I just have to just make a lot of problems.

Yeah, but like what's a possibility.

I think that's how we make it around.

I call the Assembly Committee the whole to order March sixteenth, twenty twenty-six at six oh seven PM.

Miss Adkison, would you lead us in the land acknowledgement, please?

Yes, Mr.

Chair.

We would like to acknowledge the city and borough of Dunos on Clingate Land and wish to honor the indigenous people of this land.

For more than ten thousand 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 honor the culture, traditions, and resilience of the Klingon people.

The intent would be to pass a year-round funding, but you would see the remainder of the year that is not normally funded, July 1 through October 15 in your FY27 budget.

If you pass this, there's been some confusion on that point.

So I wanted to be clear.

And we would anticipate that a total funding cost for year-round operations of the emergency shelter at Thane would be about 1.1 million dollars.

That includes contractual cost, which is most of it, as well as a more smaller amount for facility maintenance and repairs.

As you're well familiar, uh Juno and Anchorage lead the state in the amount of permanent supportive transitional housing and rapid recovery beds that we provide for our residents, however, who are in need.

However, that existing number of units that we we provide doesn't quite meet the need.

Along with the fact that we have a small proportion, small portion of our on-house population that isn't yet able to succeed in non-congregate sheltering.

Thus, thus the need for emergency shelter services of both ours and those provided by the Glory Hall.

You are familiar with the dispersed camping model that we had in place last year following the challenges we had with uh summer campgrounds uh in years past.

Uh dispersed camping really, we we think uh and our partners tell us really is a solution of last resort.

We've certainly considered uh bringing you proposals to operate uh the cold weather shelter year-round in prior years, but haven't been able to do that due to staffing capacity uh of our social service partners.

Our current partner, St.

Vincent's uh St.

Vincent DePaul that operates the warming shelter uh is this year able, they believe it's always tenuous, right?

But this year um they're they're they've brought us a proposal that would allow uh for a year-round operations.

And so that's why you have that in front of you tonight.

Um the one uh kind of additional additional point that I'll make is that um in in meeting with our partners, uh, which we've been doing all winter, uh, in addition to a handful of assembly members participating in those meetings from time to time.

Uh one one point was repeated and I think supported by the that partner agency group uh in that in order for emergency shelter operations to be successful over the summer months, we will have to take a different approach to dispersed camping enforcement.

So code on the books right now doesn't permit camping in most public spaces for longer than 48 hours at a time.

Uh, and and after that enforcement uh per code occurs.

We relaxed enforcement on that in the past due to not having adequate shelter space for um these residents to go to.

Uh, but we we we do believe and our partners agree that uh in order for an emergency shelter over the summer months to be successful, we would have to uh enforce code as as written.

Again, dependent upon our ability to continue to provide uh a warm, safe uh space for people to be overnight, uh, and uh relying on uh the Glory Hall.

It's another key partner in this space to provide day services uh for those same and many other CPJ residents.

Um happy to take questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Barr.

Questions from the assembly.

I see Ms.

Wall, Ms.

Adkisson, and then Miss Hall.

Thank you, Chair Smith.

Um in your comment about you know enforce different enforcement being needed for this to be successful.

I mean I'm assuming you mean people aren't going to go unless they're forced to.

Is that what you're saying, or do we know?

I mean, do we know that people aren't going to use it on their own, or maybe you can clarify that statement.

Yeah, we we um we believe that there will be a significant uh portion of the population that is using the shelter right now that would choose not to use the shelter and would prefer to camp when the weather permits.

Ms.

Edkison.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, so just wondering how this enforcement sort of thing would work.

Uh I know in the past we've had you know shuttles go around at you know, certain routes and that kind of thing.

Is that something where JPD could bring call the shuttle to come pick someone up at a certain location?

Would they have to go to specific areas of town to catch the shuttle?

Thank you through the chair.

Um I'll tackle that in two separate paths.

So first, there's the transportation element of getting to and from the shelter every day.

Those services would continue.