF, we are preparing for uh to protect against uh more severe GLOF with a higher uh higher CFS value.

So if we could go to the next slide, please.

So I am not going to spend a lot of time on each one of these maps, but uh these maps are sobering for people who are familiar with the JunoFlood.org uh where you've got all those maps.

That work was uh collaboration of uh there was CBJ and Michael Baker International work done for the inundation maps, and then the partnership with UAS and um and some of their science partners to present those maps in a more user-friendly way.

Those maps go up to 2020-foot uh lake stage, and they are um those maps in and of themselves are sobering.

That those 20-foot maps are based on an 89,000 CFS number.

So it is smaller than what uh what USAIS in collaboration with all the scientific partners think a maximum Gloff could be.

Uh the 118,000 CFS is more like a 22 and a half foot uh lake stage glov.

It is massive.

Um if um Madam Clerk, if you could just uh go through these the these slides, maybe one at a time here.

Um it's we're talking about um a glov of this magnitude with if you did not have sufficient mitigation uh going beyond what people experienced in in 2024, which was terrible in and of itself.

We're talking about water crossing over Riverside Drive, getting in uh moving east into the valley, uh crossing over Mendenhall Loop Road, um getting into the dredge lakes area, um, also having impacts on the western side of the river, having impacts all the way down, uh impacting the uh the Mendenhall wastewater treatment plant, having impacts to the airport, the not so much the runway, but the uh but the buildings uh associated with the airport.

It is, you know, you're getting into the duck creek drainage.

We're really talking more like a uh we've been talking about the area that experienced the 2024 inundation as as the central valley.

Um a glove of this magnitude really gets beyond the central valley, like you said, crossing over Glacier Spur Road, crossing over Mendenhall Loop Road.

So uh Madam Clerk, if we could go to the slide that's uh entitled Long Term Solution Options summary.

Thank you.

Uh so this is a summary of some of what we talked about at the at the Charrette.

And these were the options that were um the focus of that meeting, those were the options that uh the Army Corps of Engineers uh determined were the most technically feasible of the options.

So I'm gonna start on the right hand side of that table.

If you look at the that relocation column, and the very bottom, you have this 2,855 properties.

That's the magnitude of what could be impacted by a GLOF, that worst case scenario Glof.

And that is a numeric representation of what those previous maps were showing.

Because it's it's hard to almost get your head around how many properties we're talking about impacting.

Um relocation, uh, we were really clear from the CBJ perspective that relocation is not an option uh from the CBJ perspective, but every federal uh project has a no action alternative functionally, and that's their their no action alternative, not quite no action, because they they're talking about relocation, but this is uh that is once again um hard to look at, really.

Um then now I'm gonna move to I'm gonna start on the left-hand side, and I'm gonna talk about the lake tap.

I'm gonna talk about the lake tap the most because you've got a long agenda ahead of you.

So I'm just gonna get to the punchline, and the punchline is uh for all of those agencies that were present at the charrette, including CBJ, the preferred alternative was a lake tap.

Um and I also want to mention that the other entities that were present at that meeting also included Clinken and Haida and the US Forest Service.

Um part of the reason uh that I think this map that this table is helpful is it uh there's so much information, and I know I needed at least a way to try and distill, I mean hundreds and hundreds of pages of US Army Corps information.

But this gives you a sense of the paradigm that we were looking at and some of the rationales for why a lake tap was the preferred alternative.

You're uh as we were evaluating these different options, you're looking at uh how effective would an option be at reducing the the risk.

Obviously, we're trying to solve the problem of the GLOF.

Uh, but you also have to look at the converse and what is the risk of failure uh if your solution uh doesn't work.

Um also looking at things like constructibility, um the next on the next slide, I'll also talk about the closely related timeline.

Um I also want to point out we've got a row here talking about operation and maintenance complexity and cost, because most of what we've been talking about, and most of what I'll talk about in the rest of the presentation is about a capital project, but it's also really important to remember that there's gonna be operational, you know, we're gonna have to operate whatever uh a solution is for a long time.

And I should also clarify it's not it's not clear who will operate uh a solution.

That is unclear, but it but it could be CBJ.

So that is something to keep in mind that the operations is important.

Um and then the very last row is the number of properties impacted.

Um the lake tap was the most attractive option.

Um, and the reasons that went into that being the preferred alternative is it has a very high likelihood of reducing that glove risk.

It is designed to um drain out suicide basin at approximately the suicide basin's inflow rate.

Uh the risk of failure uh compared to the other options.

We would have not solved the problem.

So we could wind up with uh a gloff of the same magnitude, but that is different than say a dam or a levee where you can make the problem worse because you have more uh water that you're storing behind those walls functionally, and you could wind up with an even bigger wall of water.

Uh if you have like a dam break, that is catastrophic.

That is absolutely catastrophic.

Um, in terms of constructibility, there is um there hasn't been geotechnical work done for any of these solutions.

So there are a lot of uh assumptions that went into this, uh, but there's a high level of uh of confidence that you know a lake tap is essentially a tunnel.

Uh there's a lot of tunnel building capacity uh in Alaska.

There were experts who had tunnel expertise uh from tunneling in the Alps.

It is definitely a technology that is out there and exists.

Part of the concern about the dam is also the soils in front of the glacier.

This is those are alluvial soils.

They're very deep.

Uh, they're extremely porous.

So there's concerns of uh how the foundation that you would need for a dam uh and how deep those foundations would need to be, so that you don't wind up with piping underneath a dam.

Um also in terms of the operation and maintenance.

Uh a lake tap is the least uh complex of any of those options.

That lake tap essentially is a gravity fed tunnel.

Uh very little in the mean in the ways of electrical or mechanical parts.

It's really a gravity fed um versus uh a dam.

The dam would uh, for example, need to um have a spillway.

It would need it wouldn't it wouldn't be serve as a reservoir.

You wouldn't have the water in there all the time.

You would have to essentially um it would be activated during times of of a gloff.

A levee and flood walls, uh, those are uh I think one way of thinking thinking about levees and flood walls are you know, we're now all familiar with the Hesco barriers.

We've seen what those look like.

Uh that is more similar to what uh a levee or flood walls would be like uh, but taller and with a complex um drainage system that you would also need need to operate.

So next slide, please, madam clerk.

Here's the other really important uh pieces of information that we were presented at the charrette.

These are estimated contract costs.

They're um the next column over is the contingency with a huge 50 percent.

Part of the reason that that that number is so high in terms of that can contingency is that um these solutions are uh at a pretty early stage.

Uh uh, you know, we don't have design as you get further along with geotechnical and design, then the Army Corps would be better able to refine those costs.

Um they also, but you could see of all the options, the lake tap is estimated to be the least costly of the options.

Uh also there they gave some preliminary design to construction completion.

It also has the shortest time estimated time for completion.

And once again, it's the only option that does not require relocation of properties.

Next slide, please.

All right, suicide uh basin lake tap.

I'm gonna move through some of these next slides pretty quickly, but uh that it gives you a sense of the alignment.

There would be an intake and suicide basin.

There would be a tunnel that's approximately 2.3 miles long.

It would have an outfall that is between Nugget Falls and the face of the glacier.

There's a lot of other information on this picture in terms of barge routes, staging areas, those sorts of things.

So I don't want to get too into details like staging areas and those sorts of things, but just know that those details are still yet to be to be hammered out.

Next slide, please.

Mainly this is just to say that we've got a gravity-filled gravity.

This would be this would drain via gravity.

It's like about 2.3 miles.

You've got an in internal diameter of 10 feet, an external diameter of 13 feet.

They picked that diameter because that's a diameter that they that could convey this approximately 800 cubic feet per second, which once again is uh pegged to the rate that the suicide basin is filling.

On the right side, you see that there is a tunnel boring machine that is a particular mechanism that they had proposed to drill this tunnel.

There would most likely be blasting at the inlet and the outlet, and then you use the tunnel boring machine.

Um how much of the tunnel would be completed via a tunnel boring machine versus drilling and blasting.

It's really too early to know those things for sure.

You would need to get geotechnical information, but that's uh the best sense uh at this point in time.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

Um these are just some some pictures.

Uh the one on the right is an AI generated umage, uh, but that was uh a sense of what we think uh uh uh the tunnel would look like.

A tunnel would mostly be maintained.

The part of the reason there's a picture of a drone, a lot of the maintenance would be done by drone, but you would want to preserve some sort of walkway because people might have to get into the tunnel at some point in time.

Next slide, please.

And people could ask questions after Ms.

Kester is done.

But I did want to include some substantive information in this packet on some of the other alternatives.

Uh there were two different dam alignments that you say is had proposed, but they are both really enormous dams.

One is 2.4 miles long and one is 2.5 miles long.

Um, and they range anywhere from you know 40 to 60 feet high.

I mean, these are uh this would be a massive, massive dam.

It's it's almost hard to uh get your head around, but it would uh properties would need to be purchased for this dam.

There would be a lot of impacts for construction during construction.

There would be impacts after construction, uh, major impacts to um recreational opportunities as well as uh you know how it would impact uh our crown jewel of tourism, you know, people visiting the the Mendenhall Glacial Recreation Area.

Next slide, please.

Uh as I mentioned, the dams were not envisioned to essentially serve as uh reservoirs.

Um they would have spillways and they would be designed for a peak release flow of 30,000 cubic feet per second, because that's the amount of water that it is uh based on history and projections for the future.

We think the the river can uh have that amount of water in it and not be destructive to homes.

Next slide, please.

Uh this is just to give some pictures of what when we talk about a levee or flood wall options.

Um levee has a uh broader footprint, flood walls, their eye walls, their T walls, they they have uh a little bit less of a of a footprint themselves, but they still require uh a lot of space.

Um if you go to the next slide, please.

So the Army Corps, along with some of their um experts from AECOM, one of those experts was a person, a couple of them lived in the New Orleans area.

They have a lot of experience with levees and flood walls.

Um, and part of the uh, I mean, a levee and flood wall we're talking about, they're ranging between this 15 and 23 feet tall, so higher than our than our HESCO barriers in most places.

Um permanent.

Uh they require uh a hundred and fifty foot to 225 foot right-of-way.

As we know, people have built pretty close to the river.

We don't have 150 foot right-of-ways, which is why there is a very high number on that table that that I showed earlier, why there's a high number of relocations.

Um, the Army Corps and AECOM's perspective is that you would have to just buy a huge swath of homes that are on the river banks in order to install levees and flood walls.

And they also it require this complicated uh drainage infrastructure because we all know we live in a rainforest and we still need to move uh water from the uh dry side of those flood wall levees into into the river.

So next slide, please.

Um was uh information that was shared in the charrette.

Some of it is a little bit updated from the from the Army Corps since since that time.

Um and I think I'm gonna take this opportunity to hand the the baton off to Deputy Director Nate Rumsey, and he's gonna talk to you about flood fighting and HESCOs.

Thank you, Director Kotch.

Deputy Director.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Could you advance to the next slide, please?

Although the phase one project on our EOC response was largely successful after the or during the 2025 GLOF, we recognize the need to improve the performance of the barrier and take more proactive steps to deal with unanticipated seepage overtopping and breach conditions.

Next slide, please.

You've probably seen this footage.

It's taken by it was taken by a community member during the 2025 GLOF and shows one of the one major debris strike the HESCOs encountered during the 2025 GLOF.

Although a barrier section with additional depth would have provided more protection from a debris strike, we were pretty fortunate that this did not occur at a lower-lying, more developed area.

Next slide, please.

With that, engineering and public works is focused on near-term flood fighting as a primary tool to protect the community.

We must continue to assume large annual outburst events.

And as Director Koch mentioned, we must assume we've not seen the worst of the flooding from a severity perspective so far.

Next slide.

After the 2025 GLOF, we realized we'd need to do repairs and reinforcements and some raising to the phase one barriers that we had installed.

But with more awareness of the possible future flood severity and new modeling of the phase one and phase two alignments, we now realize we need to raise and reinforce the phase one barriers more extensively than we originally anticipated.

Next slide, please.

We've also been meeting regularly with the Army Corps of Engineers, PL 8499 team to prepare for the phase two insulation.

The Army Corps has hired Sea Alaska Construction Solutions as their general contractor and is finalizing required documentation to issue the notice to proceed.

The Army Corps in Sea Alaska will have project managers in Juneau for the duration of the phase two installation.

Which is approximately twice the size of what we did during last year's phase one project, at least from a length of protected riverfront perspective.

Both projects are scheduled to commence by mid-March of this year, which is obviously weather dependent.

And I'll now turn it over to Manager Kester to talk about next steps for the enduring solution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Director.

I think that the presentation really underscores how impermanent those HESCO barriers are and how vulnerable they are.

And that is certainly a position that we have uh we have maintained and will continue to maintain.

So after the Charrette uh and the selected alternative of a lake tap was chosen, uh, Army Corps of Engineers hired AECOM, AECOM was on contract to inform a lot of the Charette uh information, basically gave them direction to work as quickly as possible to get as much information as they they could to inform a technical report that's due in May of 2026.

And this deadline is uh from Senator Sullivan, who is right now, in fact, on Wednesday, um uh the uh engineering and the public works committee um is being addressed by the Army Corps of Engineers as they put together the Water Resources and Development Act.

So uh work was going, you know, very quickly uh down that path.

Um, and we were under the impression that that was uh that was all going uh smoothly.

We had regular check-ins with Army Corps of Engineers multiple times a week.

A couple weeks ago ago, those check-ins ceased.

Uh, and you know, we we began inquiring why haven't we had a check-in in a while?

And then on Thursday of last week, uh we had a meeting with Army Corps headquarters, where they uh rescinded all of the direction that they'd previously given to uh pursue a lake tap as the selected alternative, and basically uh said that they would uh continue to support flood fighting in the area for an undetermined amount of time.

Uh they directed staff to wrap up all efforts on the lake tap as the selected alternative, which included environmental work and um uh feasibility and preliminary engineering on that, and you know, their um their direction uh to their team was to continue to look at all five of the alternatives that uh you saw today and kind of wrap up a report that talked about all five of those different alternatives.

Uh their focus in in that brief meeting that we had with them was really on um uh expanded flood fighting, uh flood walls, um reinforcing those HESCO barriers, something stronger than Heskoberys.

I don't think that the enough kind of time was uh has been, they have not been able to put a lot of time into what that uh flood fighting looks like.

I think, you know, from our perspective, it looks a lot like a flood wall on a levee, which we already have uh seen a lot of the concerns, both from a budget and a right-of-way and uh and timeline perspective.

Uh so it was a really uh disheartening, uh disheartening pivot uh that um uh left us a little a little bit speechless, and I imagine also uh leaves you speechless.

Um, they used words like, you know, if there's ever an enduring solution uh and um you know put it put on a time frame of of decades and not years.

I can assure you that our immediate next outreach was to our Senator Sullivan, uh, who um remains committed to an enduring solution for the City and Borough of Juneau.

In fact, I've been uh on the phone with his staff today, and he has arranged a meeting with the assistant secretary's office on Wednesday of this week.

Uh we don't know, we don't understand why this change.

Um certainly the price tag is sobering.

Also, we don't have a lot of information.

We don't have geotechnical information, you know, it's a very preliminary.

Um, there are lots of people in our community who actually do this for a living, uh, drilling tunnels, now not the same tunnel, not the same uh function, but who say it can be done for a lot less.

So, you know, I fully would anticipate uh a lower cost estimate once that uh that engineering is able to be done.

Um, I've also been in touch with Senator Murkowski's office, who's committed to uh an enduring solution as well.

And Congressman Bagic has been briefed on this, and he has been a strong ally.

Um, I'm deeply frustrated with this change, of course, from Army Corps of Engineers.

They they certainly have been a great partner so far.

Uh, it's been really, we need them.

We need them to fight flood fight to keep this community uh safe and whole until we can get to an enduring solution.

Um, but we will be pushing very hard uh to pivot to uh to to get this train back on tracks to a lake tap.

And so I guess if I could ask anything of the listening public, and I know you don't know all the engineering and all the details of the lake tap and why uh it was selected, and frankly, I can't share all of those with you because I don't understand them all either.

Uh our engineers and and public works department that were that spent uh you know three days in that charret with 90 people ranging experts from all over the world, you know, they're gonna know a lot more, but really the Army Corps is the expert, and and frankly, they're not sharing a lot of information with us at this time.

Uh, but I think that you know, the call to action that I would ask is to advocate for a lake tap.

Uh, you know, they're this community needs to be very singularly singularly focused and together on what we uh need and demand for the survival of our community.

And um I think uh I think that this is the time where we pull together and have one voice.

So that would be my request as we deal with this information.

I also want to let you know that you know, my conversations are ongoing, our conversation with Army Corps are ongoing, most importantly, our delegation.

Uh they're gonna be key players in this, and they're on our team and they are on the uh team city and borough of Juno.

So we just need to figure out um how we can help them.

And I think the more that we can align as a community, the more helpful, the easier it will be for them to advocate for us.

So uh with that, we are happy to answer any questions on the magnitude of information that was shared with you tonight.

Who has questions?

Everybody's in a state of shock.

Ms.

Edkison.

Just so I can restate what you just said at the end there.

The Army Corps, which has presented uh aggressive and very welcome timeline that is agreed to fund and help install phase two of the HESCO barriers out of nowhere last week, reached out and said we don't even know if we'll supported enduring solution.

I would I would reframe that because I know that uh that they were very careful to say that uh they are still supportive of an enduring solution and will put work into looking at all five alternatives, but certainly the aggressive timeline that we were on uh last week uh or beginning of last week seems to be something that they're not comfortable with.

Follow up, Ms.

Edgison.

So they backtracked.

That's what happened.

I think that would be Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, you know, I'm sure that changes, you know, the dynamics of the agreement set in place.

But if the initial plan is to still do full funding or you know, majority funding of the phase two, if we decided to support some sort of levy damn hybrid, can we work that in as phase two and get some of the funding allocated for some of these higher cost things?

Madam Angry.

I'm not um I'm not sure I quite understand the question, but I will tell you what I have been briefed on, and that is that the Army Corps sees as a midterm solution, so they're calling it a midterm solution, um, aggressive flood fighting, which does look like um the levy uh option um to a certain extent, obviously not permanent, because that would be a much, much bigger, more expensive project.

Their uh preliminary cost estimates were about 30 million dollars a year for the um installation and then maintenance.

And that was only for the first couple of years.

They didn't have any any of that further down.

So I can't tell the future.

I can't, I mean, maybe that we'd experience another year and the recommendation would evolve.

I mean, that's one of the challenges that we have with this event, right?

It's unpredictable.

And I guarantee you that if we have a catastrophic event, we'll get more attention and people will say, hey, you're right.

This really is a giant problem for your community.

And frankly, I don't want that to have to happen uh because I don't want our community to have to suffer to get that level of attention.

But certainly it has been fluid.

So I can't I can't guarantee uh one way or another.

Uh but just to follow up on that phase two, though, right now is Hesco barriers down the rest of the occupied river.

Thank you.

You are correct.

And and and phase two is HESCO barriers, and when Army Corps talks about continuing to support that, they talk about uh more in um resilient flood fighting measures of which I don't have details.

Thank you for that.

Ms.

Hughes Candies.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you for that chunk of information to all staff, Madam Manager.

An understanding that there's a lot of information that is dynamic and changing, and you are still getting, and that uh that the core has been a good partner.

We want them to, we want to continue to be good partners.

Um we still look for their support for the flood fighting.

Do you have any sense?

You in your call to action, um, it sounds like it would be beneficial if the community is saying with one voice that you know, we want our enduring solution and we want it now, or we want it as fast as we can have it.

It's been my experience in speaking with constituents uh throughout this entire process.

Some people kind of got married to um some of the, you know, there's been a lot of things that we've talked about, for instance, a levy being one of them.

I know some people in the community really got attached to the idea of a levy and have continued to push uh the idea of the levy throughout.

Do you have any sense that because we are not united as a community, that perhaps because they are picking up on community division and what that solution looks like, that is potentially part of it.

I mean, that's somewhat asking you to take your best guess, but could you speak to that?

Thank you.

I I think that it certainly doesn't help our position to have a uh a divided community on what the best option is because we are asking for so much so quickly and something that's so different than the Army course process, right?

They want to study this for three years precisely for for very good reasons, right?

So I think that uh in so much as there's dissension within the community on what an option is, it does not help.

That being said, I have been in conversations with lots of our uh our community members um who have lots of investment and expertise um, you know, in in this area.

And I'm confident that um that you know we are all uh advocating for uh for a solution.

I I guess I am a pivot of this nature, I think is too large for uh a little bit of questioning uh constituents to have derailed the train to this extent is is my assessment of the situation.

So, yes, we need to be aligned, and it doesn't help when we're unaligned, um, but we're not that unaligned.

We all everyone in this room, everyone who has you know written their delegation and talked to their delegation wants an enduring solution and wants it quickly.

And I have I've never heard anyone advocate for anything other than that.

So I um I think we can do a better job at marching uh all uh to the beat of one drummer, which is very difficult for our very engaged and and creative community.

Um, but I I don't put the the pivot um on the squarely on the feet of internal dissension.

I really don't know what it is about.

I'm hoping to learn more uh on Wednesday.

Okay, thanks.

And Madam Manager, I don't think you talked about Wednesday.

I'm sorry, uh I uh Wednesday, um I and Senator Sullivan's office have a meeting with the assistant secretary of the Army uh Corps of Engineers Civil Works, and uh that will be uh where I can ask some of these questions uh on the why.

Ms.

Walt.

Thank you, Mayor Weldon.

Um, you know, the I think the the other shocking part of this evening so far was where we started, which is uh maybe I had seen those numbers before in my packet, but I hadn't really contemplated um the scale of potential flooding that was presented tonight.

And at some point it would be helpful to get back into that science because I feel like we have been there with the flood maps, and then we we brought in USGS and weather service, and we looked at the curves and we talked about the push and pull of the ice gets thinner and the basin gets deeper and uh the icebergs melt.

Uh so a better understanding of when when all you know a new group of experts came into the room and they they looked at their worst case scenario, like as a policy maker, I need to like have some sense of okay what's most severe but unlikely, and what's more likely but less severe.

So a better understanding of when when all you know a new group of experts came into the room and they they looked at their worst case scenario, like as a policy maker, I need to like have some sense of okay what's most severe but unlikely and what's more likely but less severe.

When you guys got that new information, did it change your impression of how we should be dealing, especially in the short term as a community, because I think that's a lot different scenario than we were in a few weeks ago in terms of the worst case scenario of flooding.

Who wants to tackle that one?

Mr.

Barr.

Thank you for the question through the chair.

A couple of things.

So I think the first thing I would just note is to reinforce what Deputy Director Rumsey said uh earlier about um needing to uh bolster the phase one work that we did more than we thought we needed to bolster it by.

Um, you know, when we installed phase one uh last year, we went into that uh believing that we were installing with some cushion, right?

With some with some room um between where the the likely uh top of a glf event would be and the top of the barriers, and that wasn't the case.

We didn't really have any cushion.

Um so that was kind of one piece of data that informed that, and then these data um kind of further reinforced that need to flood fight that.

I I would say though, that there really isn't a short-term way to address 89,000 or 118,000 CFS, only an enduring solution can do that.

So we are, I guess I it's I'd say all that just to note that, or just to emphasize Deputy Director Romney's point that we um are are coordinating as closely with the Army Corps and their flood fighting team, which is a different team than the team that um manager Kestor was referring to from our meeting on Thursday, uh, to do is buy the science of a job as we can uh when it comes to reinforcing a phase one installation of phase two and all of that short-term work.

Follow-up.

Quick follow-up.

And what about like emergency response?

Does that alter your I know we're trying to do everything we can to protect property and lives?

So I I don't know that that changes anything to see that, but curious if that you had that reaction.

Um yes, you know, we certainly had that reaction.

I I I agree with your, you know, that it doesn't really change a lot.

I mean, it provides us more information, more data.

I I guess I'll just offer one of the things that is most challenging when we look at this data to understand, and and I think you you probably share this challenge, I would imagine as a policymaker that we in our scientists talked about this the last time we dove into the science is that we're on a curve and we don't know where on that curve we're at.

Um, we don't know uh if we're close to the top of that curve and are seeing our larger, larger events now, or if we're at the bottom of that curve and we have many larger events ahead of us.

We um and that that uh is is maybe the most frustrating point of the data is it's really challenging to know where where we're at and what to predict and expect.

We of course have our last three years of data.

We have that trend.

Um Director Koch talked about that and about how that trend really cannot be relied on for year-to-year data.

It's more of like a long-term, long-term thing.

Um but I think that's what I have.

Madam Manager.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I just want to add, um, I know that the numbers are sobering, and we certainly hope uh and expect that volume to be very unlikely.

But you know, because you're sitting up here at this day, you have a unique responsibility to inform and plan for the worst when when you're given that information.

And it's it's really uh it's it's a sobering responsibility, right?

I mean, chances are it's a you know, they're planning for a 500-year glove on top of a 500-year rain event, on top of all of the these other things to come up with these numbers, right?

So we can sit here and be like highly unlikely.

But you have the responsibility and and your Army Corps has the responsibility uh to take into consideration that worst case scenario.

So I I just want to offer that as a qualifier to to that data.

Anything further Madam Mayor.

Oh, go ahead, Mr.

Barr.

Madam Mayor, if I just may too um to address assembly member walls um question from an emergency management perspective.

I just want to remind folks and emphasize that when we get into actual GLOF events.

So we're talking about long-term planning here, but when we get into actual the actual emergency management, the data and understanding of what is likely is much more known, right?

So we um we won't be faced with that question of um, you know, uh a GLOF is weeks out.

Is it going to be a 50,000 CFS event, an 80,000 CFS event, or an 120,000 CFS event, we will be much more able to plan and and communicate those expectations thanks to the good work that our partners do at USGS National Weather Service and those folks.

Um so I I know that's not like great reassurance, but I think that's just important information from an emergency response perspective.

Uh Mr.

Brooks, then Ms.

Hall, do you have your hand up?

Okay.

Thank you, madam mayor.

Um it seems like regardless of what you know, whatever avenue we choose or go down for a path, there's still gonna need to be a substantial amount of geotech work and uh other like things.

And you know, it seems like a lot of these, you know, projections are uh assumptions, you know, and they're they're assuming for the worst case scenario.

And if this geotech can help get that more refined or put things in um a better perspective, I mean, leaving it up to the Army Corps to do all the geotech could be so you know a substantial amount of time, but we definitely have the local expertise and ability to be able to do some of that work.

So is that something that you know would need to be discussed at the Wednesday meeting as far as getting uh you know a conditional use to allow some some local expertise to go and do some of the legwork for them so that when the Army Corps is ready for to you know break ground on the enduring solution, the sites prepped.

Thank you for for bringing up geotech, because that is our very next step and uh working towards a lake tap.

We have a congressionally directed spending request for six million dollars to do geotechnical work uh for the lake tap.

Geotech is uh an interesting um science.

You uh uh you could spend almost an endless amount of money drilling down every 12-inch square of property, right?

That that you to understand the soils underneath it.

So it ends up being a very expensive part of the project, which is why it's important to have a selected alternative before engaging in that uh geotechnical work, because it uh it takes a lot of resources.

Um but you're absolutely right that that's the next step.

And that information will deeply inform the uh the Army Corps' work um should should they proceed on a selected alternative.

As far as CBJ taking on that geotech work ourselves, I I think that there may be a time when we need to have that conversation and what that looks like holistically, I certainly am not ready to have that conversation uh right now.

Um, you know, what does it mean to go at it alone?

I do think that um, you know, we we are in this the the circumstance often with federal agencies that if they haven't like done the work that they want her their specifications per their alignment, you know, it's not that useful.

So that would would be another challenge.

But you know, the way you're thinking um might very well be uh be a conversation, but I think we want to get this train back on its tracks before we explore what going at it alone looks like um Ms.

Wall.

Thank you, my mayor uh manager cancer.

I know you're gonna learn more this week, but you know, in terms of your call to action, or you know, right now we you know feel confident our delegation is you know with us and on our team, you know.

Do you have guidance on who, you know, if folks heard this news and want to take action who they direct that to, or is that still a bit of a moving target?

Thank you for that question.

I mean, I do think that the delegation is the audience because the Army Corps uh will be influenced by by what they say.

I would encourage our um comments to be, you know, organized and uh and CC uh the city so that we can also collect those, you know, a sign-on letter or a resolution or or something that um just limits the gets gets our message across, but limits just the amount of time and effort that the delegation and their staff have to kind of process all of this and because they they get the calls.

They're I mean, they are the staff uh at um the delegation's office, Senator Sullivan, Senator Rukowski, Congressman Big Hitch I mean they they get it.

Um it just will give them uh tools and and know that our community supports them.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

Um the so parts of this is the plan to still is like the Army Corps still planning to 100% cover phase two, and then how much are the damage estimates up to for phase one?

Yeah, thank you for that question.

They are uh 100% covering phase two, and we do have a signed agreement for that.

But you bring up a really good point.

Like we need the Army Corps, like we absolutely need them because flood fighting is going to be so essential no long no matter how long uh an enduring solution takes.

So caring for that relationship is really important, uh, which means we we do need to approach kind of our our advocacy carefully.

As far as the cost estimate for repairs to phase one, deputy director, do you have a uh updated cost estimate on that?

Thank you, madam manager.

We are just still getting, I guess I would say the latest data on how this new information about flood severity may impact the required configuration for the phase one and phase two alignments of HESCO barriers within the last week.

Uh, but we have had some conversations with our uh identified contractors that we'll likely be working with for the phase one repairs and raising.

We do anticipate that the labor burden for that project could be three to four times what it was for the phase one installation.

Um I'm not saying that it's cost it's gonna cost three to four times because there won't be as much material involved, uh, but it will be a more intensive project.

Uh after the 2025 GLOF, we anticipated that would be approximately a million dollars in maintenance costs, but it's going to be a lot more work than that because in order to raise and reinforce the phase one HESCO alignment, there are many cases where we'll have to remove sections of barrier and completely reconstruct them.

If you looked at some of the photos, even that we had in the presentation today, areas where we experience seepage, we'll have to go back and uh repair the base for those barriers as well.

So uh I don't have a direct answer to the question other than we anticipate that it will be closer in magnitude to the phase one installation cost.

Thank you.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you.

And and just to uh the manager's comments about going at it alone and um being careful about you know harboring this partnership.

Um I'm not trying to hint or give any inkling that we should separate from that.

I'm I I want to be as symbiotic as possible and make sure that if there's any opportunity for community members or CBJ to help the Army Corps do some of the the media work or you know, is like less important stuff to them to help their process go a lot smoother.

If that's anything that we can offer up and help with, we should be exploring those avenues.

Uh thank you for that.

And I know that we we've had a couple minor studies done in town by either NOAA or UAS that they said they could use, but they were just minor studies.

Right.

Yeah, thank you.

We have uh connected Army Corps with uh NOAA, University of Alaska Southeast is working on the project.

We've also connected them with our mining community, um, who you know are our experts in this, so continuing to try to connect them with those resources and and uh appreciate the public's willingness to engage in that.

Thank you, Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

Uh I think a lot of the success that we've seen so far in this has come um not from going it alone, but also going with our partnership with the tribes and how we declared that that joint emergency.

Let's take ten minutes.

And if anybody's in the audience wants to ask questions, you certainly can to the staff.

We'll bring us back to order item two, Madam Clerk.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

In RCS EWP program and view drive resident interest.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

And I think Director Koch was taking this.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um just want to take a moment to say that this is another really difficult topic that I'm I'm gonna cover.

It's um, you know, in both of these uh presentations that I'm giving, we're really talking about people's lives and their homes, and it's um I just want to honor and respect the the gravity of of that situation and um how this is all really difficult for everybody involved.

Um for this topic, we're narrowing the focus down from the potential impacts uh of inundation to the entire valley from this maximum glaf to talk specifically about um the natural resources conservation services uh emergency watershed program.

Uh, I want to just remind uh the assembly and folks in this room that uh we do have Brett Nelson uh from NRCS, he's also uh available if we get some detailed programmatic questions.

Uh, but he gave a pretty detailed presentation uh on October at the October thirtieth committee of the whole.

Um, and just to bring us up to to date on where we are, um we had we CBJ had requested uh to participate in this program.

Uh NRCS had it's had and that was non-binding a request.

Um NRCS came out uh this summer in the July time period, and uh they said that ViewDrive would be a candidate for their um uh their EWP program, their buyout program, I'll refer to it as and they had done some preliminary work on a damage survey report um and came up with uh this total project cost of twenty-five million dollars.

Uh a project is uh more than just the cost of the homes themselves, there's uh environmental assessment, there's uh demolition, and there's uh restoration that you have to once properties go into this sort of buyout program, uh, that is permanent, uh, that is uh they'll stay in essentially conservation easement for perpetuity.

The program uh as offered by the federal government, this program, they cover seventy-five percent of uh many of the costs of the the majority of the costs of the program.

Nelson uh CBJ requested a waiver of that 25% cost share that uh was not granted uh then after the assembly had some additional discussion at the finance committee meeting uh they directed staff to um to do an informal poll so with non-binding but just to get a sense uh from the residents who live on that uh on that road uh if they would be willing uh and interested to participate in this program uh if they had to pay the 25% non-federal cost share uh or if they would not be interested in participating in the program.

Uh we had you know pretty good response rate in terms of uh we got responses from 14 out of the 18 uh properties uh you could see in this very short table uh most of the uh respondents uh said that they would not be interested in participating uh under those circumstances there was one um property owner that I had listed as unclear they they selected yes and no and they indicated that uh they would need more information in order to make an informed decision um of the two yeses um one is a property that is has been subject to severe and repetitive flooding the other is a property that is uh on the high side and has not uh flooded and as you may recall Mr.

Nelson had talked previously about um because we didn't know how many you never know ultimately how many um how many participants will choose to participate in this sort of program because it is a voluntary program it still needs to satisfy the objectives of the NRCS uh program and so mainly they're looking to uh mitigate mitigate uh against this severe and repetitive loss so uh there could be for example instances of if there are four houses in a row and three of them have been flooded but one of them hadn't because it's a little bit higher in that particular area but uh the one house that was in the middle of of the others uh wanted to participate uh that would probably satisfy NRCS in terms of they would allow for that house that had not been flooded to participate because it was in the in the middle or adjacent to homes that had been um subject to repetitive flooding in this instance uh the two homeowners who indicated in this informal way that they would be interested in participating uh are pretty far apart um and uh although NRCS has not uh made a formal decision it is likely that they would only uh cover the uh home that has been subject to that severe and repetitive flooding so it is possible that that there could just be one entity that participates in the program um in terms of some other things to keep in mind for NRCS um they the local office uh received received this funding from the federal government back in November uh they are supposed the whole project is supposed to be completed uh including you know demolition and uh uh restoring properties to their you know close to their natural state in 220 days that is uh I mean not gonna happen at at this point um that gets us into the May timeframe uh there is the possibility of getting an extension that is uh likely to to be approved um but NRCS would uh at minimum require um CBJ if we were to participate in this program to get those homeowners who want to participate out of their homes prior to the 2026 GLOF.

So you'd have to uh have agreements in place to purchase a home or homes depending on how many participants there are and they would have to vacate the property and we would have to secure any hazards.

A major theme was a real disappointment that CBJ would require individual property owners to pay a 25% cost share, or just that some people said that they they didn't have the ability to pay for that 25% cost share, or if they had to uh uh if they if they had that amount of money, they might use it uh in other ways to you know protect protect their homes uh versus participating in a buyout program.

Um I think some things that are uh important for this assembly to keep in mind would be um potential next steps.

Uh if CBJ were to participate in this program, we would sign uh agreement uh with NRCS.

Um the next steps would be there would be uh a formal and binding process uh where um CBJ would have to ask uh the ViewDrive residents if they were interested in participating or not.

Uh if they said they were not interested in participating, that would be the end of that road.

If they were interested in participating, they still have one other off ramp, um, and that would be at the point at which we get an appraisal for the property.

Um, there would be a negotiation between uh CBJ and the individual property owners on uh what that property's value is, and that is another area where individual property owners could say, I disagree with that appraised value, and um I don't want to participate.

That's another sort of off ramp for individual uh participants.

Uh it is important to also know that even if if CBJ isn't paying the 25% uh non-federal cost share, that there are still uh costs associated with project management for these projects, uh, some of which those some of those costs are partially reimbursable, some of those costs are uh ineligible for reimbursement.

Mr.

Nelson corrected one item that I had on this uh memo.

Uh the permitting efforts are uh not eligible for reimbursement.

Um the cost per property, uh, the CBJ costs per property outside of that um 25% uh non-federal cost share are scalable.

It depends on the the leading cost driver of the of a project per parcel is not surprisingly the cost of the home.

So for homes that are more expensive, the project is more expensive, and the project management is generally a percentage of the uh of the overall project.

So the CBJ portion, a non-reimbersable portion would be higher.

But it we we are talking about uh tens of thousands of dollars per property of CBJ, likely CBJ costs that are not uh wouldn't be reimbursable under the program.

Um and then also I just reminded everyone that the CBJ contribution to the to the lid is maxed out for people in the phase one HESCO lid is maxed out at uh 10,000 dollars just to kind of put all the the dollar numbers out there.

And what we're looking for from the staff perspective is to understand from the assembly if there's uh additional information that that you need uh in order to um help make decision as to whether CBJ should participate in this program or not.

Um we do ask uh, you know, we do have this essentially time is of the essence problem again.

If we're gonna proceed with this project, we have to you know get people out of their homes before August of 2026.

And um that's really not that that far away.

I think that's that's what I've got.

Thank you, Director Kodch, for another great good news session.

Uh Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

Did you get the impression?

I think it's beneficial that we got comments along with our votes.

Did you get the impression that if there was some other way for us to get the 25% that more people would be on board with the buyout?

Kelly.

We definitely heard from people that there were some people who just said we cannot afford that 25% non federal cost share.

And there was some desire um by a number of individuals for CBJ to pay some portion of that 25%.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I'm gonna ask maybe Mr.

Kelly's question slightly different or maybe a misinterpreted his question, but if there, you know, one of the frustrating things I think about this project is there there probably is a solution out there.

Like you could bring partners together to figure out you know there's enough interested parties I think but you know city homeowners or community the state nonprofits you know it's there are lots of folks who may want to see this come to fruition but we don't have time um or we haven't gotten there yet but I don't but that don't that still requires the homeowners to want to take a buyout.

So if there was a solution to come up with the 25% we know CBJ can't cover it sounds like the homeowners don't want to cover it or can't cover it either but if there was a solution do people even want it did you get that sense and you know this is a hard way to communicate with people so I'm I'll also take that feedback from residents when they email me afterwards.

Yeah Director Kot thank you through the chair uh to Ms.

Wool um that is a little bit harder for for me to answer um there were some people who did it did seem like they were indicating that they might be more open to participating in the program if they did not have to pay for that 25% um however we haven't identified uh non-CBJ source uh of of that non of that 25% non-federal cost uh cost share um so I think uh there's not any other funding source that that we are aware of right now that could other than CBJ fill that 25% gap either CBJ or the homeowner or some combination of CBJ and the homeowner uh Mr.

Brooks of the Ms Hall Thank you madam mayor it the the program by itself seems like an extremely uh useful tool that honestly could be applied to uh any number of you know the potential disasters that we have in the community whether that be landslides avalanches or like this is definitely a tool that can be and should be utilized at some point and especially for the people who have the um the inundation and need it and want to utilize it as far as the 25% you know it is very hard to ask people to walk away from their life investment at a loss is there a way instead of monetarily having the city come up with the 25% is there a put you know potential doing a partial land swap to make up that other value and proposing that to the residents who are interested in the program director cotch through the chair to Mr.

Brooks um I agree with you in terms of I mean this is such a difficult question that we're asking the residents of view drive to to weigh in on and uh we all know that um how special and important your home is to you and this is just uh probably the most challenging one of the most challenging um decisions that anyone would ever have have to face and uh my sincere you know my heart goes out to the the residents of of you drive um in terms of your question about you know land swap and I think you're getting to a a question about in kind sort of would that uh would that count as a contribution I might have to um phone a friend and and ask uh mr mr nelson who I believe it has been elevated as a pan panelist if land counts as an in kind contribution towards that 25% mr nelson are you there mr nelson if you uh I'm not sure were you able to hear that question we can't we can't hear you we we can't hear you we can

Nelson are you there Mr.

Nelson if you uh I'm not sure were you able to hear that question we can't we can't hear you we we can't hear you we can see you now but we can't hear you how about now yep you got it did you hear the question about uh land swap and uh did you hear that context yes I did okay and I guess the the first part of the response is in kind is certainly an allowable contribution um often on projects it might be hard to come up with something that would be suitable as in kind I can't picture in my mind how a land swap would fulfill that um I'm not saying it doesn't um but more commonly and this isn't the case at all with like view drive but like if we were doing a riverbank stabilization project and the city owned a quarry and the rock was valued at 20 bucks a yard um and the city was going to donate that rock that's something we could consider as in kind um if the city had a fleet of equipment and they were going to undertake the demolition with your own equipment and your own manpower we can come to an agreement on the value of that and that can be in kind of does that help yes thank you.

All right we have Mr Ms Hall sorry Ms.

Hall Mr Steininger and then Ms.

Hughes Gandhi's yeah thank you Madam Mayor and Director Cook I know with um early on there was a community meeting with the members of View Drive over at the fire hall really well attended I'm wondering if there's been any other opportunities to come together I know some of my feedback is this has been incredibly confusing to kind of sort through you know going back through all the meeting minutes and and um so yeah I I guess that's my is there an opportunity to sit down and lay this all out answer their questions in a little more informal setting.

And Ms.

Hall's volunteering to go to that meeting sure through the chair uh to Ms.

Hall uh yes I mean I understand uh that that feedback and that is um that is legitimate the the folks on view drive have been they've been organized they're they're easy to talk to we had that conversation at the at the fire hall um and we're happy to you know continue to have that sort of conversation part of the um challenge is that we continue to learn about uh all the the aspects of the program and we're we're kind of learning as as we go um and trying to share as much information as we have but it has been um evolving uh while our engineering and public work staff are also working on all the other HESCO and enduring solution pieces so it's just been a little bit of with um trying to move all all those all those pieces forward simultaneously but the view drive folks have been great to work with we can we can certainly organize something to uh have another conversation thank you for that Mr.

Steininger um thank you and I'm thinking about if we moved forward with just the one respondent who um you know responded yes and has a uh an impact of property you know all the kind of extra costs the administrative costs uh you know technical assistance pieces all those costs would then fall on just a single homeowner as part of their you know 25% share you know is it even viable at that point I guess to move forward with a single homeowner through the chair to um Mr.

I just think about a specific example of we still have to hire an appraiser and we have to do we have to do the same procurement process to hire an appraiser, whether they are appraising one house or they're appraising 15 houses.

So you do lose some of that economy of scale when when you're just talking about an individual uh property.

I I will mention that um what I've learned in in talking with Mr.

Nelson is that the way that this buyout program is typically applied, um it is typically applied in a pretty different sort of situation.

And by that I mean they are typically buying out like hundreds of homes.

The homes are generally not as expensive as the homes that we're talking about, and they're just you know buying out um a swath of a floodplain um and returning uh uh a contiguous area uh back to a natural state.

So it it is a little unusual to do a patchwork and to even have a project that's you know has a max that's less than than 20 participants.

Thank you, Ms.

Hughes Candies, or did you get your question answered?

Uh thanks, madam mayor.

That did my question was about whether we could do just one, but I'm gonna take the opportunity and ask uh a little bit not directly tied to the memo uh question because I wasn't here at the uh presentation.

I've gone back, but just to make sure I'm thinking about this the right way.

If someone said, yes, I'm interested, but I don't have that cash available.

The cash would need to be available.

It couldn't be tied up in the asset of their home.

It couldn't be measured by appreciation of their house.

Is that correct?

My 25% as a homeowner would need to be in a bank account where I could write it into a check.

Is that accurate to say through the chair to Ms.

Hughes Candy's?

Um we would have to uh figure out the mechanism for if it were a case that CBJ uh wanted to participate, uh, but the decision was made that the 25% non-federal cost share was solely born by property owners, uh, we would have to figure out a mechanism uh to get their 25%.

Um it could be some it potentially could be something in escrow or some other sort of mechanism.

Um we cannot just take their 25% non-federal cost share off of the essentially reduce uh the reimbursement.

Uh gotta be real money.

They had would have to, and I did uh ask NRCS if they had any examples of how other communities had you know had ever handled that if they if there was some sort of standard template um and they didn't have any um any standard advice um and said that would be really just something that we'd have to figure out uh locally as long as it complied with all local state and federal rules, uh they didn't uh they would be fine with it.

Okay.

Okay, thanks.

Mr.

Kelly and then Mr.

Burks.

Thank you.

I guess this question might verge a little bit towards more of a comment, but I guess before I make any sort of comments, I I think I would want to know if it's helpful.

And so this is the question I I would be asking staff is would it be helpful for us to give direction that perhaps we would want to think of more creative solutions like some sort of in-kind contribution or like I realize we've already looked at some local grant opportunities and haven't really been successful, but maybe would it be helpful for the assembly to say that we would like staff to expand that search, maybe reach out to services that we have available through Alaska Municipal League or um or or check out things.

Like I I heard recently at a conference that even though the Denali Commission is technically like that their funds are technically federal money, but don't count as federal money for most projects, maybe checking that way.

Would there, I guess, so my question is, would it be helpful for us to give you direction to look for creative solutions and possibly more grant opportunities.

My lemon Andrew, you want to jump in here.

Thank you.

Um, I certainly appreciate that uh that desire.

Um, and I would say if we had a year or six months even, and you said this is your highest priority, city manager, and you need to invest resources in looking for grants, pursuing grants, uh, pursuing interesting partnerships and mechanisms through which to align those different interests, whether they be nonprofit or state.

Um, and and you gave me that direction and said, I want you to deprioritize other things that you're working on because this is this should take your political capital and this should take your creative thought, then I think with time, I think we uh would certainly give it a solid try.

I think it's very difficult with the the short time frame.

Remember, these are funds that are available to us because of the federal disaster declaration that need to be obligated fairly quickly for us to take advantage of it.

And we just have not had the uh bandwidth to you know make um coming up with some creative solution and uh to to bring all those partners together to to fit that bill.

And so I think it would it would be difficult.

Yeah, and I'll just add on to that.

That's one of the reasons we did the informal poll was just to get an idea how many people were actually interested to see if we wanted to spend staff time.

So having just one property kind of clouds the picture just a little bit.

I'll ask a quick question.

Um, so if we did do this program with the one property, um do we have to do anything to that property to make sure it getting flooded doesn't affect the rest of the neighborhood?

Or do we just turn it into a park and then wash our hands of it?

Thank you, madam mayor.

Um I think there are two parts to that.

Uh I don't think that NRCS is going to require us to do anything to that property to ensure that that one property doesn't cause damage to other properties.

However, I think that we will have you know liability uh associated with owning one property and um could you potentially have risks associated with or need to do to invest additional funds to ensure that that one property that we purchased um wouldn't cause damage to to other properties.

Uh we had asked a similar question to NRCS, and that goes back to there was a little bit of head scratching because they're like, oh, usually we like buy out whole tracks and whole blocks, and we're not used to this patchwork of like one of 18 houses just buying that one particular house.

So that's um a little bit uh it's it's pretty unusual for NRCS, but I think probably our liability is just more on uh our liability side versus uh NRCS requirements to participate in the program.

All right, thank you for that.

Ms.

Scandes.

Thanks.

I'm just looking for a clarification on that.

I it's hard for me to see how if we had one person and we there was no longer a house there, how we're creating a liability to the other homes.

Through the chair to Miss Hughes uh Scandies, um this particular home that is interested in participating and uh would be a good candidate uh according to NRCS, um would the concern is that we know it's repetitively flooded.

Um, and whereas potentially the private property owner, you know, could home hold some liability from adjacent property owners.

Um just potentially the calculus is different in terms of people's willingness to hold CBJ um accountable for liability versus versus their neighbor.

Uh, but it is a property that repeatedly floods and uh water can get from their property to other people's property.

Okay.

I I still have a hard time seeing how you'd make that case.

I understand that you'd be more likely to sue a city than a neighbor, but um thanks.

Uh Mr.

Burks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

And um just kind of revisiting the land swap a little bit, not necessarily as a method of in kind, but as a method for financing the other 25%.

What if people who were interested in a program like this could uh get a city loan to purchase a parcel and equal to that 25% value?

And then that way the city could put up the money immediately while getting repaid over time by the person who's partaking in the program.

Madam Manager.

We have not explored any mechanisms uh like that or any available parcels.

So I I can't answer what that program would look like because we haven't haven't looked into it.

Mr.

Steiniger, lean forward.

You're asking the question.

And I think I've asked this before in a previous presentation on this topic, but just to confirm our and I know we just got very bad news on this subject, but our preferred alternative for the enduring solution, the lake pap, that would sufficiently protect all the properties on View Drive that are currently subject to flooding.

Is that correct?

You are correct.

That's one of the reasons we were pursuing it so heavily.

So um, and I think you've answered this question before also, but um, I know um, yeah, kudos to the neighborhood.

I just want to say you guys have been excellent to work with and been very patient with us trying to muddle our way through this when it's kind of unprecedented for us.

So appreciate the neighborhood.

But some of them have put up Pesco barriers.

Um is that still not an avenue for us to help or just give them HESCO barriers and say go forth and put them up yourself?

Or where are we with that plan?

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um we had uh previously explored some of those questions with the Army Corps.

Um they have uh been clear that for the HESCO barriers that they have provided to CBJ, we can't uh give those to private citizens.

Um we in terms of using HESCO barriers to protect uh View Drive.

Um both our own engineers and Army Corps engineers have looked at View Drive and have found that it is not a good candidate to be protected by HESCO barriers.

Those HESCO barriers would have to be 20 to 25 feet high.

Um, and it would be more of a almost an encirclement versus uh in the rest of the river where you're really uh in some ways it's a a form of levy where you're just helping the the water to continue to go go past down the river, but it would be a different situation, and we still don't think Hescos are a good fit for for View Drive, and neither does the Army Corps.

Yep, I knew that we couldn't do the whole neighborhood, but I know that some of the neighbors are just doing kind of like you said, putting a motor on their house.

So all right.

Any other questions or thoughts?

Ms.

Hall.

Just wanted to thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, Director Kushka.

I just want to clarify.

So the 25% that they would come up with, in addition to that, the city would be coming up with um the uh technical assistance that is about 15%, and only about half of that could be reimbursed.

So about how much would that be per property, or do we know that through uh through the chair to Ms.

Hall.

Um it it depends on the cost of of the property, but that's where we estimated a range of anywhere from 50 to 100,000 in terms of non-reimbursable uh costs per property.

Go ahead, Ms.

Hall.

And these would not be borne by the property owner.

Those costs would be uh, you know, the 25% is what uh or the yeah, could you explain that a little bit?

Yes, through the chair to Ms.

Hall.

Uh those uh costs in this memo when I talk about 50 to 100,000, uh that's non-reimbursable, that is above and beyond the uh 25% non-federal cost share.

So in some ways you've got three three buckets.

One is that 75%, you know, the majority is being paid for by the federal government at the set at the 75%.

Then the 25% is the non-federal cost share.

Um, and NRCS doesn't necessarily care who covers that 25%.

It just can't be federal money.

That's one uh bucket of costs.

And then in addition to that is this project management cost.

That's a portion of which that is not uh eligible for reimbursement.

Got that.

Ms.

Wall, I'm gonna go to you, see if you have something for us.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um this is a tough one in terms of what we do next.

I mean, I think the recommendation was to talk about what we what more information we need.

Um, I heard some of that.

Maybe we can surface others offline.

But I think the the only idea that I heard of real action coming out of the body, and I'll make this motion is to direct staff to host a neighborhood meeting.

Um, and if I could speak to my motion.

Go ahead.

Um this is this is a tough one.

I appreciate the informal poll.

We got some information here, and maybe this is simple as this is dead in the water, no one wants to do this.

CBJ can't pay that 25%.

I think that's what we decided when we asked for this poll.

Um, and the homeowners can't um either.

Uh, but what I'm curious about is as Ms.

Hall said, this this is very confusing.

It took us a long time in our last meeting to understand what we were grappling with.

I'd feel more comfortable knowing I'd feel more comfortable that we were going down the right path.

Um if there was a bit more of an informal conversation.

Fair enough.

Uh so we have a motions.

Any objection.

You looked like you were gonna say something, Mr.

Steiniger.

All right.

So um not great news for the neighborhood, I know, but we're just not quite sure which two with you.

I'll be flat out honest.

Uh Mr.

Brooks.

Oh, seeing unless you're objecting.

Go ahead.

Um I would like to object just because of the outreach from some of the view drive residents, especially ones who were involved with discovering this program and suggesting it.

They felt like uh, you know, the community engagement and uh neighborhood meetings that they've had in the past haven't led to uh results that you know were intended or that they felt were in the uh the best interest of the needs of that specific street.

So uh could it you know potentially be a uh joint meeting of the neighborhood with uh some assembly members?

Yeah, certainly the staff can invite a couple of us, so I'll remove my objection.

Okay.

Actually, Mr.

Brooke, that was the plan.

The staff just didn't know that yet.

So I already volunteered Ms.

Hall.

All right, um, go ahead and just to clarify this my intent was for this not to be a public meeting um in a public assembly meeting, but um certainly assembl with less, yeah, with the neighborhood uh with staff and with three or less assembly members.

That sounds good.

So any objection to that?

See none, we'll work with staff to make sure we can get that um scheduled.

So thank you guys for being here tonight from View Drive.

Um keep going, or you need a break.

Oh, all of our topics are long.

I don't mayor, I um would love dearly to stay on for the next topic, but it is midnight 13 here, so I'm gonna have to uh bid you all adieu.

All right, thank you and do good work back there.

Okay.

All right.

Uh so the rest of the body, a break, five minute break.

Five minutes.

Keep your five minutes.

Well bring us back in the session.

Item number three, Madam Clerk.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Telephone Hill RFQ input.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, manager.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

The purpose of this agenda topic is to update you on the work that staff has been doing on Telephone Hill, but also give you an opportunity to provide input on what the highest priorities are for a request for qualifications, which is another way of saying request for proposals for development of Telephone Hill.

We want to make sure that before we hire someone to draft this RFQ, we uh know exactly from you all what are the highest priorities.

So I'll just start with a little bit of a status update.

Um we have had a number of uh eviction cases take longer than uh we and anticipated.

So we still have one occupied property up there until February 28th.

After that, we'll be able to do testing of the uh home and then complete a plan set for demolition.

So just as soon as we get that information, we will give that to the uh designer who then will be able to design a bid package, and we will put bid for demolition out.

You see in the packet a list of the different materials that are uh that have been found on the site that in addition to the condition assessment kind of informed that process.

Um in the meantime, we have been working uh with Leland Consulting on some preliminary developer outreach.

That also is included in your packet.

They spoke with nine different developers and 13 different individuals, a a lot of really good information in there as far as like what a potential developer would be looking for, what some of their um their desires are, but there's some big themes.

The first theme is uh a flexible process, and that's where the request for qualifications process comes in instead of a request for proposals.

And the difference, you know, they're they're both mechanisms for uh for gate for gauging interest and awarding bids, but the request for qualifications really emphasizes a bidder's performance history, their ability to get the job done, and is more flexible to be able to come up with a creative uh response to again the highest priorities for the assembly in that RFQ process.

It's important to note that this is not like a bid, uh a traditional procurement process where we design something and then ask you know a bunch of different contractors to tell us how much it would cost because remember we're not paying for this.

Our product that we want is not cost-based.

It's based on a desired outcome and a level of incentives that we are uh willing to uh provide.

Um the uh other item that developers said that was going to be really important is to be explicit in what incentives we're willing to provide.

So that's another question that I uh posed for you in this memo.

Um our our range of incentives uh are from providing the land at uh a no cost, delayed purchase, um, tax abatement.

It would be eligible for tax abatement, reserving some funds from the affordable um housing fund for this project, either in a grant or a loan form.

Um those are all different mechanisms that we can put build into this RFQ to make sure that the respondents are more likely to propose something more favorable to the assembly and the community's goals.

Um, they talked a lot about different, you know, timing.

Um, weren't so weren't very worried about the construction season here.

Uh there is a March deadline for uh low-income housing, federal low-income housing.

And so kind of talking through what that might look like.

Um those are all some of the comments you guys can read that.

I'm sure everyone's read the the developer uh uh survey or the developer input report.

Um, I talked about the uh condition report.

Um, the next steps for this uh project are gonna be, like I mentioned, issuing a request for bid for uh demolition and also issuing a request for proposals uh for a firm to write a RFQ.

So we will be hiring someone to um use the statement of objectives that is also in your packet to draft that RFQ.

Um the I just want to briefly go over what's in your packet and the statement of objectives is gonna be the building block for drafting that RFQ.

And that's why it's important again for you to provide input on the things that are most important to you.

So the things that you want to carry the most weight in any scoring criteria and the things that you are willing to give.

Now that doesn't mean you're necessarily going to have to give those things, but a successful responder will both uh be they will be motivated to give you more of what your your most important goals are.

And in this case, I propose housing and maximum density housing and affordability because that is the feedback I've consistently gotten from this body.

And they'll be more able to do that if you are able to provide more incentives and clearly uh state those incentives.

So again, that's outlined in the statement of objectives.

We have the uh hazardous materials uh sample summary that just talks about what has been found in those homes, the developer interview summary.

We already went over what that has.

We drafted this uh brochure as a just a brochure to help us with developer outreach.

We haven't spread this widely.

We have shared it with the Coast Guard because of course Telephone Hill is one of the lots that's being offered to developers uh as they respond to the Coast Guard request for information.

But this is the type of kind of next step in developer outreach is is this kind of some more targeted marketing.

The other thing in the packet uh that I provided was a preliminary plates we have we want to make sure that the developer has the flexibility to kind of divide that lot up as they see fit.

However, when we work with first 40, first 40 said this is the alignment that um you know, we think would be based on you know the design and the engineering community input that would be a lend itself to maximum density housing.

And so um we're we haven't finalized that plat.

We can't finalize that plat until the road is realigned, which of course hasn't been funded.

But we want that information available to developers so that they can conceptualize what it can look like on that property uh with a you know a different um organization.

The lot lines right now are very um, they go through properties, they go through homes.

So the the lot lines right now are uh it will need to be replatted regardless of what alignment um uh the the eventual developer lands on.

So I think what I would like to do is to just to take you back to uh the statement of objectives and maybe start with uh the kind of what the what do we want?

What are the highest priorities for a request uh for qualifications?

And that's on page 40 of 136 of your packet.

So I guess with hearing no hearing no input.

I have I didn't know you were sinking in, but I thought you were giving a minute for us to read, but it's like we read our pockets.

No, I'm sorry.

Uh so what I'm asking from you today is to give input on the statement of objectives.

And uh the first question is um I have starred housing units, high density, and a minimum of 20% affordability as the top three most important things that we would design an RFQ around.

So I'm just looking for confirmation or input on that before I move on to um what CDJ can offer in that process.

Does anybody have ums well?

Just wondering if um just so I have some thoughts on that.

Do you want to take questions on?

Are there's lots of things in here?

Is this the only thing we're focused on?

Is this statement objectives?

And would you want questions on the larger project first?

Sorry, just so I follow where we're going.

Madame Mayor, I'm happy to pause and take questions on the packet of materials, and then uh maybe maybe I jump the gun there on my requested action.

Who has questions on the packet?

Uh Ms.

Wall since you started this, go ahead and then for Steininger.

Um thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, just it it can you remind me?

Um, because I think this is relevant and how I'll answer some of these other questions.

Um the Coast Guard process and how that will or you know, may or may not intersect with this kind of um suggested process here.

Madam Andrew.

Thank you.

So the Coast Guard has issued a request for information uh to developers, and as part of that, they have included our uh basically contact information to to contact for available city parcels.

And those two parcels that we have identified that could be used by developers are Telephone Hill and Peterson Hill.

We have been contacted by developers with you know questions about um about that.

Um the RFI has been postponed a couple of times from uh from closure.

And so it's hard to know uh I I I could foresee a situation where developers are like, well, no, I have my own property and I don't need to rely on CBJ property.

I could definitely foresee proposals where where they use that property.

Um the uh we have looked at the uh kind of back lot being the easiest to access for Coast Guard housing because it's probably the least and a least bougie, right?

In the back, it's also the easiest to develop without any road realignment.

So that's the the property that we have um set aside.

Um my hope is that we will get um some closure of that RFI.

It's been it's been active for quite some time, you know, before we make any um you know, final outreach to developers.

We've got a couple of months before we would begin demolition.

And my proposal would be that that that kind of aggressive outreach.

We've obviously done some outreach happens um after demolition has begun, just to demonstrate to the development community that this is a the assembly is serious about this project.

Does that help?

Go ahead.

The quick follow-up.

So if if a developer was interested, would they have to answer both RFQ and the Coast Guard's RFI if they were interested in developing Coast Guard on this property?

Coast Guard with Yeah, you know what I'm saying.

Thank you.

I would hope that the RFI process would have closed before we issue our RFQ.

Uh Mr.

Steininger.

Um different different area of the packet here.

There's a um the hazardous material sample summary.

And I am not an expert in any of this stuff.

So I'm hoping if you can help kind of contextualize the numbers that I'm looking at here from an understanding of you know how much asbestos you would expect to find in a home of this age versus what we found, as well as you know, the lead levels, like thinking both from the cost of demolition and then also some of the you know kind of community comments we've heard about preserving the homes, like how reasonable actually is this with this information that we found on the condition of the homes and the hazardous material.

Manager yesterday.

Thank you.

Well, and and I don't think it really matters because it's a um there are minimum thresholds and it exceeds those minimum thresholds in all of these instances.

And so that means that we will have to dispose of the this uh materials um, you know, in a in a special manner that drives cost.

Um I can't give you a good uh comparison because we haven't done a similar demolition project of like is this you know more expensive or less expensive than demoing your average 100-year-old home in the city in Borough Juno.

So I think that our cost estimate um about uh a third of our cost estimate is just in disposal of these hazardous materials.

So we definitely anticipated it being quite uh expensive.

As you know, from dealing with um looking at Marie Drake and some of the other facilities, it's the disturbance of the hazardous materials when they really become a problem, right?

So if if no one's chewing on a lead painted window sill that's been painted over by paint, it's contained, encapsulated, and it's not a problem.

It's when you you know cut it, uh modify it, remodel it, et cetera, that you uh expose all those hazards.

So I think that's an imperfect answer to your questions.

I can certainly get more information um and more detail on kind of what other uh other units may have looked like.

We just don't have a lot of experience.

Doesn't mean I can't phone a friend up.

Um I'll ask a question why uh everybody thinks about theirs.

I'm assuming this list is a little bit a wiggle room.

So say there's somebody that wants to build 150 units, but they need us to give them lots of grants, and there's somebody that wants to build 80 units, but they need no help from us.

I mean, but that would weigh in, you know, not only just the many amount of units, but how much they need help from us.

Is that correct?

I mean, there should be a little wiggle room in this.

Yes, I think that the developers asked for that wiggle room explicitly.

That being said, I will be careful in making sure that you give me the feedback of of where you want to wiggle and where you want to wag.

I'll look to the body for that one.

So any comments on the list?

Ms.

Hall.

Um, this isn't exactly on the list.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, the high density housing tax abatement program, at what level, you know, like does that qualify for 70 or 100 or 150?

You know, is there a kind of a cutoff on when a project would be eligible for that?

Madam Manager.

I do not have an answer to that question.

I don't know if anyone from CDD is still here.

Uh so I'll have to get back to you on the exact terms of that program, keeping in mind that the assembly can extend those uh I think in the past we've done 12 years, but um could be mistaken.

It is a 12-year period.

Units uh may yeah, it's a 12-year tax abatement.

Was that was that?

Is that your question, Ms.

Al It's 12 for 12 years there's a tax abatement program.

So okay.

Uh Ms.

Wall.

Thank you, Madame Mayor.

Um just to get my comments in here.

I'm definitely, you know, this I'm really appreciate the work that went into this whole packet.

And it especially the statement of objectives.

I think this got me, you know, re-excited about this project and what as someone who's been working on this since it began, you know, it it kind of captures the the rationale and the strategy that we've been shooting for, you know, how we originally envisioned this project and then all the things that we've learned along the way through our planning and our outreach.

Um, I like that it's really what I see written here is flexible.

I mean, I think that's that's the key is we want to leave it to the development community to figure out what they can do with us.

And we also know that um to see our goals met, our housing goals, you know, the city has to be putting in you know, incentives along the way.

And I like that it reflects the the tools that we've been developing over since the housing action plan um came out, you know, with uh tax abatement and um disposal of land and the affordable housing fund.

So I'm happy to see it all in here.

I have a few ideas on ways that we can make it even more flexible that I think we should talk about as a body, because when we make it more flexible, it also means um, you know, we may get less of our of our goals, but I think figuring out what we can do to make sure that developers bring us viable projects um that mean our goals are gonna require trade-offs and and that flexibility.

Um the one kind of thing, so maybe I won't get into the details of all those things right now, but um one thing I was kind of surprised that was not on the bulleted list, um was related to commercial space.

I I we know that um you know, we've done the assessment that you know this is not a good property to incentivize or to focus on commercial development.

Um and there's a lot of research to back that up, but I wasn't sure if our life's guide and our outreach meant it hadn't been suggested that some commercial use in there might make the project work better.

So maybe it's that wasn't a conclusion that was drawn and why it's not on this list, or maybe it's just something that's I agree it's not a starred item, but I didn't I wouldn't want to dissuade developers from including that if that's what made their project work.

Um, but I could be misremembering some of the conversations we've had.

I'll jump on that because I was thinking the same thing because we've heard a lot of mixed use help us make a project.

So um if the body is willing to do that, I would lower your how high density to about 85 units, 85 to 100 and 50, and because that gives them a space potentially to have a bottom floor of some commercial, if the body's willing to do that.

Mr.

Steiniger, do you have a can I grab your mic and not raise your hand?

It was half-free.

You you inspired.

So I was gonna say maybe just changing that high density 100, 150 to just be a high density preference and not necessarily give a specific number where maybe we craft bands that are you know if you get a preference for high density, you get this much of a preference in this range and this much in this range.

So then that adding a little bit of flexibility there and not specifically saying less than 100 units, we're no longer giving you that kind of preference or benefit.

Okay, uhs that uh thank you, Madam Mayor.

I'm I'm gonna kind of voice a differing opinion on this.

I I think that when we put uh high density 100, 150 units, I think that is a wishlist item, even if we're starring it, I think that it's not bad to indicate that that is a density that we would like to see.

I'm fine with had it having another bullet that's not starred that says mixed use as a potential, but I'm not necessarily wanting to change our definition of high density um just because I do want to set the standard up there.

And if developers say, well, we can't make it work with 150, we can maybe work make it work with 95.

But I I want it to be clear that that's what we're hoping for.

Okay, thank you for that comment.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

Um I'll kind of resonate your point a little bit.

Um if we do go to uh a lower amount that also changes other dynamics of the project, what is the most undigestible part of this whole thing is spending five million dollars to level places that were making money and app history related to the community, you know, if we can do some a lower amount of units that fits more into the incremental infill type development, and then maybe looking at a hybrid of doing that as well as some sort of uh land disposal that's already in current methods, but you know, I I think it would be a mistake at the point we're at now to spend that kind of money just on a demolition cost when the high density goal of 100 to 150 units is aspirational, even with that investment.

Uh thank you for those comments.

Um, anybody else want to jump in?

Go ahead, Ms.

Hall.

Um I'm I'm okay with the little bit lower density, but I'm also concerned about not a lot of parking.

And I I think you know, if we're yeah, um if we have some really nice units up there, I think people are gonna want to have a a place for a vehicle.

So that that's just something uh I think we need to keep in mind.

Um, and also, you know, because many of these homes do have very valuable historical architectural elements in them, you know, encouraging contractors, you know, if there's an opportunity to salvage and sell some of the materials, you know, um plant that seed.

I you know, I know we wouldn't want to invest extra money in that, but they may also be aligned that way.

Um, I know the Bergman Hotel was able to do that and and had a lot of interest for folks that live in older homes to buy updoors and different interior fixtures.

So yeah, if there's a way we can make it uh energy efficient, a little bit lower density to allow for parking, some parking and opportunity for salvage of valuable ancient wood.

So keep the price down.

Yeah, I don't know if you want to comment on that.

You talked about that one, Madam Manager that it would be up to the contractor that was demolishing whether we could the way that we manage those contracts is the contractor uh then owns everything, and so they can decide to you know repurpose, sell, give away.

Um, but they they essentially have custody of all of those goods.

Um, and then um I I uh hear you on parking.

The downtown parking garage is built to withstand three more layers of parking.

However, it's very expensive to build that parking.

Um, I do think that in any scenario, those front um lots would be the most attractive lots.

And in order, you know, I I don't expect that the lots with the gorgeous view to necessarily be the affordable housing lots, and that any developer would have to care for uh a high end tenant wanting that parking in in what they propose to us.

But I would leave that you know up to the developer to figure out what they think can pencil out because in the end, we're not buying this, we're just incentivizing it.

Correct.

Ms.

Adkisson.

I I just want to, I feel like maybe we can really quickly get into a point where we're very, very specific on exactly what we want to see on telephone.

And I just when I read this reading that this is a list of wants and that nothing, no proposal be excluded if below criteria is not met.

We're not trying to design here the exact project we want to see.

We're just trying to communicate to developers what will make their project competitive.

So I don't know that we want to, I mean, maybe we do, but I don't know that we want to spend like an hour going back and forth on exactly what we want.

But I think maybe fleshing out the list a little bit, like meant adding a mixed use bullet, for instance, is maybe a better route forward and will get us better design proposals than if we kind of figure out exactly what we want and try to curate that on this list here.

Any further Ms.

Wall.

Um, thank you, my mayor.

100% agree with Ms.

Atkinson on that.

I will say that what can be the what can be offered list, we do need to like I think get specific on what in I in my opinion, staff did a great starting place here, but there's a few decision points and potentially some other things.

So I don't know if staff are looking for us to like work on that now, or we come back with that.

But like I think this is a good place to start, but some of these I'm like assembled if we're gonna offer more flexibility or we're gonna do one thing versus the other, we should make I think that decision at some point.

So maybe staff can give me feedback on how you want that feedback.

Staff, madam manager.

Thank you, assemblymember Wool.

I would love to hear your thoughts on uh offering the land for a land transfer for free or significantly reduced value and using some uh affordable housing funds, either as a grant or a loan to um to offer, not to say you're eligible to apply for, but to say if you meet these criteria that are desired, we will uh you know commit to $2 million.

Let's say you have to uh in affordable housing loan funds or a one million dollar grant.

And that might not be a decision that you can make tonight, but those are the type of details.

Rubber meets the road that we're gonna need to incorporate into an RFQ to be successful.

Ms.

Wall.

So if we're doing that now, I'd say I'm very supportive of us um selling the land for a nominal price slash free.

Um and supportive of the plan with the affordable housing fund.

I'd love to talk a little bit more about our tax abatement program at some point.

Um and so maybe I'll try to figure out when we can fit that on a future agenda so that we can make sure that too is flexible for this project.

Okay.

So uh we'll just focus this right now on Ms.

Wall's um land at nominal.

Um what'd you say?

It's not really it's not a formal motion, but we'll just focus on that discussion, right?

Yeah, CBJ sell the land for a nominal price.

All right.

Uh Ms.

Adkison.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I'm I'm equally supportive as Ms.

Wall.

I think that um, you know, developers submitting proposals are very aware that there are uh not just one developer in town.

And so offering a full slate of options and having them sort of compete to see who can offer the best without as much as many incentives as is probably the way to go, just maximum flexibility.

So I support um Miss Wall's somewhat motion.

Thank you for that, Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I'd also support uh uh assembly member walls uh deferred land sale, but I would also like to see in what can be offered as the removal of CBJ will demolish and clear the site to make way for the development, but also a focus on the tax abatement as well as um you know the creativeness with subdividing and looking at how to you know redo that zone to meet more incremental infill type developments.

Okay, um you guys have any comments or just if you agree, we can just go with agree.

Um, Mr.

Steininger.

Um I would say I'm yeah, I'm supportive of the low cost and deferring the land or on the land sale and you know, free or no cost um annualization of the affordable housing fund because that comes with you know strings, they have to meet certain criteria.

Um I do think as we offer these things, they need to be tied to criteria that they must meet in order to get each of these incentives because otherwise somebody will just say, yes, please, all of the above.

Um, but creating that that flexibility and a baseline of that assumption that we're not gonna get much for the sale of the land.

Um I I think I see a little bit differently on you know, Mr.

Brooks comments on the demolition clear the site.

Um personally, I would prefer to see that we pushed off demolish demolishing the site until we got proposals back.

Um again to kind of keep that maximum flexibility because we may have a developer that says keep one or two to keep the historic characteristics, but demolish the rest and build something large over here to create some density, and we may see some kind of you know option like that.

So it but I do think that part of it.

I'm gonna stop you on that because I think that's gonna be a separate discussion.

Okay, okay.

Because I mean it's I I guess within the what can be offered, though, I still think that we should offer that we will pay for the demolition.

I guess is it's a point that's still pertinent to this list that we're talking about.

I think we're gonna get into that because I think we have disagreement on that.

So, but so I'm just trying to take one thing at a time.

So um, Ms.

Hall or Mr.

Kelly, you have anything about keeping it flexible and giving the property away.

And if you don't, that's fine too.

Thanks.

I think I would want to be very clear that if we are offering the affordable housing fund that in addition to the requirements that they're they're meeting here, that they also uh meet the strict requirements that any other applicant would have to for the affordable housing fund.

And it would be my preference that it not be a grant that it would be a loan from the affordable housing fund so we could recuperate that money after some time.

I don't I think I need to think about how I feel about offering at a reduced or free.

Uh Ms.

Hall.

Um regarding the deferred land sale, I prefer the and or option.

Um so either for a nominal price and or defer the payment for the purchase until the developer is realizing a gain for us to keep maximum flexibility.

Uh thank you for that.

And I would say my thoughts are along with uh Ms.

Adkisson said, keep them all open, but see what kind of deals that people can come up with.

They can keep it a little competitive.

So I would like to see the most housing for the least amount of money that we can give or do.

So anyway.

Um, so going back to looking at our next steps.

Um is first one is issuing a bid for demolition.

Do you want to speak to that, Madam Mayor?

And excuse me.

You can be the mayor for a while.

Madam Manager, and uh then we'll go from there.

Thank you.

I suspect within the NAC next month, we will have the uh bid plan set and the information that we need um to uh request bids for demolition.

So um that that's uh you have this body has consistently given that direction.

And so staff is proceeding with that.

We have not uh obviously issued a bid, but we have spent resources on designing what that would look like.

Okay, thank you for that.

Um so that's our next step.

Ms.

Wall, you want to give me a motion that we can talk about?

Well, I guess I I think we already have a motion.

I'm I don't know that we need a motion, and I'm a bit afraid that we'll get into a okay.

Talk why don't you think we need a motion or this we can do on other next steps.

Appropriated money and staff are moving forward with bid.

So I would say if there's someone who would want to change that, because I heard that they should make a motion as opposed to because I I'm supportive of the action that we've already taken.

So I'm not gonna make that motion.

Very good.

Um Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I'll make the motion to uh not spend five million dollars on the demolition of telephone hill and instead uh direct the manager to have staff investigate ways to um look at land sales and incremental infill.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Brooks.

Any objection?

All right, Ms.

Wall, and then Ms.

Atkinson and then Ms.

Hall, and then Mr.

Steininger.

I'll I'll object um for a question to the maker of the motion.

You know, we we've spent years going down this path.

We we sh we chose, you know, from a suite of options.

Um do you have a sense of what um financially it would take to choose another path and explore in fill development?

I imagine it would be a lot more cost um to redo a lot of the work that we've done down one path.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you.

Um I know that there has been um there has been a lot of costs associated, but whatever costs would be required to redirect.

Um, I think it'd be safe to assume that it'd be less than five million dollars.

Um the uh the and you know, that's not to um it's not to say that something doesn't need to happen here, it's just is this the absolute priority of spending five million dollars to achieve some sort of housing?

And at this point in time, that is not the case.

So it's and even with the incremental infill option, you know, there could be a level of demo involved with that, but I don't think it's appropriate to demo the entire hill, lower it many feet and just make a flat plat for who knows what, because like I said already, all the intended uses for what could happen afterwards is aspirational.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Brooks.

I've had Mr.

Steiniger, then Ms.

Hall and Ms.

Adkinson, unless I said that wrong.

Were you next, Ms.

Adkinson?

Okay, go ahead.

Sorry, I wrote it after I said it.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Uh I I will also object to this motion.

I uh as many people in this body have over and over made clear that we really would like to see high density housing on Telephone Hill, and that's not feasible with infill.

Um, that is not something that we're going to get to really trade change the tide of housing here in Gino for young families, for our seniors who need to age in place here.

It's just I'm not a hundred percent um objecting to the devo a demolition timeline flexibility, but the infill is very counter to what we have decided up until this point and what we're discussing here today.

So I will have to object.

Uh thank you for that, Mr.

Steininger.

Um, I'm a little conflicted on this motion as it is.

My gut feeling is that the timing and the sequencing of what we're doing is wrong, not necessarily that we need to completely change our focus and change our direction towards infill to the ends that we've been talking about, maintaining flexibility within the RFQ that we put out.

You know, what what I'm looking for is allowing for that flexibility for all types of developments that could come forward with all different ways to do things and you know, creating the most units for the least cost to the city, you know, if we spend the money on demolition now, that precludes us from looking at options that may come in through this RFQ should the demolition not have happened.

And so that's why I'd like to see the demolition wait until we work through the RFQ.

I don't want to redirect staff towards working on investigating in fill.

I I object to that portion of this amendment.

I guess I could offer an amendment to the amendment to alter it to delaying demolition until after the RFQ is issued.

Um I guess I'll do that.

I will offer an amendment to the amendment to delay demolition until after the RFQ is issued and remove the instruction to have staff look into NFIL, but to issue the RFQ with that maximum flexibility instead.

Yeah.

And I think it's just an amendment to the motion or an amendment to the motion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Any objection to that.

So Mr.

Brooks, you want to go ahead with that?

Speak to your the your objection.

And then if nobody else has one, I'll speak to mine.

Yes.

And it that is, you know, very close to the idea.

It's not necessarily that I don't want any uh possibility of any type of demolition happening because whatever type of development that is done, there's going to be a degree of that.

The price associated with the proposed demolition costs is what I'm having the issue with.

And when we talk about the project tonight here and times that we've talked about in the past, you know, we we get very uh fixated on the moment and you know maybe given the impression that is like one of the only things we're doing to address the housing need on the front when we have a lot of other things that we're working on too.

And as each one of those other things gets worked on, the need that this specific project can fill becomes less and less prevalent.

And especially with that kind of funds associated just to get it to a blank slate on top of what has already been invested and had a community member give us all a piece of paper that says you know, over two million dollars has been invested to date, and that's just for a bunch of empty, unkept houses that are no longer bringing in revenue.

So it's like I said before, it's not some not necessarily that nothing should be done.

There definitely is the will and desire to do some sort of development, but there is no desire from the community or the people to spend five million dollars to level this area.

That that's something that you know we as the body have gotten into, but it's not the will of the public.

Uh thank you.

Any further objection to the amendment, Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

Just uh objection to make sure I I'm clear uh from the from the maker of the motion.

So it is your motion that we would basically be delaying the demolition until after we already have a response back on somebody to basically answer this this RFQ that we're we're laying out here.

Mr.

Steiniger.

Um effectively, yes, it would be we would still have the money appropriated for demolition.

It would be within the RFQ.

My idea is it within the RFQ, it would still commit the city to paying for the demolition.

Should the winning project have that RFQ require demolition?

So we're still committing to the demolition.

We are still, you know projecting that strength in our or face in this project, but it would preserve that maximum optionality of what the N project could look like for anyone responding to the RFQ.

Um, because we've gone to this point without having started demolition because of factors outside of our control.

And so at this point, we have the ability to provide that optionality while retaining that commitment to the project.

I guess is that that's my intention.

Thank you.

I'll withdraw my objection.

Um seeing no further objection, I'll object.

Um I appreciate we're coming from Mr.

Steininger, but um we have been talking this as Ms.

Wall said for years.

No one has stepped forward and said we would like to do infill development.

We've had other people say get rid of the houses and we'll uh look at developing that.

In fact, we've even asked Telephone Hill neighbors that have come up with uh a different uh plan than us.

That's what I keep telling them, come up with the developer that will support that, and they can't.

So I think it just delays the project further if we don't demolish the houses.

So we have an amendment and we have objection, Madam Clerk.

Will you call roll?

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

For amendment number one, delay demolition until after the RFQ is issued and remove instruction for staff to look into in fill, but to issue the RFQ with maximum flexibility instead.

Mr.

Steininger.

Yes, Mr.

Brooks.

No.

Ms.

Hall.

No.

Mr.

Kelly.

Yes.

Ms.

Wall.

No.

Ms.

Adkison?

No.

Madam Mayor?

No.

Motion fails with five nays and two yes.

Uh, thank you, Madam Clerk.

So we're going back to the main motion, and Ms.

Hall, you didn't get a chance to speak to your objection.

Do you still want to speak to your objection?

Um.

All right.

So Mr.

Steiniger and then Ms.

Wall.

Right.

So I I'll speak then in objection of the underlying motion.

Um, primarily because I don't think at this stage it is a good use of staff time to have them start investigating an entirely new track on this.

You know, it if it could have been done for free view of the RFQ process and have a bidder come in with that, I would have been in support.

But if it's distracting staff from the other very important things that we heard about earlier this evening and going to love finding in DC, I don't think that's an appropriate use of our time and effort of staff, and so I'll have to uh object to the underlying motion.

Uh thank you for that.

Uh Ms.

Wall, you had your hand up.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um I'll just I just wanted to address um Mr.

Brooks' points um, or one of his point.

I I think it's I very much understand why he and others are you know shocked when they think about the amount of money that we're spending to demolish housing.

And what I'll ask people to keep in mind is what the cost is of doing nothing.

We have 300 units short just for the Coast Guard showing up.

That doesn't include the crisis that we're currently in.

We are doing lots, there are lots of things happening.

We're working on them.

We're making progress not fast enough.

This is a big opportunity to move the needle.

And yes, that costs money.

If it didn't, we would have high density housing all over this community.

We don't so that's I I understand why that is so frustrating to people, but that's why we've been continuing to move in this direction is that we know what is gonna happen if we don't.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Wall.

Um, I'll speak to that too.

I mean, a case in point is Peterson Hill.

We spent a lot of money to develop that subdivision and and it's got quite a few houses and Clink and Heide is regional housing authority is going gangbunter gangbusters right now to do housing.

So Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

And you know, I know that this whole thing has been going on for a long time, but the voters passed, you know, two million dollars in funding off a one percent temporary sales tax for the redevelopment of telephone hill.

And if we go through with this demolition, we'll be at over seven million dollars, and we'll be giving them a blank plot.

And uh, and it's um it's that's that's not what they voted for.

That's not what they're expecting, and that same kind of investment can go far way further in other areas.

We were just you know, at the meeting before this, talking about what could possibly be done with this facility, and uh, and we already know that this facility has deferred maintenance costs well beyond the assessed value of it, demolishing this building and then having one of the most prime pieces of real estate in downtown.

That's that's where it's practical to knock down a building.

But when we're talking about not only knocking down buildings but reforming the geology of the area, that's where people are starting to get lost.

All right, thank you for that, Mr.

Brooks.

Um, so Madam Clerk, we have a motion and objection.

Um please call the roll.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, for Mr.

Brooks motion to not spend five million on the demolition of telephone hill and direct the manager to have staff investigate ways to look at land sales and incremental infill.

Mr.

Brooks Yes, Ms.

Adkisson, no, Mr.

Steinger.

No.

Ms.

Wall.

No.

Mr.

Kelly.

Yes.

Ms.

Hall.

No.

Madam Mayor.

No.

Motion fails with five nays and two yes.

All right.

Thank you for that.

And then um, Madam Manager, let's talk about how much we've spent this far on telephone hill and get the right information out there.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

You have appropriated a total of $5.8 million for telephone hill, of which you've spent just over 500,000 to uh develop design and get it to this point.

All right.

Thank you for that.

And do you need anything further from us tonight on this topic?

It doesn't sound doesn't sound like we want to give you a ton of input on anything.

I will warn you that without anything further.

I'm gonna be coming back to you because uh the direction is uh let's see.

Sorry, I should we want you to go.

We well, it's we don't I don't think we want to put barriers on it because we want to see what people come up with.

Let me uh let me summarize what I understand.

And uh and I'm sorry, I I was expecting a little more uh more feedback, but I think I can give you a summary of what I understand.

I understand that you would like to include uh mixed use as an acceptable use that you would like to prioritize in the RFQ housing units, high density with a range of 100 to 150 units and a minimum of 20% affordability.

Uh I am hearing that you are um open to uh selling the land at a nominal value or deferring the payment of the land.

You are also open to uh an affordable housing loan in the future.

Um I think that that is the um and and that we are uh proceeding with um issuing a bid for demolition, and we are proceeding with issuing a request for proposals for uh an RFQ.

I do think that there will be another opportunity for you to touch the RFQ to finalize that um direction, but that is what I'm hearing.

So okay.

Um I'll just speak for me in my case.

I agreed with your statement of objection.

It was so that's why I stalled is because I agreed with it.

So I'm looking at the body and seeing I think overall people are agreeing with that.

Is that better clearer for you then?

So and Mr.

Steiniger had a comment.

So actually a question because we jumped topics earlier in this, and I had a question on the um what do we want section?

Uh, what is old Juno building design?

I when I look around downtown, I see concrete buildings, I see some Victorian looking, I see cedar siding.

What does that mean for a developer?

How should they interpret that?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think it means not Newportland design.

Uh we got some feedback from just the schematics that were presented in the um place guide, uh, that something with a little more uh character.

That would fit in.

Yes, yeah.

Which is why that hill is like it is, because initially when it got uh uh set aside for state capital, the four designs were so atrocious that the public went, eh, Mr.

Kelly, and then Ms.

Edkison.

Thank you.

So on the last bullet point under what do we want?

Um, I guess my question would be what would qualify for senior housing?

Would there be ADA requirements included in that I think it could um uh look like a lot of different things, but uh in its most basic, you would want units that are um elevator accessible, um have you know a min some of those ADA amenities, but I don't um I do not read this or my intention is not that this means um assisted living.

It would still mean seniors living independently, but with the um amenities that they need to be able to live in the home.

Uh Ms.

Hall.

Oh, sorry, excuse me, Ms.

Atkinson.

Mayor keeps skipping me tonight.

Um I need to start writing them down, sorry.

My pen was not working earlier.

So I I have a question for for the manager, and maybe this will upend our whole conversation up till now.

So I do apologize, but um, I I do have a uh instinct to provide maximum flexibility because I I'm interested to see what people can make pencil out, what they can make work.

And I'm certainly not a developer, I don't know what they can make pencil, but uh I guess from is your sense that us offering such a flexible uh uh offerings like oh maybe you could get a loan or a grant of maybe two million or maybe 500,000.

Would that have the opposite effect of of not being helpful and not getting responses?

That's a good question, Madam Manager.

Thank you.

I would want to pen you down on those details before issuing an RFQ.

Okay, Ms.

Hall.

Uh thank you.

And I I would just say the words you were all looking for is age-friendly design.

And um, you know, really that could be anyone, you know, what's good for our seniors is generally good for anyone, because who knows when when you're gonna need more accessibility.

So all right, Ms.

Adgison, and then I'm gonna probably wind this topic up because we still have things to do before the end of the night.

Okay.

I won't uh I guess uh man meta manager, I know you said we'll have a chance to touch this RFQ later, but I mean, have we uh by from that answer you gave of we really do need to have some some clear parameters?

Have we done anything at all tonight?

Or do we it was like have we not really accomplished anything on helping you sort of craft this RFQ?

I I think we made great progress.

And most importantly, you've all had an opportunity to reflect on the direction that we're headed and reaffirmed that direction.

All right.

Can we move on to topics?

Okay, number four.

And we have to watch our time.

Number four.

Madam Clerk.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Sea Walk procurement and financing update.

Uh thank you, Madam Clerk, Madam Manager.

Thank you.

Uh, this um purpose the the goal that I have with bringing this agenda item to you today, is um to get a support for introducing an ordinance for a revenue bond for the Seawalk project.

Uh, but I want to walk backwards from that because there are a lot of important milestones that have to happen first.

Um, the Sea Walk has uh long been a priority.

We've been working uh on seawalk design for for some time and slowly putting away funds to be able to passenger fee funds to be able to fund that project.

Uh the timeline has uh been accelerated a little bit because Petromarine, who owns property for about half of the Seawalk.

If you recall, we secured a uh easement.

Madame Mayor, can I just request uh it's uh a short break for the room to clear?

It's difficult for me to keep it.

Okay, let's take two minutes.

The later it gets in the evening.

So I will try to be brief.

The purpose of bringing this uh item before you is to get support to introduce an ordinance for a revenue bond for construction of the seawalk.

Uh, we've been working towards that goal and designing the seawalk and and slowly putting away funds for it.

That timeline has been exacerbated because Petromarine, who owns about half of the um property that we're gonna be building the seawalk on.

If you recall, we entered uh into an agreement with them to lease that property to construct the seawalk.

They are moving forward with construction of their new dock in uplands in 27.

And the uh construction of the seawalk and the construction of their infrastructure needs to happen concurrently for lots of reasons.

One of them being uh mobilization costs, staging of materials, um uh access to uh the property, petromarine, because of the improvements they're gonna be making and because of the disruption that construction would make to their operations, they will not allow us access after that 27.

So all of that means that we need to do that portion of our project concurrent with Petro Marine, which means we need to both be using the same uh contractor.

And Western Marine is the contractor that they're using.

We work with Western Marine quite a bit.

Uh, we're currently working with them on Aurora Harbor.

That there are other contractors uh in the region that can do this work.

So I am planning on making a best interest finding based on all of the reasons outlined in this memo to work directly with Western Marine to work very closely with contracts and with law on a uh uh you know procurement process that still guarantees our um guarantees uh we're that we're getting the most value for that product, and there are some ways to do that outlined in this memo.

Um, but uh what I'm really asking for for you today is to support the Seawalk, which is a 28 million dollar project.

We would bid the second half in our traditional procurement process where we design it and then we issue a request for proposals.

It is just that that stretch of it, we are gonna need to do concurrent with Petro's um Petra's uh work.

So that is not something that the assembly, of course, needs to vote on, but you need to be aware of it because it is highly unusual to issue a manager's best interest finding for that large of a project.

Um happy to answer any questions.

Who has questions?

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

So is this funding for a portion that couldn't be covered by marine passenger fees?

Madam Manager.

100% of the project cost is marine passenger fees.

So no, it's all passenger fees.

Do you want to explain how the revenue bonds and the passenger fees work?

Oh, thank you.

Yes.

So the uh we have about four million dollars set aside for this project that will uh get us through design.

Um, it's about a 28 million dollar price tag for the project.

That's a that's a preliminary number.

We're we're not at 100% design.

But what we would do is we would um issue revenue bonds, uh, which is not not a uh not a general obligation bond that requires a vote of the public, but it's uh a revenue bond that we can secure with a guaranteed revenue stream.

So because we have a guaranteed revenue stream with passenger fees, we can borrow that kind of tax-free uh money and um pay it back over time.

Uh Mr.

Kelly and then Ms.

Wall.

Thank you.

Do those revenue bonds incur any obligations on our part beyond repaying them and the interest.

Madam Manager.

Um we would have an obligation to construct the project.

Ms.

Wall.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um this um, it's okay if you don't know the answer to this question.

One of the, you know, when I first started on the assembly and when I was involved in the blueprint downtown, like Seawalk, Seawalk, Seawalk was always a top priority.

Um I understand why we've been uh pursuing it aggressively.

I did, you know, looking at the results from the survey that we're gonna talk about here coming up.

It's clear that you know, tourism is a sensitive topic for the community when it comes to our budget, which we all knew, but it was highlighted in the report.

You know, as we've done our tourism surveys every year, do we have faith that there's that seawalks still remains a top priority?

Manager.

Yes.

Um, and there's a couple of reasons for that.

Uh one, it is uh infrastructure that we build for uh explicitly for our visitor that uh locals also really enjoy.

So it maximizes that value of building infrastructure that is enjoyed year-round by residents.

It also has the opportunity to really reduce congestion because the uh waterfront walk from the AJ dock um is a lot shorter than the walk along the side of the road, which means you're gonna have less buses on the street, less people on sidewalks, let uh that sidewalk stretch on thane and less congestion.

So it really does meet a couple of uh of those community priorities.

Any further questions?

Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

Uh this is really a question I should have let you know in advance.

I was going to ask.

Uh so if you if you're not ready for it, that's okay.

But Ms.

Walls, speaking of priorities, like one of my priorities is dock electrification.

And I am just curious how much we might have in that in that fund and how close we are to to being able to fund uh more dock electrification.

Madam manager.

Thank you.

And I cannot remember off the top of my head how much we have in doc electrification.

I know that it's significantly more than CWAC.

I'm I'm gonna guess it's look, bone a friend, 13 million dollars for dock electrification.

Uh, we are looking, there is funding um uh in the governor's budget uh to create a program for um uh that that may create a program for dock electrification that we would be eligible for, you know, pending all things that the money stays in the budget and that the program is created and that we compete favorably for that program.

This is why I think it's important to keep that money in our account for dock electrification to really demonstrate our commitment.

We're we're a lot further along um than any other partner in the region uh on that dock electrification project.

The the two docs, it's a 54 million dollar price tag for dock electrification.

You could split that up and do one.

Uh Mr.

Steininger.

Um I don't expect an answer to this now, but it'll be good to see the actual terms of what the debt would be, like how many years, how much debt the debt service would be coming out of our annual um head tax budget, you know, how much we're gonna pay in interest over time.

Um I'd appreciate seeing that information when the ordinance gets drafted.

I know we don't know the actual interest rate until we actually issue the debt and all of that, but some kind of estimate um, and then to kind of contextualize that.

How long, how many years would it take us to actually put away the 28 million dollars to do this project if we didn't have you know this kind of fire under us that was petromarine activity to make us try and do it now?

Like how long, how far out would this project have been otherwise without issuing the debt?

Madam Manager.

Let's see.

So to answer your first question, absolutely, we would structure the debt to be able to pay, make those payments without sacrificing other marine passenger uh facilities no longer than the lifespan of the infrastructure.

Uh it's it's a long lifespan infrastructure.

I believe we have a 35-year lease with Petro for that.

So that would probably be the limitation on that lifespan.

Your second question is how long would it take for us to just save the those funds?

Um, we have always intended on uh bonding for this.

Um it really just depends on what you want to prioritize.

Like if we didn't do marine park, we could save those funds more quickly.

Um, so we've been prioritizing putting aside funds for dock electrification instead of the seawalk, knowing that we would uh potentially bond for either one of those projects.

Um what is it, a like 20 million dollar passenger fee budget a year?

Uh we obligate a big chunk of that in kind of operational costs.

So um I I can certainly do a more detailed analysis for you, but the strategy has been to request revenue bonds.

All right.

Ms.

Wall, would you get start us off with a motion, please?

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I move the committee, the whole direct staff to draft an ordinance to pursue 28 million dollars in revenue bonds for the Sea WAC project to be funded by marine passenger fees.

Thank you, Ms.

Wall.

Any objection?

Seeing none, that motion passes.

Item five.

Madam Clerk.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Budget process, how members propose reductions.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, Madam Manager.

I I would actually like to hand this one over to our finance chair.

That's you, Ms.

Wall.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

We told Ms.

Flick she could go home.

Um I uh uh won't go through this whole memo.

Happy to take questions, but I got a feedback from a few of you as we've been approaching this, you know, um hard process that we're facing.

Um we do the budget process a little different every year, but this year the idea of significant reductions in our operating services um is tricky.

And so um we've got a few things here um to share with you.

Um and I uh won't go through all of them, but just to say that um well this is a starting place.

Um we know these conversations will be iterative, but we wanted to give the assembly kind of a place to start big picture about kind of where our priorities were.

And so this is what we came up with, knowing that at the end of the day, we're all gonna have to make um motions and decisions and votes to as we get closer to the budget, but having some conversations before we get there.

I'm happy to take questions.

Any questions from Ms.

Wall?

All right, and just so everybody knows, I talked to the city manager today and uh said we're gonna need staff help on this.

So she said go to her first because it it's operational and we have to see your operational impacts are before you head for finance.

So swing by her first or or Mr.

Barr.

We'll throw them both under the bus.

So um I don't think we need any emotions or anything on that.

If you have any further questions, talk to Ms.

Wall, the finance chair.

So with that, item number six.

Ms.

Shivens.

How long do you think you're gonna take on this?

Okay, well, I'm just making sure.

So we um if we need to, we can extend.

So uh I said if we need to.

Um Ms.

Heimbigner.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, and I will I promise to soon pass the mic to Maylani Shivans of Raincoast Data.

I just wanted to start the conversation with a little bit of context.

Um, while uh Brecken is pulling up the slides.

Um, I'm Ashley Heimbigner, communications and engagement director for the city.

Um, and after the results of the October 2025 municipal election, um the the body quickly came together and and recognized that you needed to hear from your community before heading into these challenging conversations.

Um, and then your direction was formalized at the assembly retreat in December.

Um, and that gave the communications and engagement team our marching orders to conduct a pretty robust um outreach campaign to learn from the community what what their priorities are, what they value, and and where they're willing to make trade-offs.

Um and and one of our, you know, the centerpiece of this outreach effort.

Oh, sorry.

Uh next slide, please.

Um so you can see uh we're we're the where we are here moment is where the star is, but but we started with the October 25 election, moved through our identified options that we discussed with the assembly um that the assembly provided to to the manager.

Um we conducted the community compass survey, which you will hear more about from Maylani in just a moment.

Um and now we're conducting our community compass workshops.

Um we're really excited about these.

The first took place last Wednesday at the Filipino community hall.

I'm grateful to have several members of the audience that participated in that workshop.

Um, our next uh event is coming up tomorrow night at the Valley Library, and then our our third event is next week at the Douglas Library.

Um we are also excited to be talking with you and conducting those resource allocation exercises with you as well.

Umce we have the results of those activities, we will provide a full recap of the input we heard from the community at the April 11th budget meeting.

Um, and then you all will get to hear from the community directly at the April 15th listening session.

Um and then, of course, the end of this this circle is the implementation.

Um, but I wanted to hone in just a little bit on the community compass survey.

Uh, hopefully everyone in the room had a chance to take that survey.

Our our goals there were to seek guiding principles from the public to inform community priorities and your budget decision making.

Um, we intentionally worked with Raincoast data to make the survey concise to most most importantly make it accessible because we wanted to hear from as broad a swath of our community as possible and to make it replicable.

Um, something that could potentially be, you know, this could be a baseline that we build off of to conduct this community sentiment outreach for years to come, should the assembly decide to do that.

Um we also heard, you know, that the and knew that members of our our community were would want to share more.

So we created an additional input form to supplement the survey and invited them to reach out to the borough assembly directly.

In terms of outreach and distribution, we used our traditional channels, the website, press releases, posters and flyers around town.

We had a robust social media campaign.

We had posters on our city buses, we did radio ads and interviews on all major stations.

We had table tents and community spaces.

We did some tabling in public split spaces.

We reached out to staff and then had a lot of direct outreach with community organizations to encourage them to share the survey with their stakeholders.

We really enjoyed the public tabling.

We this is a photo of the of Tasha and Phil from the comms and engagement team at the Lemon Creek Breeze In on one busy Saturday.

And uh we were at Safeway, uh Foodland, Forbidden Peak Brewery, and I think our favorite was the Juno Douglas High School lunch hour.

But um what was really great about this is people might, you know, some people came up and said, You're not gonna hear want to hear what I have to say, or you know, um, you know, we're sort of curious as to what was going on, but generally they were happy to be asked.

So we were we were glad to be there.

We were glad to provide the opportunity for that community input.

So thank you for for charging our team with doing that.

Um this is a photo from our workshop last week.

Again, this is a more detailed resource allocation exercise for people that are really willing to get in the weeds with us on these budget conversations.

Um and community priorities.

I think what was interesting for many of us, and I this is sort of a preview of of what we might share is that a lot of folks came into the room wanting to talk about adding and talking about rent-of-revenue generation.

Um, and and we, you know, sort of were surprised when he had to say we're actually we're here to cut, you know, this is this is where we're going.

We're we're we're looking at budget cuts.

So um I thought really interesting conversations, really great ideas shared.

And I'm I'm excited to hear what we hear, uh excited to see what we hear tomorrow.

Um with that, I will pass it to Maylani Scheibens.

Um, Brackett.

Oopsor.

Thank you, Ms.

Heinbigner.

Welcome, Ms.

Shivans.

Thank you, and thank you so much for having me.

Um, so welcome to the Juno budget survey report.

I'm gonna have to present this way.

Um, next slide, please.

So um Miss Shivans, you can pick up the mic and turn all the way if you can.

Okay, I might do that.

So I I I think I have to say that the the response rate here was nothing short of extraordinary.

We had 4400 uh responses, unique responses, just too shy of that.

Um, from a statistically significant aspect, we had a 99% confidence level.

That's a very high statistical survey.

Next slide, please.

Um as we were going through the survey was looking at generation, geography, race, um, making sure that the surveys that were coming in looked like the community as a whole.

And um we got as close as we could, and then we also weighted the final survey results by generation and geography.

Next slide.

We wanted to ask the survey um that you know, ask the community budget questions in several different ways to provide the the maximum amount of tools for you and for the community for the CBJ.

So the first question that we asked, we we took 20 different elements of the budget that are all known to be incredibly important.

Everyone agrees they're incredibly important, and we said you can only pick your top four or five.

Um someone said I had to leave off choices.

I strongly support to keep my list short.

And I think that that encapsulates this very well.

It was a forced prioritization exercise.

Next slide.

Like I said, everyone got a chance to pick four or five of their favorite items.

Next slide.

And we're just gonna zoom in on the top 10.

So, in terms of the the top, the very top items, we saw that um people, the the number one choice was streets, roads, bridges, and winter maintenance.

That was followed by schools, K through 12 education support, number two, followed by public safety.

Number four was water, wastewater, stormwater, and solid waste.

So, really just the core um elements that that the municipality provides.

The community said these are the things that we do not want to cut.

This was the do not want to cut question.

We found some interesting different distinctions among generational groups.

Um, while most chose um streets, roads, bridges, we did um see that um millennials, their number one priority was K through 12 school education, public education for um those are our greatest generation of those 80 and older and the silent generation.

Um their number one priority was Bartlett Regional Hospital and Healthcare.

And for um Generation Z and Generation Alpha, those in their teens and 20s, their number one priority was recreation.

Rounding out the top 10 list, we also had trails, parks, and open green space, Juno International Airport, natural disaster response, mitigation and preparedness and libraries, museums, arts and culture.

Next slide.

We do have lots of tables in this report.

And so you can go and really look at that subgroup analysis.

Next slide, please.

So then we asked the same question the opposite way.

Instead of saying, what are the things that you do not touch?

Please do not touch these elements.

We took the same list of 20 items and we said, you know, if we had to, if there is a budget gap and you're required to, which are the elements of the budget that you that you would consider cutting first if you were required.

A member of the public said it's almost impossible to pick all seem like priorities.

And I think that that encapsulates it well.

Again, this is a force prioritization exercise.

Nobody is saying that these elements are not important.

We've had many surveys and studies showing that all of these things are important to the Juno public.

Next slide.

So again, everyone had the same list of 20 items and was asked to pick their top four or five items.

Next slide.

And so when we look at the top items that came out of this, number one was tourism management, visitor infrastructure, followed by climate change and energy efficiency, followed by economic development and workforce support.

There was actually three elements on the on the top, the top lowest priorities or the 10 lowest priorities that also showed up on the top 10 highest priorities, which means these elements, um, recreation, libraries, museum, arts and culture, and trails, parks, and open green space, you know, choosing to make cuts there or choosing not to make cuts there will be controversial because there's a similar level of support or or some level of support on each of those top 10 lists.

Rounding out the top 10, we have housing and land use planning.

Um we mentioned recreation, we have homeless services, and then the two at the bottom, ports and harbors and social services.

Next slide.

So we came up with a list of um potential areas to increase the this, increase the city budget for CBJ.

And next slide, please.

And asked where people, you know, if if there was any revenue generation, potential taxes that the public felt comfortable with.

Um we asked this this question in a different way.

It was not a forced prioritization exercise.

We said um check all the boxes that you feel comfortable adding.

And so, you know, look at it as it's measured as a as a slightly different way.

There was two um revenue generation concepts that had more than 50% uh of um support by those responding to it.

Um one was looking at different ways to do property taxes, and the other was underperforming property fees.

One element here that jumped out to me.

Um, we we added a category there of um no increased taxes or fees.

Um I was curious how that would rate it.

It rated as is lower than I expected.

Um 22% of the public said they they don't want to um have any new or additional taxes or fees.

Next slide.

We wanted to then ask the question in a different way and really look through the lens of community values.

So let's go, let's leave the the actual budget um categories and budget items and really look at how people want the city of uh the city and borough of Juneau to be operated and put it through that lens.

Next slide.

So we did the same force prioritization exercise.

We came up with 15 different community value statements and and asked um, you know, which which of these the community wanted the you know, the assembly and staff to be to be thinking about when they go through the budget process and and leading the community.

Next slide.

There were five of these that um kind of rose a little bit to the top.

Um the the first one there had the most support of any item in this entire survey.

It is um making Juno a place where working age residents and young families can live, work, and stay long term as the number one priority that came out of this budget survey.

Um the second priority is delivering high quality core services, followed by a well maintained or well maintained public infrastructure, strong fiscal management and responsible budgeting and a little bit lower is expanding the availability of affordable and attainable housing across all income levels.

Next slide, please.

We wanted to just ask how the community felt about the CBJ overall.

Next slide.

So what we saw is that just about half of community residents, 45 say they feel positively about the City Emborough Juno, including 13% that feel very positive that have very positive feelings.

Um just under a third.

So 32% of the community said they have negative feelings, including 9% who say they have very negative feelings, and just about a quarter of the community led by our Gen Z surveyors say they um they're neutral.

They don't they don't have an opinion.

Next slide.

And finally, the the last area that we asked about was communication.

How do you prefer to learn about CBJ, um, whatever CBJ is up to, and how would you like to interact with CBJ?

Next slide.

And so um this was again check all that apply, not a force prioritization.

So at the very top is the CBJ website.

Um 65% of Juno residents like to um interact with the CBJ or find out what the CBG is up to through the website.

That's followed by um just over half of Juno residents that want notices sent by email.

Um 45% say they really enjoy online news organizations.

We have several of them here in Juno, followed by Facebook and radio.

Next slide.

And then um what I wanted to leave you with is the thoughts of um Juno residents.

Next slide.

We had a lot of thoughts.

We had um we had the opportunity for open-ended responses.

Um we had 6,000 open-ended responses that ended up in 2,000 words.

Um that's equivalent to the Juno, the community of Juno collaborative collaboratively writing Moby Dick.

Um we have 424 pages of comments.

Next slide.

And that really, I I just want to, you know, the this the report has been posted now.

And I just want to give you a quick navigational guide.

We tried to make it very simple.

Pages one through eight are a standalone summary.

You don't have to read the rest if you don't want to.

Pages nine through 39 are a deep analysis by subgroup for for people who really like diving into the details and the tables.

And then pages 40 through nearly 500 are the analysis and then every single comment that we got from the public that was fit to print.

Um we got rid of a few naughty words.

Um next slide.

And that is your nine-minute summary of the Juno budget report, but I am available um with any questions you might have.

Thank you for that.

That was great.

Um, Mr.

Kelly, them as well.

Thank you.

Something I found curious was one of the responses for new revenue, especially considering that Prop one seems to do exactly the opposite of what the first one is.

So I'm kind of if my memory is right, the the first choice was reforming property tax code.

And we just, of course, through a charter amendments are have a capped mill rate.

Are you able to make any sense of that?

You know, so the the example that we gave, we we put some examples on there, and you know, maybe we shouldn't have.

Um, but the example that we put on there was to structure the rate so that um, you know, for example, look at look at structuring the rate and in different ways.

Um, we looked at a Jackson Hole um property tax where there is a um lower base rate for or there is a higher base rate, and then residents um who are um year-round residents get to get a discount on that um rate.

So that there's there's some type of different rates for people who are using homes and your year-round um long-term residential.

So um maybe and and we didn't ask um, you know, the why in those cases.

There was an other box there.

Um you know, sometimes people use the other box to explain why.

So I don't know, but it may have had to do with the particular wording of that um that option.

Ms.

Wall.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

And it thank you, Miss Shivans and our whole communication team for this effort.

It was really impressive.

And you know, although like the survey, maybe there weren't like surprises or it won't make any of our decisions easier.

It was really clarifying for me to see it all laid out that way and the amount of outreach that went out to get them any responses is just like something we've never done before.

So really appreciate it.

Um and we'll be continuing to pour over this.

Um of the things I appreciated about what you did was you know, looking at the demographics and you know, waiting the final answers by, you know, if we knew we didn't get quite all the valley representatives that you know, we need to be represented to the community.

There was waiting there.

Um I I did notice that you know you asked about income level and how people experience it, which was not something that you can wait by, which was explained.

Uh you know, I walk into reading any survey or any kind of public input with you know assumption that people with more resources are going to have more access to participate in these things, you know.

If we can't wait by that, is it a fair assumption when I read this that you know it's it's when it comes to income, we're not representative of our community, and we we kind of have to filter the results, and that is not a critique of the survey, it's just kind of a reality.

Is that a fair filter for me as I look at it?

You know, I tried to do some side analysis on this.

So I looked at so what what um assemblymember Wall is talking about is we asked people, do you feel like you are low income, middle income, or high income?

We didn't put numbers with it because that is extremely complicated to survey because I do survey that for other clients.

Um and um, but I but I also spent some time looking at how how close are we getting, and I think and I I um I I think we were like seven percent said that they were low income and seven percent of the community of Juno is below poverty.

So potentially um that is an alignment.

I I you know, not necessarily.

Um I was surprised by how many people thought they the percentage of people who said that they felt that they were high income.

I thought that that was a win for the community um in a way that that sense of of being higher income.

Um it it's yeah, we we don't have a uh mathematical way of measuring how close we are on the low income.

I I think if we do this again, I would like to offer some better prizes to try to um bring in some people that might be motivated by by prizes.

Um but you know, I I think we did I think with the waiting, um, I think we get most of the way there.

Anything further?

So you've done a lot of these.

Were you surprised by any of the results?

Um, you know, I I was really delighted with how um people answered the the the survey overall, how how they use the survey instrument.

Um the responses came in just people used the tool just as had been intended.

And so I was I was delighted by that.

Was I surprised?

There was a couple things I was surprised by.

I think I think I mentioned them, you know, I I was expecting a higher percentage of people to say that they don't want any taxes or no new taxes at all, um, or no raise taxes.

So that came in lower than I was expecting.

But overall, I you know I've I've used this type of tool in this way across um many different projects and clients, and and it I I find it to be incredibly useful and a very also just very useful to present to to people and then to use later as a tool.

Um, and I I feel like I feel like we got there.

Uh thank you.

Any last questions, Mr.

Brooks?

Thank you.

Uh I can't recall if it was on the uh the uh uh the extra revenue page or not, but there was a 17% other.

Can you tell me what page out of the 500 that those other might be on?

Yes.

There is um it's actually in the table of contents.

So um if you go to the table of contents, um the property.

We have um so I have to take my glasses off for this one though.

Um so for um revenue generation, it's page 426.

Other thank you.

We tried to make it very easy to navigate.

So thank you for letting me point that out.

Um go ahead, manager.

Madame Mirror I just want to note for the listening public that we did issue a press release that has a link to this survey.

It's also on uh the community compass website that's Juno.org/slash community compass.

Um, and so the listing public, it's of course also published in our packet, but just want to give the listening public where they can navigate to find the full report.

Okay, and just so we don't get there, it's we have five minutes left.

So Mr.

Kelly, will you extend us just for 10 minutes?

Because there was a couple hands up.

Thank you.

I move to suspend the rules by extending us for an additional 10 minutes.

Yeah.

Until 10 10 p.m.

and ask for unanimous consent.

Any objection?

Okay, seeing then we have Ms.

Wall and Ms.

Adkisson.

And Ms.

Hull.

Um, thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um the tourism, you know, I think one of the the top priorities for budget cuts was tourism management and tourism infrastructure or something like that.

Reading the summary analysis, it seemed like I think you could read that title two ways.

You could say people don't want us managing the industry.

They want the industry to have free reign in the community and do whatever they want.

And we're not going to manage the impacts, or it could mean we don't want you supporting, you know, and growing the industry.

I got a sense from the comments that that one was what made that to the top of the list, or was it a bit of a combo of both?

Okay.

So, you know, on on those particular questions again, I I didn't there wasn't a spot afterwards where we asked um why did you vote the way that you voted?

So on one hand, I I I you know, from from a um totality perspective, I I don't know.

I have talked to business leaders in the tourism sector who said I voted for tourism.

Yeah, like the the private sector is uh is is uh funding it and I you know and also that we have the head tax dollars that are going towards the things like Seawalk that that was previously discussed, and so there doesn't need to um potentially be much funding outside of that.

I I don't think there is much funding outside of that.

And so you know, my impression when I looked at the elements that had the highest um or I guess the lowest priority, um the highest priority for um maybe being available to cut is that they were um they were elements of the budget that had a smaller price tag, and so therefore they're going to have a smaller impact.

And and people picked the uh the elements that might have a smaller price tag and therefore a smaller impact on on the Juno community as a whole.

That all right, Ms.

Hall.

Okay, Madam Mayor.

I certainly appreciate this.

Um both of you, it's just wonderful the amount of work and the speed.

And um, you know, for future surveys, I the the voice I'm not seeing is those of our shelter residents and you know, like aware and St.

Vincent's and Glory Hall and the cold weather shelter.

So, you know, they're they're kind of hidden.

And and as well, noticing that the social services were like, oh yeah, cut those.

It's like, do people even know what they're talking about?

So um, yeah, that that's just something to maybe consider going into low-income housing projects, screening park, um, you know, just some ideas.

So thank you.

Ms.

Heimigner, you had a so you have to find a mic somewhere.

Since that was an outreach question, I did want to share that we did reach out to aware in St.

Vincent de Paul and a number of community organizations, um, several of which share that they did share the survey with their um stakeholders.

Um we but I would agree I don't I I didn't feel particularly reflective in the survey, but we did make sure to make that outreach.

Good anything further.

All right, seeing nothing further again.

Thank you, ladies, for all your hard work.

I think we'll be able to use this and uh well, we should probably give the clap of hands.

Anything further, Madam Manager?

Anything further, assembly?

Seeing nothing, we are adjourned.