I call the March eighteenth Special Assembly Finance Committee joint meetings with Doxon Harbor Board and Junior School District Board to order.

Ms.

Wendell, you note the role.

That brings us to approval of minutes.

You have the February 25th, 2026, Assembly Finance Committee meeting, minutes.

Any changes to those minutes.

Seeing none, those are so moved.

That brings us to agenda topics, and we will I will be handing the gavel um to Mayor Weldon for the joint meeting with the Docks and Harbors Board.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And we are co-chairing there with uh Dox and Harbor Board Chair, Mr.

Souter.

So we will start with introductions.

Chair Suter.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, my name is Shim Suter.

I'm the board chairman.

Been on the Docks and Harbors Board for three years now.

Thank you.

Uh thank you for that.

Um Beth Weldon, the mayor.

Mr.

Smith.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Good to see you all.

Thanks for your service and work.

Greg Smith, Deputy Mayor.

Good evening, everybody.

I'm Jim Becker.

I'm on my last term of the board.

Hi, everybody.

Christine Wall.

Um, I am in my sixth year on the June assembly.

Um, big user of our docks and our harbors.

And Ed Smith, I'm in my uh last three years on the uh harbor board.

Maureen Hall's second year of first term, and welcome to everyone.

Paul Kelly, third year on the Juno Assembly.

Uh Nicholas Orr, I think I'm in year number two or three on the Docks and Harbors Board.

Neil Stanger, and I'm in my second year on the Juneau Assembly.

I am oh, I have to let go.

I'm Matt Later.

Uh it's my second term on the Docks and Harbors Board.

Nano Brooks, first year assembly member.

Thank you, everyone, for being here with us.

Uh Clayton Hamilton, Harbor Board.

I'm a local fisherman.

Tyler Emerson, first term on the harbor board as well, also a fisherman.

Uh Matt Cresswell, Harbor Master.

I'm here tonight.

Uh, Mr.

Yukatil is out of town and could not join us, but he is on virtually.

So we do have Mr.

Utill present if we need him.

Robert Barrett, Deputy City Manager.

Good to see you all.

Adrian Wendell, budget manager.

Um, and before we uh introduce everybody else, let's go online and starting with any assembly members and Docks and Harbors before we go to Mr.

Youcatel.

All right, I'm Ella Akison.

This is my third year on the assembly.

We have in the room from Dox and Harbors, Ms.

Leah Naram, who is our administrative officer, and Mr.

Jeremy Norburn, who is the deputy harbormaster.

I think we have somebody else from Dox and Harbor on the line.

Mr.

Mark Ridge Ridgeway is online.

He's declined to be a panelist.

Oh, okay.

Um, Mr.

Youcatel, Board Director.

Good evening, Carly Kelly, Port Director.

All right, is there anybody we missed other than Miss Ms.

Becker in the audience?

Former assembly member and uh has an interest in the Dox and Harbors Board.

So with that, uh, we will go on to our budget presentation.

And I'm assuming I'm going to that with you, Mr.

Creswell or Mr.

You could tell.

Okay, Mr.

Creswell.

Okay.

Members of the assembly, Madam Mayor, thank you for having us here tonight, members of the board.

Good to see everybody.

Uh we'll go through our presentation for the Dox and Harbors FY27 budget.

Uh, just want to start off by thanking the assembly for the continued support of Dox and Harbors.

We have a very good relationship, and we look forward to continuing that along into the future.

So thanks for inviting us in to uh present our budget to you.

We've gone through our introductions of our uh board members.

Keep up with myself on the slides there.

Uh, only person I think not present, Mr.

Horshover.

Uh, he's in his first term on the board.

He couldn't be with us tonight, and believe Mr.

Ridgeway is attending virtually.

We'll start out.

Uh, as everybody knows, we're we're an enterprise department made up of two separate enterprises, the docks enterprise and the harbor enterprise under our docks enterprise.

I think everything downtown cruise ship type related.

That's our docks, and then our harbors is everything else, the small boat harbors, the launch ramps, the associated uplands, and everything that goes along with our our harbor operations.

We will start with our docks operations uh strong.

We we we are finishing up FY26 strong, looking for a uh strong FY27 year.

The big takeaways out of the slide on your screen is uh, of course, we always look down toward our toward our fund balance and uh but first looking at our expenditures and revenues.

You will see that once again our uh revenues exceed our expenditures.

So we operate in the black and we are looking at a contribution of around $692,000 in FY27 to our fund balance for the remaining of FY26.

We'll be making a 1.719 million uh contribution to our fund balance.

So at the end of uh FY26, we're looking right at $4 million in our docks fund balance, and that'll be increasing to 4.64 or 4.65 at the end of FY27.

Bottom line uh on the staffing, 19.74 FTEs.

We'll uh get into that a little bit in the slide.

There's one one hundredth of a change, and that was just due to some reprogramming of part-time limiteds at the port to allow us to uh better respond to the ever-changing staffing and security needs of uh cruise ship docks and how we we we evolve every year for how we're handling uh cruise ship security operations, and that does require it's not a set it and forget it type thing.

We have to look uh Mr.

Hinton, who manages the port for us, has to look at that every year and figure out what will uh what his best option is for hiring, recruiting, hiring, and retaining staff.

And we realized this year that we had a need for a little bit more continuous coverage.

So we reprogrammed a few part-time limited positions into a benefited seven-month harbor officer position, and that gives us a little uh a little better overall leadership down at the port and some of the off hours by adding that harbor officer position.

Uh we talked about the uh FTEs.

One thing you may notice in here is the in the uh increase in fund balance, and see that next year's a little less than half of what we contributed this year.

Uh, as you all know, the assembly passed the new dockage fees for the cruise ship, going from the way we always charged before with the the price per foot.

Now we're charging the lower birth rate.

So that was a substantial increase, nearly a doubling of uh revenue for the docks enterprise.

And that for the remaining three months of FY26, that money will be going into the docks and harbors account and fund balance, all of it.

So that's why there's a little bit of a delta this year, an increase above normal into fund balance.

And then starting in July, we will start with the uh revenue sharing or however we we want to go with it for where uh we're not gonna take all of that doubling of fees.

It is going to put us back around traditionally or a little below traditionally of what we had for uh increasing in fund balance.

But overall, we remain financially solvent in the docks enterprise.

Just a quick pie chart here.

You can see for our expenditures and docks, uh, personnel services is 32%, commodities and services 25%.

And then now with the new fee fee structure, 43% of those uh fees for docks will be going to general fund.

And then for the revenue side, 98% of all the docks enterprise revenue is made up for our charges for services.

So we're looking at a $5.8 million budget for the docks enterprise in FY27.

Just a nice little chart here.

Let me move the presenter box out of the way.

The big thing to the big takeaway on this one is you know that you can see our revenue in blue and our expense in red and taking away the COVID dip back in 2021, recovered in 22.

You can see where our revenues continue to exceed our expenses as they should be.

And then the green line is our fund balance and fund balance is a fluid thing.

We build it up, we use it for projects, and then we build it back up again.

So you can kind of see the history.

You can kind of tell where projects were as you look through that, where our fund balance went.

So, in summary, uh already talked about our new cruise ship revenue.

Uh, the way that's uh being handled through the assembly.

We're transferring 2.464 million from the docks enterprise to CBJ support.

Uh and in FY26, the docks enterprise was provided with 717,000 in marine passenger fees, which uh were used, which are used for for port operations.

And in 27, we will not be receiving that money.

FY27 already talked about the one 100th of a FTE increase, and that was just a reprogramming of positions.

Uh, we thought it was gonna be an absolute one for one, but it ended up being just very, very slightly off.

So there's a one one hundredth increase to our to our FTEs.

We're still working earnestly and staying with it, the cruise ship electrification for the cruise ship docks.

A L and P is is handling the the contracting with our engineering firm for for design.

That's a company called H3.

Uh, we anticipate by the fall having a 35% design.

Uh, we're meeting quite regularly with AL and P and working through this project.

So there'll be there'll be more to follow.

We're estimating at or above 60 million dollars right now for the dock electrification.

Uh we completed the $3 million statter phase 3D project, and it was a result of the transfer from docks enterprise to the harbor uh enterprise to complete that project.

And just one other thing of note.

Uh, we will be working in uh kind of marshaling the fireworks uh process for this year.

So there's a uh 100,000 dollar expenditure for we're anticipating for fireworks.

And we thank you for taking that on.

Before you get to harbors, let's see if there's questions on docks.

Who has any questions on docks?

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I was just curious if you could speak a little bit to the um uh investment revenue income.

Let me uh go to the beak presentation here actually so I can see it.

And let me find the line.

So I've got Miss Naram back here, and this is where I phone a friend um for the exact language or Mr.

You could tell.

Um, I know that you know we have money and fund balance that gains interest, and uh that's my understanding of that's I think that's all that it's made up of just our fund balance.

I don't think there's anything going on uh more than just our fund balance and the the interest it gains, but I will gladly ask Mr.

You could t or uh Miss Naram if I'm correct.

Mr.

Creswell, you're correct.

And if you need more information, um Adrian could probably weigh in, but that's that's just interest on our fund balance.

Thank you, Mr.

You can tell chiming in.

You were a good phone a friend.

Anything further?

Um Mr.

Smith and then Ms.

Wall.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you, Mr.

Crestwell.

Uh seeing that you there's currently no support from marine passenger fees.

I believe in the past, those some of those funds were used for maintenance and security and things at CBJ docks.

Now are those costs being covered using doc the you know, dockage fees, which were as you mentioned, increased.

Thank you, Mr.

Smith.

So it's if we go back to the uh summary page here, part of the uh essentially we're down 2.464 million dollars, and we're not getting the marine passenger fees.

So we're still even with those amounts.

We're operating in the black.

We just will we're having to cover those costs out of the docks budget, and it essentially just means we will not have the same money we've had before to complete projects and uh or the other larger expenditures.

Thank you.

Ms.

Wall.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um you know, transferring um funds from your dock enterprise to your harbor enterprise for centter harbor.

Um, do you do you all have like criteria that you need to use to be able to make that transfer or kind of can you explain why that in what situations you all um choose to do to move money between the two?

Thank you for that.

And yes, we do.

We have uh it's not our when we're looking at transferring money out of docks into harbors, it's not nearly as stringent as we look and the lens we look at marine passenger fees with.

However, it needs to have you know the way we see it as we operate currently, it needs to have a nexus to the uh tourist operations.

Anything further?

All right, carrying on.

Great.

Okay, we'll move on to harbors.

Let me move this pesky little box out of the way again.

I'm just gonna minimize it.

There we go.

Okay.

Start off again with uh the Harbors Enterprise remains financially solvent and strong.

Uh it's our harbor operations seem to get bigger and better every year.

Um, we continue to be able to search for grant funding and use available fund balance to match grants.

And thanks to the assembly for uh some one percent sales tax money that's been provided.

We've been able to complete a lot over the last several years.

And I just kind of wanted to highlight that that uh our harbors enterprise is thriving.

Uh going down to the bottom, FTEs.

That's the first thing I always look at.

That's remaining the same.

Uh-oh.

Not my computer.

I'm not quite used to it.

Uh so FTEs remain the same.

Revenues continue to uh outpace expenditures for FY26.

We're looking at uh 7.15 of uh revenues and in the same breath that I just talked about expenditures.

The reason you see expenditures high there is because of support to capital projects out of our fund balance, and that's why why you see that there.

But uh the overall our revenues are exceeding our expenditures.

Uh down on the uh fund balance line, you will see a decrease in fund balance of 880,000 for 27 and 1.917 for the remainder of FY26.

Takes our fund balance down to 1.204, and that is simply a result of all these projects that we're doing.

We build our fund balance to be able to do them, and then we pull from it when we need to complete the projects.

So harbors is a little more intricate than dots for sources of uh revenue and expenses, expenditures, personnel services is of course people are most expensive asset, 40% of that.

Uh commodities and services make up 34%, capital projects 29%, and then service on on debt is 7%.

And that's uh back from I believe it's the 2005 Harris Harbor rebuild that we don't have much longer left to pay off in that few years, I believe, and that one gets paid off for revenue.

Primarily charges for services is 72%.

Uh rentals 18% permits, income interest, uh state shared revenue up.

That's the uh raw fish tax that historically has been uh allocated to docks and harbors and beginning in FY26.

We will no longer be receiving that raw state shared revenue or raw fish tax, and that averaged anywhere from I'd say 250 to 450,000 per year, but we will not be receiving that in revenue this year.

So that's a bit of a hit.

But overall, we've got a 7.7 million dollar budget for the harbors.

Same thing with uh revenues versus expenditures in this chart, still exceeding the fund balance.

Same story as docks.

We we build and we use and we build and we use.

So that's the story behind this chart.

Uh already talked about revenue remaining strong.

We did have, we are looking at some unbudgeted expenses this year.

Um, there's not a person in this room that doesn't know all too well what we've dealt with this winter, especially my staff.

Um fishing vessel Julianne that sank in uh Aurora Harbor that you know good job to uh handsome marine.

It came up last weekend and uh it's on its way to sick in tow now, may have made it already, not sure.

So that was around 150,000 unexpected uh expense to docks and harbors.

We're still working through uh whether we can recoup any of those costs or not, whether that be through the owner or through insurance proceeds if if authorized right now, actually last week we were up to 258,000 in snow removal expenses for the winter.

It's still snowing, so that number will change.

Um anybody that drives by Aurora Harbor can see all the great work that's been done in there.

That's phase four is nearly complete.

Major milestone.

We started rebuilding Aurora Harbor, I believe it was 2013, and uh it's been four phases to get that done.

We know that a lot of times we're better off phasing projects so we can capitalize on the special harbor projects because our primary uh source of funding other than our revenue is the state municipal harbor matching grant program, and that has a five million dollar maximum on it.

So we're trying to number one, we're trying to raise that up to seven and a half million dollars.

Um that's a uh a real number based on the 06 uh when that program was established.

We're showing that should be about 7.53 million.

So we uh through the Alaska Association of Harbor Masters, we're uh working hard with the legislators to get that raised up for a uh a maximum award of 7.5 million.

So all that to say $10 million projects are are a lot are kind of a shot for us a lot of times to be able to maximize that harbor grant and everything, especially in the harbors enterprise.

We try to do, we we try to do it with with other funds and anything available.

And uh, Mr.

You could tell is great about uh looking for all these grants and get and getting these things done for us.

So phase four, it's been a uh 12 year job to get Aurora Harbor rebuild, and that's the final phase of rebuilding Aurora Harbor.

We look for occupancy no later than May 1st of this year.

So that'll be that'll be nice to have Aurora Harbor all done.

We received a uh a MARAD grant for the uh new drive-down float at uh Aurora Harbor.

That's very similar to the one out past Alaska Glacier Seafoods, what we call the bay loading facilities, just a little bit smaller, not a whole lot, but uh it'll be very beneficial to our commercial fishermen and and users in the downtown area that need to load things on the boats and have trucks show up and offload catch or offload gear.

Um we're we're really excited about that project, and we were very excited to get a grant for the for the vast majority of it.

Um, and then for our cost share on that, we uh we applied for state harbor matching grant and we're able to, we were successful.

And I believe it was one one or one point two million dollars we got out of that that decreased our burden on that project too.

So that was a success.

And we continue to pursue a new Aurora Harbor office.

Anyone that's been in the office in Aurora Harbor knows it was a garage and it was repurposed and walled in many, many years ago.

And uh it's essentially falling apart.

So we're uh we're looking at how we can be more efficient and combine some offices and maybe put the port director's office in ours all in one and have a new office there in Aurora Harbor.

Uh we are anticipating an increase in land lease revenue due to the potential Hunototem title and lease.

So that'll be that'll be a great, great addition to our uh our fund balance, thinking roughly 287,000.

That'll come to us.

While we're still on harbors, do we have any questions on harbors before we move into just general presentation?

Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

I was noticing back in the um on the slide about the kind of the overview of the adopted and proposed and projected budgets that we are projecting no state shared revenue this coming fiscal year.

Could you explain?

Thank you, Mr.

Kelly.

The uh state shared revenue is uh we call it raw fish tax, but what that is is that it's that's a tax on any value added seafood processed within the borough.

Uh so think, you know, AGS, TACU, the fish that comes into there.

There's a state tax on that.

That's then returned to the municipality.

And historically that had been shared with docks and harbors, and it does not look like it's going to be shared.

It looks like it's going to general fund this year instead of docks and harbors.

I have a question while we wait for other people to have questions.

I'm curious on your rates.

How are they doing?

Um people accepted them, or we need to raise them in anywhere, lower them in anywhere.

Did we do a good job?

Or where are we with the rates?

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Uh you talk to anybody in our department that wants to do more and have more and make things look better.

We'll always say we need our rates higher.

It's not the truth.

We we we think right now our rates are fairly in close to the ballpark of where they need to be.

And I don't want to speak more to that because I have faults, but they're not formulated well enough to think about.

But I think we're doing, we're we're doing solid on our rates.

We increased them, let's see, three and a half years ago, I believe is when the rate increase was passed.

This year is our final, our biggest rate that increased was our our mortgage and primarily our monthly mortage.

And it was a 9% increase.

But what we did to to kind of ease that in is we phased that over three years.

It was 3%, 3%, 2.8%.

And uh, so this is our final year.

We've got the 2.8% increase in there.

And we still do adjust all of our rates by CPI each year.

Now that we kind of think that we're set where we need to be on our rates, we uh keep that CPI adjustment.

I believe that was 2.1% this year.

So we're at least staying on a flat line coming up with the cost of of other goods.

A couple of rates that we've we have changed a bit.

We we were having a lot of trouble with uninsured vessels and derelict vessels sinking.

We created a new fee structure for uh uninsured vessel surcharge that right now is set at $1.50 per foot if you're an uninsured vessel.

Uh we look to collect a little over 100,000 from this from that this year, and the way we wrote the language as this is a minimum of a dollar per foot, a maximum of three dollars per $3 per foot to be uh evaluated each year after the first of the year by the Dox and Harbor staff and pushed to the board, and that rate will be set each year at a rate not to exceed 20% of actual vessel disposal costs.

So we uh have had a lot of sunken vessels this year, and several of those were uninsured.

So we're waiting on a few more invoices to figure out where we're at with uh what it actually costs us to get rid of several boats.

Yeah, that was gonna be my next question.

The follow-up was is it enough to pay for the boats that were sinking?

TBD.

Ms.

Wall.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um the Junototem land lease revenue.

Is that built into your FY27 budget or and when does that kick in in your budget?

Are you or we just waiting for that?

I'm gonna uh uh exercise my right to phone a friend here and ask Mr.

You could tell.

Mr.

You could tell.

Yeah, through the chair.

So um it is loaded into the FY27 budget.

But we're it hasn't been signed yet between the two parties through the manager's office and Junatotum, but we're we're anticipating that it will be anything further, Mr.

Smith.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um I I think Mr.

Crosley, you said it, and I have a lot of faith and trust in you and Mr.

Eucatel and the board.

I just want to ask, and that's you know, I see a kind of a continual anyway.

There are continual negative fund balances for not negative fund balances, excuse me, but um, you know, a declining fund a declining fund balance through the years.

I just want to ask straight up.

The reason that there is your I will just say in deficit is due to your capital spending.

It is not due to an operational deficit.

Just wonder through the chair.

Uh Ms.

Smith, you're absolutely correct.

Our uh our standard revenues well exceed expenses.

It's the uh the the pulling from the fund balances projects come up.

Okay, thank you.

And my last question, because I wasn't following it.

Where did we end up with the gold belt leases?

Those weird little triangular pieces by sorry.

Thank you.

He's wincing.

Sorry.

It was a lot of effort for a tiny piece of property, right?

Uh alas, Miss Nair, we we talk about this all the time.

I just can't remember exactly where we are in the process.

Is that done or is that?

Oh, we're talking about the office over here.

I was thinking about C drone.

Gotcha.

Yeah, I can speak to that.

Okay.

I'm sorry, I could probably call it the wrong name.

Sorry, I had another piece on the C.

All right.

Any further questions?

Okay, does the board have anything they want to talk about?

Or does any well we're opening it up to any topics?

Ms.

Hall.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, the fees paid to other city departments.

Did we talk about this side?

Okay, that's okay.

So I I thought.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were done.

Yeah.

Only a couple more, Madam Mayor.

Thank you.

So just to finish up real quick and wrap this all up.

This is just one we we like to have uh from FY13 to FY26.

This is our food we fees paid to other departments.

Uh down here in the gray is just our interdepartmental fees.

That's our uh our support for HR payroll, all the other city hall functions.

But what I want to bring everybody's attention to here is the light blue.

That is our insurance line.

And you can see where we stayed fairly steady on insurance up through FY22.

Um, and that was sitting right around 258,000.

But since FY22, our insurance rates have have tripled to 757,000.

So that is a substantial increase to our budget, is that that high insurance rate?

So just it's something we something we track and we you know, we we look at where that money could be if we weren't paying such high insurance rates, but we know that insurance is insurance and it costs what it costs.

We track it too.

Yeah, I am 100% sure everybody is.

Um, so just a quick quick capital improvement projects.

Aurora Harbor looking for substantial completion of phase four, looking to recapitalize the uh Aurora Harbor Office, establishing a CIP and FY27 and already talked about the drive-down float.

Downtown waterfront improvements.

We're working on the electrification study.

We are really looking forward to hopefully being able to uh get design done on the new bathrooms and waiting area down in uh vicinity of Pratrovich Plaza and get that construction completed next winter.

Uh we are uh currently looking to have a uh contractor come in and evaluate the structural condition of the timber piling under the Alaska steamship wharf.

That's uh getting a little long in the tooth and just a tad bit old.

So we're starting to need to think about recapitalization of that area.

Uh and then we have marine passenger fees from last year that we are adding a new comprehensive camera system to the seawalk and docks for security down on the cruise ship docks.

Uh Statter Harbor, we continue to work with Corps of Engineers for the uh general investigation feasibility cost study for the uh Statter Harbor Breakwater.

I'm happy to report that that's moving along.

Uh we are on the hook for our part of the match, uh, three years, three million dollars, three alternatives.

So at a minimum, 1.5 million dollars is a docks and harbors contribution to that.

We were going to do a full geotechnical investigation in the vicinity of the project area.

Uh the core has recently come back and said they don't need the uh full geotech, um, which is good because it's going to save a ton of money.

And instead, we're just going to conduct two penetrometer tests in uh in the vicinity of the project area for the new Statter Harbor Breakwater.

Look to be complete with that uh study in September of 27.

So we're about halfway through the study now.

We're about 18 months into a 36 month study.

Phase 3D at Statter Harbor, which is the phase three is the whole passenger for higher loading area, but 3D is the paving, the lighting, the landscaping, and the baywalk uh around the area of the new parking lot, new bathrooms.

We'll be uh soon as the snow gets off, they'll be doing the final touches out there.

They got really nearly uh complete with that project before the snow started flying.

So that was great.

Uh Echo Cove.

We're looking to apply for a uh Pittman Robertson uh Hunter Access Grant to put a boarding float in out at Echo Cove to make it a little easier for people to launch and retrieve their boats and uh come in and out of Echo Cove.

We're gaining a little ground on potentially building a new uh launch ramp facility at the where the current uh North Douglas uh launch ramp is right now.

It's becoming more and more heavily used, and uh it's a very small facility and very hard to upkeep in its uh current condition.

We had to remove the docks every year, and so it's essentially a seasonal facility.

Taku Harbor, we received uh received grant funding to replace the uh the floats that run up to the shore from the uh from the float, the T float out at Taku Harbor and uh construction will begin here in the next couple of weeks on that.

Tracano construction will be heading down to install elevated trestles instead of floats that ground on the rocks at low tide.

So we're really excited about that one.

That's gonna look really nice and be a great improvement down at Taku Harbor.

And the final project I want to touch on real quick is down at the little rock dump.

We have that that property.

We're always getting asked if we could do something for secured storage, primarily for our commercial users, commercial fishermen.

And so we worked with uh worked with consultant.

We were able to design uh roughly, I believe it's a little over half an acre, maybe an acre.

It'll be fenced, uh improved pad fence.

We'll have some connex boxes in there.

It's just gonna be a simple secure storage area, nothing fancy about it, but it's gonna give our give our users a place to actually be able to store some gear.

And uh we're looking forward to that project, and we look to have that done later in the summer.

Significant expenditures.

We talked about the wave attenuator.

So that project after we get done with the general investigation, then we'll move into the we'll have the preferred alternatives and we'll start looking at construction.

We're just anticipating potentially 100 million dollar project, which will be 8020.

So we'll be on the hook for 20 million dollars of that project if it is 100.

North Douglas Launch Ramp, that's potentially a 30 million dollar project.

And we're gonna be working hard for grant funding to uh decrease our liability, financial liability on that one, assuming 10 million.

New Aurora Harbor Office building, assuming that's all on us, 5 million purchase fishermen's terminal memorial fisherman terminal property.

That could potentially be a uh 10 million dollar uh burden.

That's the area uh between Aurora and Harris Harbor.

Uh dock electrification, 60 million, recapitalization of the steamship timber dock, 30 million.

So a lot of these are can be passenger fee funded, but that's just wanted to give everybody kind of an idea of what we're looking at long term.

And then we talked about with the new fee structure and how that's all working.

The 450,000 fit raw fish tax, two and a half million of dockage fees and 717,000 of marine passenger fees.

Looks to be a diversion of the general fund from from the uh Dox and Harbors Enterprise of 3.67 million dollars this year.

And that's it.

I'll take any questions.

Who has questions?

Mr.

Ms.

Wall and Mr.

Smith.

Um, thank you.

Uh Madam Mary, we'll have some questions for the board on some of the aspect.

One more for you, Mr.

Creswell.

Um, the Fish Sherman terminal property.

Um, you know, I've been following that since I was on the assembly.

There's we we would love it.

No one has wanted to give it, sell it to us.

Is that we're this is a new number for me.

Do we do we think we have an interested seller or you know, are we just holding on to that idea of that money for someday?

Thank you.

So we as Doxon Harbors would love to have that property.

We think it's vital to our continued operations.

It's a piece of property right there and right in between our two largest downtown harbors.

It houses a current boat yard, it's got uh uh uh crane dock out there, even though we're building new cranes down on the uh the new drive down float.

We we continue to think that it's in the best interest of the city to have that property that is in between kind of the the heartbeat of our downtown marine operations.

So we and we hard to say what the exact price is.

We just kind of put that in as a placeholder.

Follow up, but still not a willing seller.

Not this second, but there could discussions continue.

Mr.

Smith.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um just from what I know about the wave attenuator and its importance and the infrastructure it will replace now.

I guess I'm just wanted to 20 million is a large number.

I'm just kind of curious if you know what might be the thinking on the strategy to be able to um get to that, get to that number.

As far as uh excuse as far as how to fund that 20 million dollars.

Yep, the local match or whatever it is.

Yeah.

Um I'm not gonna put my foot in my mouth, and I'm gonna ask Mr.

Ucatil to opine on that.

Mr.

You could tell.

Uh, through the chair, Mr.

Smith.

Um, what we'd like to do is convince the legislature to increase the maximum um this will harbor grant to 7.5 million.

And so that this is floating breakwaters are an eligible expenditure under that program.

Um rock um breakwaters are not.

So we're lucky in that form.

But if we got seven and a half million from the state, and we're hoping that would be it might be one of the projects that we advance for the 1% sales tax initiative in 2027.

Um, so there's 15 million.

And um, we also think that this would be an eligible um port expenditure because it supports the uh whale watching fleet.

So that's roughly how we would um craft uh uh a local match with uh um the state dot um municipal harbor grant and uh dock funds and uh one percent sales tax.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

Uh on the graph for the fees paid to other city departments.

When it has like the breakdown there on the left is interdepartmental landscape building maintenance for the landscape building maintenance and fleet maintenance, is that to the CBJ departments that handle that?

Okay.

Yes, sir.

Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

On that same graph, uh you mentioned insurance is insurance.

I was just wondering if you might have had an explanation for why it's gone gone up so rapidly.

Is there additional property we're insuring?

Is it just rates or some combination of that?

Thank you, Mr.

Kelly.

We've been it's been explained to us many different ways.

It's insurance is a mystery to me, and I hear it a bunch of different ways, but we're here in the national market, the risk nationally due to repeated large natural disasters.

Um and docks and harbors has a lot of infrastructure by value.

Um, I forget the I remember sitting in an assembly presentation or something, and we're in the top three of the city for for value of infrastructure.

So it using that, yeah.

We we have a lot of uh a lot that needs to be insured.

So it's our risk is there, our exposure is there, and we have a lot of uh a lot of infrastructure that needs to be insured.

So I think I heard you correctly that uh phase four was the last of Aurora Harbor.

So I've been on the assembly just a little bit, and that has been a topic every year on our assembly, just so you know.

So I hope you put a little bit of money aside for a nice party when that is complete.

I'll talk with the port director.

Anything further?

Any questions?

Any any uh thoughts that we didn't cover from assembly members or board members, Mr.

Brooks of them as well.

Thank you, madam mayor.

And this is just uh kind of related to a meeting I had earlier today with uh the commission on sustainability.

They had some questions about um what the process is when ships get sunk and the environmental aspect of it.

So can you just speak on that a little bit, please?

Certainly, Mr.

Brooks.

So when we receive a report of a boat sinking or a boat sunk, staff responds.

Um during the day, it's a really quick response.

But it's not our own call or our security staff respond.

Uh we go down.

First thing we absolutely the first thing we look at is anybody potentially on board the vessel as a sank.

While you're doing that, we make sure power is secured to the vessel.

Once we determine that nobody's on board the vessel, then we start looking at potential pollution threats and infrastructure, potential damage to infrastructure.

Uh a lot of times boats sink and they're outboards and they aren't sheening much at all.

Sometimes there's a large sheen coming off boats.

Um, we look if we as the docks and harbor staff can take any initial mitigating action to keep pollution from spreading.

Unfortunately, this winter, when all those we lost 10 boats during that December-January storm.

And the crazy part was is they were sunk and it looked like a parking lot because the harbor was so iced over and there was so much snow on it.

Um, so it was hard to tell in that case a lot of times how much uh how much or if any uh pollution there was.

But what we're required to do and what we do is we initially we we immediately call the National Response Center, make a make a report, and then generally follow that call up with a call directly to Sector Juno with the Coast Guard um and then DEC, they come down, we assess the situation at the same time.

We're getting in touch with the owner.

We are finding out if it's an insured vessel or not.

Then we're finding out if the owner has the means to deal with the vessel or not, whether the insurance will cover the raising.

If there's no financial means and no responsible owner or there's an owner that doesn't have the means, the Coast Guard oftentimes will open the oil spill liability trust fund and pay for what that does is that gets rid of the pollution threat.

So if that means they need to raise the vessel and pump any oil or fuel off of it, they do it.

If they can do that in the case of the Julianne, that we call it federalizing a case.

Uh the Julianne, the big sander and Aurora, that was federalized, but it was more advantageous to the Coast Guard to pay divers to go down and sting the tanks underwater instead of paying for the full raising of the boat to remove the pollution.

Once the pollution's off the boat, then Coast Guard's uh responsibility is gone, and then it becomes the problem of the owner in docks and harbors.

Well thank you, Memory.

Do you mind if I ask a question of our board members here?

If that's what we're doing now.

Okay.

Um I wanted to bring up the revenue diversion here.

Um, you all are all the groups coming in front of the assembly have been very polite, um, knowing that the city is in a tough budget place, but um you know, in in the direction on the dockage fees and the marine passenger fees that that really came from the assembly.

We we we wanted the revenue from the docks to increase.

Um, so that we could cover those um expenses previously covered by marine passenger fees, and so that some of the funding could come back to the community.

Um, so I I feel solid about that direction and um was part of that discussion.

On the other hand, the Alaska fisheries business tax and the raw fish taxes, you know, I think coming from uh that diversion is coming from our manager who is taking direction from the assembly to try to fund try to find other revenue sources while the city's in a tight place.

Um I'm not necessarily convinced that you know that funding is um you know appropriate somewhere else than harbors.

And so while you all are here, I'd definitely be interested if there are board members who you know feel strongly about what that funding should be used for or what it would be used for if if we were to not make that diversion on the fish tax.

Mr.

Leiter.

Um thank you for that question.

And and um I said something very similar to L MS Anonymous Hall at one of our previous meetings.

Um the the fish tax from the harbors is in my mind a lot more difficult to stomach than the dock uh changes in revenue.

And and the reason I say that is because the dock um changes in revenue um a lot of the cruise ship tourism affects like a wide swath of the city.

And so I get it.

I get that we need to fund the hospitals that take care of those people.

I get that we need to, you know, figure out the sewers where their sewage is going, all of that it's less palatable to me.

Um removing that fish tax resume because we need functional harbors for the fishermen where that revenue is coming from.

Um and I'll I'll try to be uh very polite as well.

Um one of the the questions I have and the concerns I have is that we spent a lot of time and a lot of pain for our users to increase our fees so we could achieve the solvency that Mr.

Creswell has talked about and Mr.

Yukatel has talked about.

And it's um what I get concerned about is is you know, if we were in the red, would you be taking our money?

Not I shouldn't say our money, I'm I'm losing my politeness, but and and so we put this work in to really squeeze our users, and that's hard on the people who use that for their commercial life, and that's hard on our people who use that for the recreational life.

And so I'm I'm I don't want us to be penalized for being financially responsible, and that's what it feels like.

Thank you.

Mr.

Hamilton.

Thank you.

Um I'll just it is just me as a fisherman as a board member as a you know, Juno citizen.

Um Harbors is doing fine too, and we have been the whole time, even before the rate raise.

And you know, like this would be a little harder to stomach if we could show that we earmarked any of these funds, you know, like if the fish tax had been going to any specific facility that I use for years and years and years, then I might be upset.

But as it is, you know, there's no earmarked funds for anything.

Um like we're doing fine and we're making money.

So it doesn't really sting that much.

Just remember when you know we do need those cranes again, or you know, when the university does change its mind, you know, like you talked about that 10 million dollar fee, and like, my god, if we had to replace what's there at the fisherman's terminal, it'd be a lot more, you know, like to rebuild everything that's there, you know, like that's the only functional yard really.

Um yeah.

Yeah.

And this is out of line too, maybe off topic, I guess rather.

Out of line, whatever you choose.

Um the two funds aren't actually two funds.

It's all one big pot of money that we make a bunch of imaginary lines in.

Uh so you know, like there are questions about like how do we justify this or that, but you we're kind of making hurdles for ourselves with that in that regard.

Anybody else, Mr.

Emerson, you grab the mic.

Thank you.

Uh I just kind of echo Matt's sentiment.

Um I think, you know, as a commercial fisherman, you know, bringing fish in and delivering and the processors, you know, they're paying you know less money for the fish because they have to pay that tax.

And I I feel like it should benefit, you know, the the infrastructure that we're using and we're paying for.

I think the rate, you know, the rate increase.

I mean, people understand it, but if you bump up the rate and then at the same time, you know pulling that revenue out from that source.

I think I think it's harder for people to see the need.

Um so I'd kind of encourage you to look elsewhere, but I I understand the city's in a tough spot.

So and unfortunately those uh fees have no strings attached unlike your mortgage fees.

Um who else Mr.

Suter do you have anything to chat on today?

I would just ask that um we make sure that everything's covered that we need to keep the docks going and keep them updated.

Um the steamship wharf that's going to be a huge recapitalization project.

Um the Statter Harbor wave attenuator and then recapitalizing the entire float system out there afterwards right they're both in the same shape built about the same time.

So that project would be pretty difficult to phase as well just by the nature of the construction anchor stayed so there's some big things that are kind of floating around out there and uh I just I'd ask you guys to keep keep that up front when you're thinking in uh and making plans for stuff.

I think your port director reminds us of that often that's good.

Uh Ms Hall yeah regarding the fish tax revenue just one little point I'd like to make is um fishermen have children too in in our schools and and we are pinched pretty tight right now with um revenue for our schools and and uh so anyway I I know down in Oregon where I grew up the timber receipts you know they would often go towards the schools to help support that so um yeah just uh maybe take some of the sting out we're all in this together thank you go ahead Mr.

Smith thank you madam mayor um I do want to just say as being the docks and harbors liaison last year I definitely want to appreciate the work that this board does to really try to achieve I'll call it my maximum value for city public assets and land and things so I they are um I may not anyway I may not agree every time but I know that that is a value that they are going for and I I appreciate them fighting very very hard for that um I also know that they've seen them make decisions that were difficult in the face of you know like all the public testimony like we have to do was for a different you know a different way and they were like this is the right thing for this enterprise um and they you know did that that they took that action so I I want to acknowledge that um and I'll just say you know look looking at the at the budget um I I am looking and I I have to you know run the numbers in the map but um there's a lot of infrastructure there's you know some important improvements as well as just standard maintenance and um obviously we are in a we're in a uh a bit of a fiscal pinch at the city but I I don't want to have to because we're maybe not a lot you guys aren't generating enough you know you're not able to put enough aside to do your improvements that that will you know present a significant problem coming back to the community later so anyway I'm trying to you know pay attention to um do you have sufficient revenue to be able to reinvest in your infrastructure and and do those things so thank you anything else quiet crowd tonight Mr.

Orr you haven't spoken up yet I'm not putting you on the spot you don't have to say you you are yeah you you are putting me on the spot actually I thought Matt Later Ms Smith X right oh no I I think Matt Leiter put it great on the fish tax and I was just gonna let him I was like we don't need more comment emailed it that was pretty much it.

I mean I could put it in a way that's less tactful but I think we'll leave it with what Matt said always wise uh Ms.

Smith do you add anything while you have us here the list is long I was free to and you don't have to say anything I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot just my mother said if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all so I'm gonna just leave it at that thank you.

All right anybody online we haven't heard from anybody online you have anything Mr.

I lived in Juno most of my virtually all my life, except for the service.

And do a professional.

And I think being involved in the board, I see everything that has to be done.

And as far as I'm concerned, they're doing everything right.

They're very responsible.

And this winter is a good fit.

You know, we've got so much snow.

And they're taking care of business.

And I I'm glad to be I'm in my last term.

I'm glad to have been part of that.

And all your guys' time, because I know you put a lot of time in, and sometimes you have to deal with some pretty heated public.

So uh we appreciate you taking that on for us too.

But anybody else before we adjourn?

Um thank you for the kind words and uh Doctor Harbor's staff and board, and we we uh we enjoy working for the city and and enjoy bringing services to the public.

So um we'll keep we'll keep doing what we're doing and um take direction as we need direction.

But it's uh it's a pleasure and honor to to work for the city.

Thank you for that.

Okay, going once, going twice, seeing none, we'll give it back to uh well, actually, we're gonna take a break because we're gonna have another meeting here.

So let's take ten minutes.

Um, I understood their text went out for six thirty.

Is that correct?

Okay, well, we'll just uh there's uh snacks in the other room if anybody wants to grab some before we go.

And anyway, we'll take a break until we see some school boards.

We'll bring us back to session, and we are now with a joint meeting with the Genoa School District Board of Education.

So Madam President, we'll start with you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um Brittany Choney Haywood.

I'm currently serving as the board president.

And this is my third year of my first term.

Uh thank you, and um, I'm the mayor, and uh I've been a mayor for a long time.

Way too long.

Mr.

Smith.

Greg Smith, um, in the first year of my third term and honored to be deputy mayor.

Hi, uh Elizabeth Siddon, I'm in my third term, and I'm currently vice president of the board.

Hi, everybody.

Um Christine Wall.

I am in my sixth year on the assembly.

Hi everyone, Amber Fromherst.

This is my second term, and I'm the clerk.

I am Jenny Thomas.

I am in my first year of my first term.

Paul Kelly, third year first term.

Neil Steininger, I'm in my second year of my first term on the assembly.

Um, Steve Whitney and I started a long, long time ago, back when the mayor first started, and then I stopped and then I came back again, and so now this time I'm in my first year though, new first term.

Thank you, everyone for joining us today.

And now, Mr.

Hauser, you want to start with you, and we'll just go down the line.

Uh yeah, uh, Frank Houser, superintendent of the junior school district.

Nicole Herbert, Chief Financial Officer.

Robert Garrett, Deputy City Manager.

Adrian Wendell, budget manager.

And Ms.

Adkison, you want to chime in?

I mean, you did a great job for me already, but uh, I'm Ella Atkinson.

I'm in my third year.

All right, thank you.

Well, before Mr.

Or sorry, sorry, Superintendent Houser starts.

I do have a question.

What does the clerk of the school board do?

Usually second everything.

You gotta be on your toes.

So I understand.

Yes, you have to keep track of everything.

All right, with that, Superintendent Houser.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor and Assembly members, uh, members of the board.

Uh, thank you uh for providing us this opportunity.

Uh, we are going to do an uh overview of the FY27 proposed budget and the budget that was adopted uh by the board um in the final reading last week.

Uh for the FY27 budget process, uh, we started with a preliminary budget, which was a rollover budget created based on maintaining current programs and services.

It's important to note um that for that uh preliminary budget, it was unbalanced.

It had uh been adjusted for uh ADM or enrollment uh and pupil-teacher ratio.

So there was some adjustments to staffing based on the uh ADM and pupil teacher ratios when we brought that to the board, and it only included the operating fund.

We then transitioned to the proposed budget that was before the board.

Um, the board, of course, uh we were going through the budget uh input process, received a lot of budget input process in the FY27 um budget development process for the consideration as well as uh looking at adjustments to the state and borough funding based on known information at the time.

The proposed budget did require board approval.

Uh that proposed budget uh will be submitted to the assembly uh by the April 1st deadline.

It has to be balanced by state law and it will include all funds.

Ultimately, we will get to the adopted budget that was adopted by the board, and that adopted budget when it finally reached makes its way through the assembly two will go before the board.

Um, we'll go before the state board uh of education uh needs to be approved by the state by July 15th.

It will include all funds, and again, that has to be balanced.

This is just an overview of the budget development timeline.

Uh the board started the development process uh for the budget in January.

Uh there were um multiple meetings for the last few months.

We are now in March.

Of course, the budget is ready to be transmitted to the borough.

That is the um adoption, the adopted budget.

Um it will be transmitted to the borough, part of our conversation today in April.

Uh, hopefully the process will take place and the budget will be uh you know approved by the assembly as it moves forward.

And then, of course, by June, we will submit it to the uh this um to the state for uh before the July 15th deadline.

This is just a quick overview of the number of meetings that took place uh and input sessions from January to March.

The district did hold multiple public meetings on the FY27 budget through the development process.

In looking at the development of the uh budget uh and the proposed budget that um the board adopted, the um enrollment numbers for the junior school district uh are still projected to uh decline.

We're seeing approximately about uh one and a half to two percent reduction from the prior year.

The enrollment numbers looking for FY27 is 3,767, and you can see a breakdown of um traditional uh enrollment uh in our brick and mortar schools, charter schools, and correspondence programs.

As always, in the determination of the revenue coming into the district, it is all based on state funding, city funding, and a little bit we received from the federal government when looking at state funding uh per AADM.

Uh as you can see, this is the trend over the last decade for the base student allocation.

Uh I want to point out that back in uh 2025 for the fiscal year 2025, there was an additional of one-time funds of $680 to the base student allocation.

Um, in 2026 for the fiscal year 2026, the state did make permanent a BSA increase.

What's important to note is that increase that was permanently in the BSA was $700, only $20 more than what the um districts received in FY25.

Uh the $680 one-time fund uh for FY27 in the development of this budget.

Uh, we are anticipating a BSA of $6,660, which is maintaining the BSA that we had for this year, FY26.

Um, at this time, we are not anticipating or projecting an increase in the base student allocation from the state, even though there are um some bills there.

We're not hearing that uh BSA uh is likely, but at the same time, um, it would be nice.

But at this point, uh we are uh building this budget based off of the 6,660 BSA.

As we look at what that means for our proposed revenue for next year, we're looking at 76 uh million uh dollars.

That's assuming that we'll receive the maximum contribution from the city and borough of Juneau.

It's including the steps down and the hold harmless.

So when Juno School District consolidated, they were underneath the hold harmless provision with the state of Alaska, which meant that we were kind of being able to bridge the gap between the decrease in enrollment for three years and in 2027, it'll be the third and final year of that step down.

So that's the majority of the decrease in our state foundation funding, and that 2% enrollment decline.

So on this pie graph, we can kind of see that CBJ's appropriation makes up 47% of the school district's budget.

The state is about 52%.

I have broken out the hold harmless piece because that's really important for us right now to keep mindful of is that almost 2% of our budget right now is related to that hold harmless funding we have in 2027.

That will not be there for us in 2028.

And then other local revenue tuition and Medicaid reimbursements, that makes up the other point 96% of our budget.

And just a different way to look at it, we have our actual graph that kind of outlines every single line of our local sources, borough, local tuition, e-rate, and then from the state, we have the foundation funding.

We have our TURS and PERS on behalf, and then the other state revenue is the PFD lottery.

So if when you are signed up for your Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, it asks you if you want to buy an education raffle ticket, and that's about the amount of income that we get on an annual basis from that education lottery.

And that last one revenue from federal sources, the 30,000 is the amount we receive for about Medicaid reimbursements.

At the bottom, that's showing how much of our projected fund balance that we are going to be using to balance our 2027 budget.

As we talked about earlier in the budget, we started with a rollover budget with adjustments for enrollment numbers and uh some small adjustment with staffing based on the ADM reductions that we were projecting for FY27.

The FY27 budget does maintain the pupil-teacher ratio or the PTR at all grades.

The PTR is used to calculate the classroom teacher allocation for the FY27 budget.

One of the nice things that you'll see is the board was able to maintain the pupil-teacher ratio from this year FY26 in FY27's projected budget.

So for kindergarten through third grade, the pupil teacher ratio will be 26 to 1.

Fourth grade through sixth grade, the people teacher ratio will be 28 to 1.

And for secondary schools, 7 through 8th and 9th through 12th grade, the PTR is 30 to 1.

It's important to note that this is a budgeting tool that there will be variations in classes.

Some will be a little bit higher, some will be a little bit lower.

But this is from a budgeting perspective, maintaining those PTRs that we have seen.

And I would like to point out that not all districts across the state of Alaska are able to maintain their PTR right now.

They're having conversations about increasing PTR.

So we are we are, I think, because of the hard work that the board initiated a few years ago and uh looking at the budget, uh we've been able to maintain those, and of course, the support from the city and borough of Juno.

This year, the district was excited to launch balancing act, uh, an interactive online budgeting simulation tool, which gave the community an opportunity to be hands-on with our budget.

Uh, but like school districts are required to do every single year.

The budget that uh people submitted was required to be balanced before they were able to submit it.

And so if anybody is watching right now and was like, I couldn't submit a budget because it was really red, it was uh because you had to have a balanced budget.

And so I know the city used balancing act a few years ago.

We found it really helpful, and I think it was really informative for um our community members and families uh to go through and see the breakdown of how we um allocate funds across the district, how much goes towards instruction, how much is used for supplies and so forth.

And I think it's a great tool to help educate as well as inform the community uh about the budget for the school district.

It was open for 17 days.

We had 825 page views, average time of interaction was about 8.42 minutes, and we received 55 responses.

Looking at our expenditures for 2027, we uh present them in two different ways.

We present them by function, and this is required by the state of Alaska's uh department of education, and it kind of speaks to what the purpose of those funds are being spent on.

Are they spent on directly in the classroom?

Are they supporting special education?

Are they more supporting uh students indirectly or the teachers indirectly?

And so when we look at the breakdown of our expenditures by function, 75.28% of it is going directly to instructing students.

We have instructional support, those are the departments and the areas that support the support the schools, but not directly.

That makes up 18.63% of our budget.

And then non-instructional, that is district administration and district administration support services.

That makes up 6% of the district's budget.

The other way districts are required to track their expenditures is by objects.

And so this kind of breaks it down into different categories of are they salaries, are they benefits, are they for travel, are they for utilities, insurance, supplies?

And so when we look at our budget from this perspective, 86 uh percent of our budget is spent on salary and benefits.

We are in the business of people, and so that makes sense that the majority of our budget is spent on staffing our schools.

Uh after that, purchase services makes up 8.91%.

That is predominantly high because that's where all of our utilities are at.

Supplies and other expenses make up 4.2%, and then transfers to other funds, it makes up 0.72%.

And those are the transfers that our operating fund sends out to support the deficits in our student transportation special revenue fund and our tradition services uh special revenue fund.

Something additionally we did this year in order to kind of continue to increase that transparency and the understanding of what makes up our budget is we prepared um the all funds report, which the assembly has seen in the past, but in addition to seeing our budget by revenue object and function.

We also published 59 pages, which kind of shows you the budget by either department and or by school.

And so it's going to be a way for not just the district um board of education, but also the public as well to kind of see comparative year to year.

What do those um department increases look like or what are those school increases look like and see and be able to ask more pointed questions to really understand what's happening in the budget from year to year at a different level than previously in these past um few years.

So we're excited about that and kind of be able to continue that um uh momentum going into next school year.

The City and Bureau of Junior Assembly has been very generous to um provide additional funding for non-instructional supports.

Um, and so uh for the FY26 funding for non-instructional shared services items from CBJ uh was about 2,115,000 for FY27.

The funding request for non-instructional shared services items uh is 2,109,000.

This is a reduced ask uh for the FY27 over FY26.

Uh, in addition to the district requests, the assembly fund general school operations at 35,801,900, which is the amount permitted according to the state foundation funding formula.

This is an increase of 797,188 over the FY26 originally approved budget.

The district also requests the additional 2,109,000 for the non-instructional programs of student activities, student transportation, food services, community schools, and the learn to swim program.

The FY27 budget really does reflect the district's commitment to transparency to effective and efficient use of resources and to fiscal responsibility.

In November, the district received a clean external audit with all funds in the black.

The FY27 budget represents the district's best effort to accurately anticipate or request funding resources and to work within that level to provide a comprehensive yet sustainable level of service for students and the community.

And so I just want to take a moment on behalf of the district and the board.

I would like to thank the assembly and the city and borough of Juno staff for their continued support of the students, staff, and community of Juno through your support of the Juno School District.

At this point, that concludes our presentation.

If there's any questions and Gunashish for giving us the opportunity, thank you.

Thank you for that.

Who has a question?

All right.

Well, I'll start while everybody thinks about what question they have.

Um to your um chart on enrollment, um tough question on 2028.

Are we still expecting a decrease or are we hoping to plateau or at this point?

We are still anticipated uh continued decline in enrollment.

Uh, like I said, we're seeing right now about one and a half to two percent enrollment decline.

Um, and of course, a lot of that is based on um, you know, the outmigration that we're seeing across the state, uh, reductions in birth rates uh as well as um uh uh just the uh uh the bubble classes, if you will, of older grades as they transition out, there's not as many younger grades coming in.

Uh there is hope that within the next uh three to five years there will be some stabilization with the ice cutter uh uh the icebreaker coming in.

Um but at this point we are still anticipating for FY28 uh reduction in enrollment numbers.

All right, thank you for that.

Okay, so now we have Mr.

Smith.

Um I couldn't tell if I saw your hand as well.

And then Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um thanks, superintendent and members of the board definitely very much appreciate your work and time.

Um I know it is significant.

Um I I had a question on fund balance.

How much how much is in anyway?

Well, what would happen if you know with if this budget is approved with anyway, how much would remain and then remind me on I know there's interesting strings on school district fund balances.

So could you just give me a very brief, you know, reminder of what those what some of those are.

If I'm understanding the question to the chair to um deputy mayor Smith, the the kind of guardrails or strings when we look at fund balance.

Uh there are really two, and um Nico might be able to add more to this, that but uh the two that I'm thinking about.

The state statute does require that um districts cannot maintain more than 10% of the prior year's expenditures as fund balance.

And so that does set a cap on the amount of money that can carry over in fund balance.

Districts can um retain in their fund balance uh into the next year.

In addition, uh the board does have a policy that uh requires at least 1.5% of that fund balance, and that's the expenditures um for that fund balance be held in reserve.

Um, and so trying to keep that bottom level.

And so while there's a cap, there's also kind of that 1.5 bottom level as well.

So those are the two um main guardrails that uh we look at with the fund balance.

Okay, I'm gonna ask this question a little bit different.

On page 34, you say you um budgeted use of fund balance.

How much does that leave in your fund balance?

Yeah, that leaves um the board a minimum that's required to hold and about another I think 700,000 on top of that.

So one uh point seven million.

Okay, I think that was more your question.

And then he answered your sideboards of that thing.

Ms.

Walkman, then Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, my question is on page 41, the the non-instructional um funding requests.

Um can you just um kind of go through some of these non-instructional um items and help me understand which of those are in this request fully funded by the city and which ones are supplemented by other sources.

So I'm assuming learn to swim, that's the full cost of the program, but maybe food services not, or just kind of at a high level, what percentage of these represent the total of those programs?

Yeah, uh Ms.

Herbert and I might um trade off on some of these.

So starting at the top, really with 101 high school activities, that 1.2 million dollars does provide the uh uh lion's share of the support for high school activities.

The rest of the funding is generated through um uh donations through fundraising, uh, as well as the district does provide um a little bit of funding for that through some of our staff support, but the majority of that 1.2 million dollars goes towards providing high school activities, very similar for the 90,000 for middle school activities.

Student transportation is its own fund.

Um, and so the request for the 409,000 really is to try to address what is um the funding level for transportation just received the first increase recently um for uh uh with the BSA increase, but it still does not cover the cost of the contract for transportation.

And so what you're seeing reflected the request in this non-instructional ask is really to try to address that deficit that is created with the contract costs, and that really is similar with the um food service.

Those are two special revenue funds that the district does receive um identified funding from the state uh in support from the federal government for those.

But the ask really is the difference in um what is anticipated for the deficit to be at the end of the year to cover those costs.

As far as other programs learn to swim, you're correct.

That helps uh cover the cost for learn to swim and community schools.

It does provide for the community schools program.

Um the funding that is that 200,000.

There's uh additional um uh supervisory staff for like the community schools and the staff that work for their that us pay for out of the general fund, but the majority of community uh schools is funded out of that 200,000.

Um before I go to Miss Kelly, I'm gonna do a follow-up on that question.

Um high school activities, let's talk about that because it's been the same every year, and now we only have one high school.

So can you tell me why it's the same number with just one high school?

Yeah, that's that's a great question, and thanks for that question.

Um while it's one high school, we have uh more students that are participating at one high school.

And so the needs for coaches, we expanded some of the coaching um staff to be able to provide enough um coverage.

One of the things two years ago when the consolidation happened, and when we came to the ask, I want to say it was about two years ago was this um commitment to make sure that we did not turn students away.

And if students wanted to participate, we were able to have that.

And that means that a coaching level of maybe three head coaches or one head coach and two assistant coaches wasn't enough to cover all of the students.

When you have uh ski programs, you have cross-country programs and you have near 100 100 students out there that are spread out across the um, you know, trails.

You want to make sure that you have enough coaching staff to support that, as well as uh making sure for our volleyball teams and our basketball teams, you not only have your varsity, your JV, your C team, your development team, you want to make sure that you have enough that expands out to make sure students have those opportunities.

Um, and then also when you have larger teams, making sure that those teams still have the opportunity travel.

Varsity usually has an opportunity to travel, JV has an opportunity to travel, but some of those students in the C teams and development team programs, we want to make sure that we provide uh them at least throughout the year an opportunity to have some kind of experience outside of just practice.

Um, and so uh that's one of the reasons why you're seeing that um that continued ask uh at that level is to be able to provide and maintain that same level of support for all of our students to be able to have access to the activities um and not turn any students away.

All right, thank you, Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

I was just looking at um on page 13, the line item for energy.

I guess it doesn't particularly stand out when you consider um consider some of the other items on here.

But I was just wondering if the school district has been able to find efficiencies and energy usage in in recent years or if they have any plans uh to uh become further energy efficient with uh their buildings.

Yeah, uh through the uh mayor to uh Mr.

Kelly.

Um I think one of the things that we have done is the um I mean, through support of the city, uh the uh general school district was able to take part in the uh renewing America Schools grant.

Um, there was a little bit of uncertainty about kind of where and if that money was going to come through, but a part of that grant was to uh really focus on upgrading some of our HVAC systems um and really focus on you know being more efficient with energy and seeing some savings in that regard.

We just uh had as part of that grant the energy auditor come through.

I think it was been about two weeks now, did a complete of the five buildings that are gonna be seeing some of the um resources from that.

Um so we're we're moving forward for that, and hopefully we'll see um some increases uh with um efficiency for some of our facilities through some of the upgrades that are provided for that.

Uh, we're also working through the CIP list uh to find some other efficiencies uh as well for some of our facilities in regards to other efficiencies.

Um, you know, as energy costs continue to go up, uh, you know, it's costs continue to go up.

We have to keep our buildings heated, uh, warm buildings, uh, buildings that don't leak are very good for learning.

Uh, you know, those are things that really uh help support student learning and uh comfort.

And so we want to maintain those.

And so uh some of the efficiencies um, you know, really are they're not able to be, and I can't drop the degrees, you know, five degrees to try to save a little bit of energy.

I mean, there's things that we have to make sure that we maintain to um find that peak optimum uh learning environment for our students and and we want to keep that.

But where we can find and look at investing in potentially savings uh around especially efficiencies, we try to do that.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

Can you just uh give us uh a brief explanation of what the difference is between the energy line and utility service line on the uh expenditures by object, page 39.

I will turn that over to uh Ms.

uh Herbert to go into more detail.

The mayor to member Brooks.

The state requires us to categorize certain um energy and utility costs in different categories.

And so when you're looking at utility services, you're more looking at um heating oil, and then underneath energy, you're more looking at electricity and water and uh to members Kelly's um question earlier, something that we actively look at.

Um, our director of operations, not director of operations, our operations manager um monitors which some of our buildings can switch between um heating oil versus electricity to heat and is able to sometimes switch them to and from in order to do cost savings.

So, like we have those other um levers that we're able to pull ourselves that doesn't require waiting for CIP and um certain things to be fixed over.

So that's where that may fluctuate between year to year, depending on where we're primarily heating our buildings.

Umtility services may go up where energy may go down.

Ms.

Hall.

Looking at the historic enrollment, um we have uh um really high numbers of correspondence students sets in our home bridge program, correct?

That is correct.

That's 210 right now, and we are anticipating that number to increase.

We've been seeing some increased numbers, but yeah, that uh correspondence is in the home bridge uh program, and and we do receive uh funding for those students that are on our home bridge program.

Yeah, and a follow-up to that would be does the state track um, you know, like in our community, we have kids attending Raven and IEDA.

Does the state track what community the kids are from that are attending those programs?

The state has um tracked that information in the past.

Um they don't always send that information out and it's by uh program, so you'll get a report that'll show um the number of students in the Juno school district that part, or not in the Juno school district, but in the Juno community that are um at uh Raven or Idea, one of the other homeschool programs, including our home bridge program.

Um, they have uh sent out some of that information and they do track that information.

They don't always send it out to districts though.

Okay, so we don't really have an idea of how many Juno kids are attending.

Last the last numbers I saw, we have about 530 students, a little bit over 500 students that are not uh that are correspondent students participating in a statewide correspondence student uh correspondence program that live in the Juno area that are not participating in the junior school districts.

Sometimes I've heard people talk about 800, but they oftentimes forget that it's all statewide correspondence programs included in that number is our home bridge program.

So we actually have those students in our program.

So um, anytime you look at correspondent students and those numbers of students that are participating in correspondence that are in the genome area, you uh uh geno area, you can't forget to subtract the students that are in our homeschool program because they are our students.

Yeah, Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

On the uh expenditures by function on the page 38 or page 12.

The uh operations and maintenance.

Can you tell us how much of that is just maintenance or what determines what is an operation and what is a maintenance?

Herbert, sorry.

Through the uh mayor to member Brooks, operation maintenance is the general description that the state requires us to track, but that it doesn't have us split it down further.

So within that, that includes all of our custodial services.

It includes all of our maintenance department, and that also includes all of our um utilities that we uh pay to heat our schools and provide electricity and any uh maintenance and repair.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Uh so would that uh 11 million number also encompass the part of the 400,000 or two million number for utility services or energy?

Yes, that's one of the few areas where that function 600 operation maintenance directly ties to the object for 4,300 utility services and 4,350 energy, but not all of the objects tie up cleanly to a function.

Um so on page 39, what is transfer to other funds?

Madam Mayor, transfer to other funds are the general operating funds that are getting transferred to support our student transportation fund.

So in addition to the money that we're receiving from the city and borough of Juno, we are also transferring money to balance that projected deficit.

And it also goes to our nutrition services uh special revenue fund.

Um, in addition to balancing that, uh, the board has also elected to continue universal free breakfast, which is uh about 230,000.

Ms.

Collins, did you oh yes, you can't wave your hand?

Ms.

Hall.

Yeah, on page 33 where you're discussing proposed budget revenues and under the other category, Medicaid reimbursement fell under that.

And I'm wondering, are you currently only billing for students enrolled in special education services?

Medicaid reimbursement, you know, through like OTPT speech.

At this time, I do believe that we are only um trying to capture uh the students that are um in special education services receiving those um reimbursable services.

Um I can get confirmation on that and uh forward that on uh in the future just to make sure I believe we have been looking at the possibility of expanding that, but at this time I believe we are only capturing those students um that are in uh special education.

Follow up.

Go ahead.

Yeah, and and so knowing that nursing services could potentially be covered both inside and outside of um students that qualify for um special education services.

That's I've I've heard that's a pretty decent source of revenue.

So he'll although recognizing that things are very um unstable with that program right now federally.

That's if I may uh through the mayor, um, I I think that uh in in the budget, there's uh a support for our health services and our nurses that I think are going to provide more stability and provide more capacity uh for our leaders to explore some of those options that you're talking about.

So that's one of the things we're looking forward to being able to um potentially see more realized uh reimbursements because of some of the decisions the boards have made uh for the FY27 budget.

All right, see nobody else, I'll continue.

Um, congratulations on all your fund balances being in the black.

There's was a time when they were not so um you didn't bring that piece of paper with us.

So if you could forward us to that some point, that'd be great.

The audit uh the audit, just the your fund balances.

Oh, the fund balances?

Okay, yeah, we can go.

Right.

We can we can get that to you, yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

You must explain things really well.

All right.

Go ahead, Ms.

Hall.

I don't know if this is a question for our staff or for your staff, but um, over the years of flat funding of the BSA.

Um, what has shifted over to the CBJ that has traditionally been paid by the you know under the BSA?

What have we kind of taken on during that time that normally would have still been under the BSA?

If you can't take a stab on it, I can't why don't you start?

Because I mean I get these tabs and I don't have necessarily history.

Pupil transportation, not initially when I was first on, and uh high school activities activities are definitely one.

I think we always helped with uh rally at one time, community assistance and food.

Go ahead.

Through the mayor to um member hall, it's important to note that our funding for student transportation is based off of enrollment, and when it's based off of enrollment, you still typically provide transportation to the same geographic area, and unless all of the students stop coming to school in a very specific area, it's it's gonna it creates an issue in that you're still trying to provide transportation for this large group, even though you're getting less money because your student population is dwindling.

And so a lot of districts are kind of running into that same issue in that they're trying to provide the same services over the same geographic area, but they only get funded on the enrollment, not the geographic area.

Yes, and we're also a linear town, so it just makes it more difficult.

You can talk to our wastewater folks on that because they know all about linear towns with pipes.

Quiet group.

Okay, now discussion time.

Oh, Mr.

Brooks, sorry.

I um I was just uh wondering, you know, if there's uh been any uh discussions that I wasn't present for in meetings or any um desire amongst the school board or or discussions related to the consolidation of building maintenance services with CBJ.

Is that something that you've you know battered around thinking of what the pros are, the cons are, or is it just something that's so far removed from your thoughts?

Go ahead, Superintendent Hauser, because we have discussed this in the past.

Yeah, uh to the mayor's member Brooks, yeah.

The um during the consolidation, this was a conversation that came up, and really what was determined at the time uh one uh one of the um conversations that took place is the high need that we have.

And I mean, whenever you have maintenance needs, there's high needs because still doing needs, but maintenance specifically.

But when we have uh a major maintenance need, we need people there right there at that moment to take care of what potentially is a safety issue for kids.

And so um, and we just can't send kids home.

We need to make sure that we have dedicated staff to provide that service.

And so um our maintenance staff are part of our Jess Union.

We're really proud of the work that they do.

They take care of our snow plowing, they take care of our um some of our grounds work, they do a lot of the maintenance, uh, internal, external.

And so they do so much around the district.

And I think a couple years ago when this conversation was happening.

Um, if I'm remembering correctly, so uh Madam Mayor, please feel free to um correct me or or uh add as needed.

Um the conversation around potentially the city taking on the cost for maintenance uh also had an increase in the costs.

So if the city were to take over the maintenance, um, it would only cover major maintenance.

We would still have to figure out how to do snow plowing for all of our facilities or walkways and everything else.

Um, but the cost for the uh equivalent maintenance is if my my memory serves correct, would have actually been more expensive to the city to cover that.

And so um at the time it just didn't it wasn't it didn't seem like it was cost effect efficient um because it cost more money and um just uh to be frank, uh there's these are valued members of our staff that we wouldn't want to give up because they do such a great job for us, um, and it's so important that they are part of the junior school district and have uh immediate access as needed.

Yeah, and I'll just add um if I may, we were trying to be very creative with maintenance because that was one place that we thought we could, but Deed actually kind of squashed us too, because even though there are buildings, they fall under the umbrella of the school district.

So then they were saying that, well, technically that should be under your cap then.

And yeah, that local contribution thing.

We tried to be very creative, but that was a good point because we tried that too.

Mr.

Whitney, do you have something to add?

Yeah, yeah.

So adding a little bit to what Superintendent Housing through through the mayor, member Brooks.

Um, this came up quite a bit in in facilities committee.

And it there was just a there's a pretty strong need for the maintenance people to be tied to the building administrators.

So when things go wrong in the middle of the day, the principal needs to be able to direct these people.

So there's I mean, that's a huge huge factor, just how things work for efficiently.

Okay.

If there's questions along the way, feel free to ask them.

But now just more of the discussion time.

If uh board members want to bring something forward, or if assembly wants to bring something forward, now would be the time.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you for talking because everybody else is and it's really and it's really difficult for me to talk to, but this is really conversation, so I'm gonna have to, but uh, I know that it's uh something that had been brought up through the DZ playground uh design process, and it's something that even you know uh you know, got me thinking a lot, but you know, there the the cost for the design inflated well over a hundred thousand dollars.

It was redone three times.

I have a hard time seeing what the true benefit to the community was from having a CBJ department charge a JSD such an exorbitant amount, making the project therefore just more expensive, taking longer and uh just you know, wondering like how do we avoid things like that happening, or is there some underlying benefit that I'm just not seeing, but it seemed to be uh a slight source of contention.

So I don't know if that's something that the uh the board can speak to, or if if we have any ideas on the city side of why things like that happen.

Uh well, first of all, we have to pay our staff too, but I'll go to Mr.

Smith.

I don't want to I don't want to cut off any a member of the board that might have a response.

I I believe an issue that happened there, at least that I was aware of was I don't want to say that there wasn't a budget for the playground, but it was it kind of it we maybe didn't have a good enough cap or a control and I mean I'll take responsibility when it came to public works and facilities and was I can't remember the number.

I mean it was was it two million dollars?

I can't remember.

It was significant, and then I and then I made a motion to say no, we're only going this high.

And then I think that you know, that it maybe caused some issue with design because they had to rescope and redo more work.

Anyway, um I and I think going forward, I've said it on a number of things.

We you know, we should set it that there should be a budget set for for some of these projects, so we don't get expectations up or you know, have to come back to the drawing board after after people have done a lot of work and um anyway.

That's just that's my perspective on maybe an issue with with how that project rolled out and was designed.

Anyone else want to comment on that?

Oh I got that was Mr.

Smith's fault.

That's why I got but yes, uh Mr.

Burks.

Thank you.

And it like I I totally understand that, you know, the the departments need to get paid, staff needs to get paid, but you know, at what point uh is it less beneficial to the process to charge certain amounts, like I guess you know, like why charge ourselves so much to a point where it starts creating contention within a project, even though we're all on the same team essentially, you know, is there a cap we can set on interdepartmental development charges just as a baseline to prevent things like this happening from across the board.

But it you know, like I said, I I I understand people need to get paid, departments need to get paid, but you know, that's one project at over a hundred thousand dollars, and just for a playground, how many projects are handled a year, and you know, that's that's just where my mind kind of goes.

Yep.

Um I will try, and then Mr.

Barr can correct me, but typically designs are percentages of a project.

And like Mr.

Smith said, it came in, it was way more than um most people on the assembly could stomach.

And so that's why they had to redesign it.

Mr.

Barr, you can correct me if I'm wrong there, but thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um I I don't disagree with anything that's been said uh so far, Madam Mayor, by you or Mr.

Smith.

I think that um, you know, when when when projects need uh, you know, based on public comic public process, uh, you know, decisions that that boards or assemblies make when projects need uh redesign efforts that those redesigns uh add to and are multiplicative of uh existing design work.

So um I I think this project was uh subject to that phenomenon.

Um I Ms.

Siddon and then Madam President.

Thank you.

I was chair of the facilities committee through most of the development of that project, and I'll leave the budget piece aside, but to say I hope that maybe in our joint facilities committee, we can hash out a a better process for any joint projects in the future, so that our dollars are put towards projects that best serve our kids.

Thank you for that.

Um Madam President.

Thank you.

I think I had something very similar along the lines of um Dr.

Siddon.

So again, I think um it was a rather rough process.

And if there's a way to have maybe a better understanding of that flow or how the process should go, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

And I think Mr.

Steininger is the chair of that committee.

Is that correct?

So you have marching orders.

Um Ms.

Thomas and then Ms.

Wall.

So with the playground design, just how that went, we're looking at getting like new boilers for schools and stuff like that.

And that's gonna come through you guys as well.

And so my concern is how that's getting marked up as, you know, like it seems like money's just transferring back and forth.

I feel like there should either be like a cap or an agreement to how our all of our dollars serve the whole community versus I feel like just it doesn't look I'm trying to think of the right word.

I'm trying to think of the right word.

I just don't think that it makes much sense to charge us to design a boiler that's going in a building that you guys technically own.

So I mean, paying for the boiler, that's one thing, but the design of what it needs to be I just think that going that route, same with the playground, like staff is getting paid regardless.

So we're charging school districts when we're already tight on our money.

Thank you for that, Ms.

Well.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um I'll maybe broaden the discussion here because I think the DZ playground for me was sorry, the Dun Skahini playground for me was um indicative of a larger issue.

I feel like I've seen since I've been on the assembly, which is to be frank, not great communication between these two bodies.

And I'm not blaming anyone here for that.

I think it's just we're all in our different spheres doing our own things that we have our authority to, and then when we try to talk or do things together, it's it's been challenging, even if we have shared values and you know other things.

So I'd be curious.

I get to talk to my assembly fellow assembly members a lot.

I get to hear a lot about what works for them.

But for while I'm here with the school board, I'd love to hear from a few of you of kind of what you need from us, how we can better that communication.

Um any ideas or suggestions.

We've got a lot of new people here, which I think is good.

Comments on that, Mr.

Whitney.

Thank you.

Um through the mayor.

Um so I wasn't part of the board in the process when that first playground first started.

Um, but then I ended up being on chair of the facilities committee after after Dr.

Siddon stepped down.

Um a couple things that really stand out to me on that um project is it was really traumatic for the two schools that ended up at Tazaka Tahini.

I mean, they basically got uprooted and moved there, and so there was a lot of intense feelings about that.

And then in the community of Lemon Creek as a whole, you know, we don't school, you don't really want to have the lower economic groups all in one school because bad things tend to happen to the kids.

So they get split up.

Half of them go to Harvard Youth, half of them go out to Costaguin.

Um, so and so they did they did have a school in their neighborhood and they lost it.

And there was just there was some intense feelings about that, and for good reasons, like when you have desegregation, it was all is the black kids that have to be on the buses.

And here it's the poorer kids and they don't get their own school.

So it doesn't surprise me a bit that there were changes in the design on that.

I think I mean things can all be better, but sometimes I think just the intense background situation is it's you end up walking in a no-win situation.

And since I took over, there's still been animosity until just recently.

But I mean, what the schools went through overall too, besides just that project, it's been pretty intense.

And I think you can expect uh to have problems.

Yeah.

Ms.

Collin.

I think for um for especially as a new board member for me, I think it would have been nice.

Um, just regarding this project.

Um the the bidding process, the um the way as it was explained to me as I was onboarding was very unclear.

No one could tell, no one knew whether it was a city project or a school district project.

Um trying to um I've spoken with some of the project managers on a city.

Um, they tried to explain their role.

Um, but having done construction for years, um, the bidding process seems odd to me.

And so is that something that I think um when you're asking what what would help us as a board, at least for me, would be maybe not how like how it is now.

We were told this is the amount, and now we're gonna go out to bid versus like we're bidding, these are our things, how much money do we need, which is a typical uh bidding process.

So, like explaining that.

Um, I know for that project, um, we didn't really get any say on the playground equipment that's going to be there.

Um, so little things like that.

I think that's the kind of communication that we need from the city and the board so we can all know where we're at, where we're at in the project, who's making decisions for which components of the project and what we're responsible for.

Okay, that's that sounds good.

Um that's interesting because we certainly didn't pick the playground equipment, so I'm not quite sure who did.

Must have been the committee of something else, because we certainly didn't pick playground equipment.

Well, neither did we.

Well, I'm gonna clarify.

I'm sorry, Madam.

Um I'll clarify that a little bit.

There was a design company that was chosen that brought options to that school's community to gather feedback.

So there was some input that was had um that was probably is probably now over a year and uh half ish, somewhere in there.

Um, so I mean it's been some time, but there was a mechanism for some input at that time from those schools that were in that building.

Anything else on that topic?

And there's other topics that we certainly could talk about.

Yeah.

I I have a I have a comment.

Um Ms.

Rommer's.

I guess for me, the last Adam Clerk.

I guess I'll just say the lesson learned is um the the challenge of using a third party vendor for something who's for for something for a project in which that they have the expertise in, how much trust you put into that?

And I think a lesson for me is so we're hoping there's not gonna be an like and we might be experts now of um playgrounds, but there's gonna be another project, and there's gonna be another vendor in which that we have to do our due diligence to vet like what they're bringing to the table, and I guess adding more specificity, uh including a budget at the get go of where that project is gonna go to keep it reined in, um, is something that I'm taking because uh as a lesson from this experience, and it's probably my second um experience in terms of playgrounds, but just not having I mean, because a vendor will sell you the bells and the whistles, and they sound good because they'd be like, oh, it's certified, but then all the nooks and crannies that it takes to be certified.

We don't have that luxury in Alaska because of the season and the ground and the thong and the timing and the shipping.

And so those are things I think would be helpful, like you almost need an expert to work with the vendor of the expert of like how to procure and obtain services here in Alaska is just something that I'm gonna take away from this experience and um from a distance as a board member who was with this project, but not as closely as some of my colleagues.

Thanks.

Thank you for that.

Anything further?

Any other um, Madam President?

I have a list.

Oh, good.

Bring it on.

Um, one of the things that we have had a few conversations about recently is, and this kind of ties in maybe to some of this discussion, is a facilities assessment.

Um, I believe there was one done, and I'm going to look to board member Thomas to help me out on this.

Um, I think that there is an old one, and so maybe having an updated assessment of the district facilities.

And what what is that?

Tell me what you mean by your assessment.

Ms.

Thomas, would you miss Thomas?

Please blanking me right now, but they went through and looked at all of our facilities and looked at their efficiencies, looked at their capacity, looked at how they would best be used in the district.

And I believe you guys had them do a quick assessment right before consolidation happened as well, like a quick and down and dirty, they didn't come up and do it.

And I don't know if we want to use that same company again just because they're familiar, but it would just help us have a better idea of are we using our facilities to the best of their ability?

Like what needs to be done.

They did safety assessments, they did you know everything you could think of, and I can send you the assessment.

Um do you know the name of that company?

No.

Uh just so you know, we did not do the assessment.

So I'm assuming the city.

Okay, I mean, I don't even remember asking for an assessment.

So was that our staff?

I mean, uh well, it was a m Mr.

Whitney.

Yeah, so it was 2017.

It was a joint, it was a joint assembly school district committee, which we have, which we didn't think you might have been on it.

I it hasn't met yet.

I think you might have been on it.

I was on it, Jesse Keel is on it.

Um, Wade Bryson was on it, and Brian Holst was on it.

But we um, and I think Jensen Yorba lot was the contractor who'd who'd put it in Ozama, and they had they brought in other contractors who were experts in education, and it was the most useful thing to me is they made maps of every school, all the classrooms.

Was that the study they did when we were trying to see if there was extra room in the school for other things?

Okay, now I'm remembering.

But it is a lot of the information in it is stale, so it's and especially the finance and the maintenance cost.

And so there probably is value in okay.

Well, I'm gonna look at Mr.

Steiniger and say, I don't know who's on your on the joint committee from the school district right now, but we should get a meeting going.

We have one scheduled.

Perfect.

Glad to hear.

And who's on that committee?

Yeah, uh the assembly wise, I think it's Mr.

Brooks, Mr.

Kelly.

And myself, and yourself, yeah.

Sorry, I forgot you district, madam president.

Okay, there you go.

All right.

And I believe we have a deadline to get that agenda put together.

So uh Miss Choney Haywood, let's touch base.

Or who's ever chair of your facilities committee too, could be part of that discussion.

Well, you chair of the oh, I do not chair any of the subcommittees.

Thank you.

Smart lady special committee that that you gotta be in charge of.

Um, yes.

Continue on your list.

Oh no one else is raising their hand, so oh, this wasn't even really my list, but um so one of the other things that had been posed um is kind of around the flood mitigation and what our responsibilities are with um MRCS.

Yeah, I'm gonna look to Mr.

Barr for that one because I have no idea.

Are they part of the emergency plan?

And do the obviously they don't seem to know their role, or do other people in the school district know their role and it just hasn't made it to the school board.

I think part of it too is like with the fencing and some of those pieces, like is that our responsibility or you know, making sure it's there and in place.

I mean, it's a safety issue for the children in that school.

So yeah, thank you for the question.

So I I guess I'll start by saying that um when we're in the midst of flood response, we're certainly quick to reach out to the superintendent's office when we have any um needs, uh, either as part of the emergency response effort, or if we have needs to, you know, be on school property to either use that property as part of the response or to be on the property to protect that property.

Um I'm not familiar specifically with the fencing um at MRCS.

I am familiar last year that we did some protective work.

Um in culverts, either on or very close to MRCS property to uh you know, keep water uh out of MRCS.

Um, but I would I would view uh blood protection of um public property broadly speaking as something that we prioritize in emergency response generally I'll look to my other board members if I can to see if there's additional questions on this topic.

Listen um I'm sure Ms.

Jermaine here because she could speak to it better, but back in like the September October facilities committee meetings, we were briefed on flood mitigation, the the fencing, the bank stabilization, and the eventually the driveway into MRCS that we will be responsible for out of our maintenance costs that I asked the question back then and still have not gotten a clear answer on.

Like, why isn't that just under the umbrella of the city flood mitigation response?

Why are we paying separately for impacts of the flood to the building?

Could you share us with what the impacts were the flood?

I didn't know there was any impacts to MRCS, Mr.

Whitney.

Yeah, and like Dr.

Sid mentioned that the biggest one that dwarfs the others is the bank stabilization to keep the driveway going into the school from going into the river.

So and there's also there was some tree cutting and it was like Dr.

To button that up, Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

And uh yeah, I'm I'm sure that there's definitely some worries with the erosion on that entrance of Mendon Hall River School too.

Not only did it damage the fence, but it it is getting close to the entrance entrance.

And I was just wondering if on the school board there's been any thoughts of reestablishing the old entrance on the other side of the property.

And then that way might give you a little more grace time to figure out the you know what we all can do for the reinforcement of the banks and the the fencing without having to worry about the entrance aspect of the school, too.

Walts.

Sorry, I found the slides.

It's almost a million dollars in total project cost between the bank stabilization and the yeah, all the flood two bullets of flood mitigation at MRCS 700 for one and 225 for another.

Thoughts on looking at the other entrance.

Why we figure this out?

Mr.

Whitney, are you raising your hand?

Yeah, so on that I we have we didn't talk about it through them through the mayor.

Um and I think I believe Mr.

Main, and I might be wrong on this, but I there's a good chance that I'm not um that I mean the Army Corps of Engineers, they were they were they were kind of the ones pushing the bank stabilization.

I thought that would work, but but whose responsibility was and where the funding comes from.

I think that was a lot of there's a lot of confusion on that angle.

Okay, Ms.

Thomas.

I think regardless if we move the entrance or not, we still have to repair the bank with the fence that fell down.

Like that's a huge safety concern with kids getting out and getting to even if the entrance is gone, the the fence is gone that goes right to the river, and that's a huge concern of mine.

I can't speak to it anymore because we'll have to have the staff look at and figure it out.

I mean, I don't we can't come up with an answer for that right now.

We hear you.

How about that?

Yeah, send it to the committee.

Yeah.

Thank you, madam mayor.

Um for entertaining the topic.

Yeah.

Um just go ahead, Ms.

Sidd.

Thank you, Chair.

I mean, as we're joking about sending things to the committee, I do want to point out circling back to the Zontachini Playground, that committee is not a decision-making body.

Yeah.

And then the last thing on my list, if we're moving on, um, was just to have a conversation, a discussion about kind of the partnership and after school child care and kind of thoughts on where we are on that.

Um, I can speak a little bit to that.

Um, as far as I know, there is a private company working now, but they're only on three schools.

There was something brought forward, but looking at my assembly, because I don't know because the deadline has passed.

The last I knew they were looking for a sponsor.

Did anybody sponsor that project?

Seeing none, I'm guessing they didn't get a sponsor.

Mr.

Smith.

Yeah, I'll give you an update.

We I've I've been speaking to some members who've been um advocating for the funding for this after school care.

Um and and summer uh school aged care.

Uh and the decision and thought was that the community grants would take too long.

So we're evaluating um a possible ordinance.

So we'll see how to do that.

Although I don't know that everybody knows that.

And um, just so you know, um, we told the people that were bringing it forward that at least I didn't uh speak for myself now.

I didn't think that rose to something that was being out of our regular grant things, and they were supposed to go get a sponsor, but it doesn't look like they did.

Ms.

Wall and then Mr.

Kelly.

Uh you just said this, so but I'll say it in a different way for the group here.

This has not come before the body, and so we have some of us have no information on this.

And uh so there's some speaking in code.

Some of us cannot answer your questions.

Sorry about that, but that was what we told the people that were bringing it forward was to go find a sponsor.

So it come could come before the body, and it doesn't look like they found a sponsor.

So I'm not saying it's a dead issue, but it's gonna be a more of a pill.

Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

I think I'm I wonder if I might have spoken with some of the same people as as Mr.

Smith.

Um there was some interest in using some of the money that was forwarded.

Um that's being instead of using the assembly's grants process that was being forwarded, returned from the school district back to the assembly and using that as a as a funding source.

Um, so that's not something I've um I have asked a few questions of staff, but I haven't moved on, and maybe there's other assembly members working on it.

Mr.

Tom sorry, Ms.

Thomas.

So we have a grant program, and the way we do our process now is if anybody wants money from our grant program, which is basically asking for money for anything.

Um, you have to find a sponsor from the assembly before it can go.

Yep, sponsors it.

Yeah.

And we talked to um it was coming from the chamber and we talked to them three weeks ago or something, and we told them to find a sponsor.

They did say, couldn't this go outside of your normal thing?

Because as Mr.

Smith said they thought it would um have to be sped up.

And um again, I was speaking for myself and made that quite clear that I didn't know that this arose to being outside of our normal process.

So we'll see what happens if they want to keep bringing it forward.

We'll have to see if they like I said, like Mrs.

Wall said, a lot of the assembly hasn't even heard of this yet, so it hasn't come before the whole body.

Ms.

question on your concern on a timeline was to implement expanded child care options for this summer.

When I spoke with the group, I was concerned because on the school district, we were already deep in the process of where what our buildings are gonna be hosting this summer.

So I wasn't sure even like logistically it was possible, but could we be looking at the grant process for the fall?

I mean, is there I don't know your timeline.

Well no, we only do our grant process once during our budget season.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

But on the oh go ahead.

Uh on that week.

I was actually gonna ask if you know we saw the resolution that came from the school board about the proposal.

I was going to ask that this is the space available to, you know, my understanding is it would expand from six twenty to sixty students at three sites.

I mean, does that space exist for the summer?

Again, that's a Christie Germain question.

I don't know.

Depending on if if I made through the mirror, um, I I think that um we would have the availability.

We are scheduling summer uh work.

A lot of the summer usage is of course deep cleaning and cycling through, um making sure that our facilities are ready for the fall.

Um, but if we knew we could plan and we could see about um finding some space, we're looking at maybe one or two classrooms in a couple buildings, one building.

Um we uh want to support, you know, what is seen as one of the high needs around the community, and so um we would definitely work to try to make space available um in locations that were identified um that would support uh that after school child care option.

So um while we would have to look at it, I feel pretty confident saying that we would find a way to make it happen because we know it's a high need.

I appreciate that.

And we did tell the group bringing it forward that they need to contact the school district, so it doesn't sound like they have so they need to do some homework.

So it just hasn't been before the whole body, and I'm not sure how what the mechanism will be at this point.

So go ahead, Ms.

Sidd.

Well, I think this is a great example, right?

We weren't coordinated enough for the Zontakini Playground.

It we're not coordinated enough right now on it.

I mean, are we disagreeing that child care is an important option, or are we saying we functionally don't know how to even have that conversation?

Because what I hear us saying is like we don't even know how to bring a topic before this body.

What is this meeting, if not the opportunity to bring a topic before this body and figure out if we can make it happen?

Do we think it's a priority?

And if so, what's the next step?

So again, as Ms.

Wall pointed out, this wasn't brought before our body.

It was brought to a couple of us.

We told them what they had to do.

Yep.

So that's so right.

If any member of this community wants to bring something forward, they come to somebody and they say, How do I do this?

So the people who came to you, did they leave with a clear path forward of what to do next?

It doesn't yes, they did.

Okay so the whole thing is the chamber brought it forward um they're sorry for throwing you out there they had blue scheibler bring it up I called her personally and said this seems is at that time it was 48000 and I said that seems very very steep and she said no did you see my paperwork and so she sent me her paperwork and it was more like 200 something thousand and I said that's a little bit better but you still have to find a sponsor.

So she knew they had a sponsor the chamber people knew they had a sponsor and the fact that they didn't go get a sponsor I'm not sure if it was a if they had figured out that the problem the idea was totally baked if you will so remember we have lots of people that bring stuff to us and they have to do a little bit of work.

Ms wall first because I chopped her off so but again without going through our grant process the rest of the body doesn't know anything about it.

So go ahead Ms.

So in as I've been talking with this group we I said I mean my advice to them was going through the grant process while it might be better procedurally in terms of the understanding of my time the time frame that they're wanting to work on an ordinance is better and I'm working to find a couple friends I've also had to evaluate the project I see if it's the best use of funds.

I mean anyway I all child child care is good anyway but we also know we have limited amount of funds there are anyway um there's details for the you know things you have to consider as we're looking at but um I'm kind of looking at like introducing an you know introducing an ordinance to bring forward to the assembly that may move more quickly but um and I don't know how you fix the count the communicate you know the communication piece I I don't know how to do that either because we think we communicate pretty well what our process is for grants and I'm I know that they know because I know that the I'm not going to call out the people that approach us they're very familiar with our grant program so I would guess that things just fell through the cracks and um another way to do it is if Mr.

Smith wants to bring an ordinance forward potentially we can bring it forward but and figure out where the rest of the assembly feels on it.

Is that what you're looking for madam president I was just looking for a conversation so and I don't have anything else on my list.

There you go.

So my question back with you guys is if we did that um are we look are you guys looking at us to fund the whole thing ourselves I'm asking Ms.

Thomas I'm only a party of one but it would make sense that we would have to ask you guys because we did away with rally because we couldn't find staff and couldn't afford to put it in our budget.

So yeah I I would assume that we would want a hundred percent participation I mean child care is a huge need in the community and okay and just so you know this was a one time funding that they were talking about um Ms.

Collin did you have your hand raised sorry yes I just wanted to for clarification we or another organization doesn't need to come to you if you want to do an ordinance that's just something the assembly member does on their own okay thank you.

And it's it's always wise if the assembly member talks to a couple people though I I mean to make sure they have some friends uh to make sure it's gonna move forward because like we could have lots of ordinances introduced and they don't get very too very far as I'm sure you guys do too.

Uh madam president I like that just now um yeah I was just gonna on the question of kind of costs I mean you know our current structure is rally is out of our budget so there isn't really anything at this point in time um we do have you know I think a very generous lease um for the vendor that's currently participating um in our buildings I I would imagine something similar could be offered but there isn't anything at this point in time as far as additional funding I don't think yep and I was just asking to try to bring the communication to a head so we know when we talk about this it will just be assembly funded.

So that's why I asked the question.

Which is really our money anyway, right?

Okay, anything else.

Ms.

Fromherse.

I guess my question is just to confirm the grant.

So I know that the grant processes.

It's one time a year or it's right.

It's during our budget process.

Okay.

And if uh people want us to fund things, uh, they have to find an assembly sponsor.

Um we can blame Ms.

Wall for this, but it's worked out very well.

So we were happy to have this because we would get a whole bunch of funding requests that we know that we would never have touched.

So now you have to find an assembly sponsor so um it can be brought forward.

Okay.

But that deadline, just so you know, has passed.

So they it's too late for them to find a sponsor.

Um, Mr.

Whitney and then Mr.

Steininger.

Okay, I'll start it on my list now, then I guess.

Um God, I've only got a couple things.

So just um in in light of bringing ideas and conversation to the the joint meeting here.

Um first, I mean, the very first thing, Madam Mayor, that you brought forward was the lack of enrollment or declining enrollment.

And this is um, I mean, this is something that impacts us in a bad way as well as the city.

And we're definitely a sort of a symbiotic organization, but I just want people to be aware that um another simbloodic organization of us is the university.

I don't have any suggestions, but I just wanted people to be aware that um they've recently offered in-state tuition to out of state students and they've initiated the common app and it's it's looking very promising about bringing more people in.

And I mean, there's gonna be a five, 10, 15 year, at least 15 years for the school district before that produces kindergartners, but it's I mean, people talk about the Coast Guard cutter, but in my mind, that's probably our best hope of of stabilizing this decline in enrollment problem.

And just so people are aware of it and it's not really in our purview, but if it does come up and there's an opportunity for us to help or be supportive, I just wanted people to be aware of that.

Yeah, I appreciate that, Mr.

Whitney, because we have a lot of people that stay after going to UAS.

Yeah, though, myself included.

Okay, before we get before your next topic, though, we take turns.

Mr.

Steiniger, we'll come back to you.

All right.

I I just wanted to confirm an answer that I heard earlier um when Deputy Mayor Smith asked how much, or maybe it was actually you may or Weldon, how much would be left in your fund balance after the 5.7 million draw?

And I think I heard about one and a half million.

Is that correct?

So kind of sinking forward in the sustainability of your operating budget.

You know, if we lose that 5.7 million draw, you only have 1.45 to go to call it a million million and a half in inflationary pressure in the next year, kind of where does this leave us?

You know, how prepared does this budget make the school district looking for it, especially facing decline enrollment and probably a decline of revenue and a winding gap?

Like how how confident are we that we are setting ourselves up for kind of longer term success with the proposal that we're looking at?

And this can go to kind of I mean there's a big policy discussion.

I'm not necessarily just putting this on you, Superintendent Hauser.

Um, just curious to kind of have that conversation.

Ms.

Herbert.

We've had lots of good conversations in the several meetings since January about how we want to um make sure we're we're fiscally responsible, we're not making unnecessary cuts.

Unfortunately, we know that even though we are an organization of people, that we don't fill all those positions, and so we incur vacancies, and even though we hire substitutes or have to contract out with third parties, um, it does tend to provide a cost savings of the district.

And so we talked about whether or not we wanted to project a vacancy rate going into 27, or if we wanted to, as we go into 27, as we have been in the past budget cycles, look at what the actual um vacancy rates are uh providing um in that year to then increase our fund balance to help balance the 28 budget.

And so that was the conversation that we had with the board of education.

And as it relates to the vacancy rate, we know that we're gonna have it.

So even though we budgeted a hundred percent fill rate come this fall, we'll be able to look at to see what our initial vacancies are looking like and monitor that starting in August and September and have very good ideas of what we think that that will create for next budget cycle.

The second piece of that that we had good discussions on was our health insurance.

Uh previously the district has always budgeted that 100% of our employees will participate in our health insurance plan, but that hasn't been the case.

And so this year we decided to strategically uh use a 10% health insurance waiver rate to help reduce that budgeted expense because we know that that hasn't been typically the case.

And so being able to then in the fall look at, okay, we're assuming potentially 10% of our employees aren't going to participate health insurance.

What do we actually see that is?

And we'll have great ideas come September and August of what those um bigger dollar amounts are that will then add to that fund balance.

So if we go into next year with 1.7 million, we know that that is going to bounce back up again because of those vacancies that we're anticipating, unfortunately, and um additional health insurance waive rates.

Go ahead and follow up because and I can follow up too.

Yeah.

So the budget that we're looking at, the 81 million, that's assuming 100% fill rate for all your teaching positions.

You know, what does that draw look like if you have more of a normal fill rate of kind of comparable to what you saw this year?

You know, does that draw completely disappear or is it like a million dollar draw or what does it look like?

You pulled your microphone closer.

So I thought you were um the number from um fiscal year 25 stands out more to me than what we're currently seeing in 26.

So I will say in 25, the total amount of vacancies um that were used to balance the 26 budget was about four million dollars.

So let me put that in other words.

So you pretend you're looking at only drawing one million dollars from your fund balance if all that occurs rather than the five.

Okay.

I think I've been using the metaphor of like the glacier outburst, because that's very unique to Juno in that July one, we'll have balanced our budget on 5.7 million dollars and we'll have the glacier outburst happen of our and our fund balance will be kind of depleted.

And then throughout the school year, we'll actually realize what our health insurance waivers are.

We'll realize what our actual 27 vacancies are and our fund balance will start growing again to then come August of 2027, another outburst of fund balance use.

Okay, and are we hopeful at all that we're gonna get more BSA from the state?

Ms.

Adkinson, where are you?

So I think um to kind of tag on to that, um balancing a budget off of prior year fund balance is not without risk, um, which I think maybe is in part what you're getting at.

Um so if we do have those higher vacancies, if we have a higher um health insurance participation, um, any number of other factors that could impact those numbers and what that fund balance is that we are currently utilizing to meet next year's budget.

Um at some point could become problematic.

Um there could be a fiscal cliff.

Now, you know, again, trying to manage that, making sure, you know, we're not using fund balance from this past year and also factoring in a healthy vacancy rate.

Um, you know, we've we've chosen to do one basically or the other and not both within a single year budget.

Mr.

Kelly.

Thank you.

I didn't have a list, but uh I feel a little inspired from the conversation about communication that we were that we were having.

I mean, this committee meets this joint committee meets once a year, usually.

Um, I wouldn't necessarily probably lose a few friends on both bodies if I tried to pile on more meetings.

Um, and I think the solution is probably also not piling on a bunch of more uh topics into uh Mr.

Steininger's um lunchtime meeting.

One hour long meeting.

But I I am also thinking about the um the liaison assignment um as the assembly we do have a liaison, I think this year it's Mr.

Brooks.

Um I was, I guess kind of wondering if maybe there's an opportunity to use that role a little differently.

I think at this point, we usually just send Mr.

Brooks or whoever our liaison is for the year to observe meetings, but maybe there's an opportunity to realize that role in a different way.

And also on the topic of communication, um, I want to note that uh Miss From Hertz did uh reach out to me a couple weeks ago with with the text message, and um I'd like to open that up as a possibility.

Any other school board member, um, especially those who I've served with in the past, um, are welcome to to reach out to me at any time.

She reaches out to me too.

Yeah, yeah, and any any anybody is welcome to reach out to any one of us.

I mean, on the school board, so yeah.

Um, Mr.

Whitney, we'll come back to you.

Sorry, I didn't want you to think I forgot you.

Yeah, so I I had um one more discussion topic I wanted to bring up.

Um, and it had to do it was to the mayor.

Um Mr.

Kelly mentioned earlier about efficiency potentials, and this was something that we discussed about last time I we discussed last time I was on the board, and the idea was to explore sort of a zone heat pump for the whole JD HS through Harborview complex of buildings, and back then it was just it was mostly school district buildings with the university, and now it's a mix of cities, university, and school district buildings.

But the idea was instead of having boilers and furnaces that just put in a single heat pump into the channel and heat the whole complex, and it died because the you know the heat zone was via was in play and for that project to go forward all the all the public buildings had to be customers, so until the zone heating actually so it died because of the zone heating potential.

But I think that's probably not gonna happen at this point.

I think it's safe to say so.

It's probably a topic worth exploring again to maybe hook all that.

There's a lot of square footage there, and we burned a fair amount of oil, I think.

And it's it's probably worthwhile to add that to your committee meeting and add to your one hour lunch.

Just a broad thought that I wanted to bring back up to putting people's minds again.

That's the end of my list.

I only have two things.

I'm looking at you skeptically on that one, but uh because we were to rely on the private, and that has pretty much been has not moved forward at all.

So um anybody else?

Oh, yeah, two over there, Ms.

Collum and then Mr.

Brooks.

Um, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, but um, one of the things when you ask if we thought there was going to be any change with the BSA.

I am looking at that, but there's also um some legislation that's uh they're discussing about um correspondence schools.

And um, if that ends up happening, um, that would be a um all of those students who are outside of our district, all of those funds would then be part of our funding source.

So that is something I am looking forward to.

I think it's 422 or 442 house bill.

Um, I'm really curious to see where that goes.

So when we're looking at funding, I think there's there's potential, but I don't know where it will.

Thank you for that.

I had not heard about that.

Yeah, I just got an email about it today.

So here you go.

Um, Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

And there's just uh two parts.

One is to like the the communication side, kind of what uh assembly member Kelly was talking about, and just my role in the liaison's position.

There have been multiple instances where uh you guys have discussed, you know, uh let's reach out to the city and see where they're on this.

A lot of those times you can ask me.

Like I'm I'm part of it there, and uh I'm uh I there's been multiple instances where I do have a little bit of input for you guys on that and stuff, and feel free to ask me anytime.

It's like, hey, we have our liaisons from the city.

Let's see if they've talked about this at all.

And I tune into every single meeting.

So I'm there as a resource for you guys as well.

Uh and then to uh uh board member Whitney's uh mention on the district heating.

I'm a huge fan of heat pumps and would like to see them all over the community.

And I I think that there definitely is an efficiency to be had for doing a mini split system on uh municipal buildings, but uh it gets lost a little more when you talk about the ground source heat pumps because of the costs associated, you know.

So it's like it definitely is worth it for an efficiency standpoint, but specifically for the ground source, you know, definitely looking at other other options that are a little more cost prohibitive.

Um thank you.

I'm wondering if Mr.

Seiniger has terms of reference for the joint facilities committee, and could you share it with all of us ahead of our meeting?

Terms of reference.

This is my concern.

I mean, as long as I've been on this board, no one's been quite clear on the purpose of that committee.

So while we've all joked and assigned you a long agenda, the Zante Community Playground is a great example where clearly we don't understand how that committee works.

So before we design an agenda and meet, it might be best if we agreed on terms of reference.

Yeah.

Uh so the committee meets as needed.

Yeah, the meeting that is scheduled for 30th or 31st.

30.

Anyway, 30th or 31st at noon.

31st, thank you.

Um that was kind of instigated by discussions in our budget process as the assembly regarding bonding and whether or not to put a school bond debt package on the ballot this fall.

And in order to have that discussion, you know, we have to have that meeting is kind of how we inform that.

So the committee with a facilities committee, that it's a separate committee of the school board.

It's a joint committee between the school board and CBJ assembly.

Yeah, but our joint committee is with you know, and maybe I can clarify here.

So when was when I was tasked to have this committee meeting on the bonds, I reached out to uh President Choney Haywood and Superintendent Houser saying, you know, I've been tasked with having this meeting, you know, this is the topic, you know, it's kind of not my responsibility to schedule a facilities committee meeting for the school board.

So my assumption is the school board, you know, through the the president will have that discussion as a school board to you know, if you need to come to some kind of agreement on your own before you come to the joint meeting, or if we want to just have that discussion the joint meeting, but you know, kind of that is a process, you know, the the committee meeting happens, it informs you folks, and and we work through that process.

Go ahead, Mr.

Whitney.

Yeah, um through the mayor.

Um Dr.

Siddon, so I mean the district can't we don't we have no way to raise money, we can't issue bonds.

That's the city has authority to do that.

So the facilities committee is an internal school district body, and it was brought forward to the facilities committee because we do put together the CIP list and we went over that in the facilities committee because in light of this, the request from the city to meet on the bonding issue.

And so we put that from the facilities committee, we put that information in the board packet, and we asked the board members to look over that and give input.

But the process for issuing bonds working with the city is through this joint committee.

So it's not not the facilities committee.

We facilities committee has no authority to maybe this helps them and and maybe this helps them, maybe it doesn't.

So if the committee talks about bonds and either side doesn't think they move forward, then it stops.

But if both sides think it moves forward, then it goes to you guys and it comes back to the body because you're correct, they are not a uh decision-making committee, and then the assembly and the school board differently decide whether to move forward on that.

I uh on it from kind of clarity.

I think my understanding was it was that joint committee that would meet with the assembly.

I mean, that's why we have the separate joint committee within the school board structure.

But we know bonds and facilities.

So why is a subset of us meeting with the assembly about bonds?

That's what we've done in the past to have both sides meet as a smaller group.

So we don't have to have continual joint meetings, but we want to have continual joint meetings, we can do that too.

Just requesting terms of I'll go back to that request.

I'm not sure what that do you mean agenda?

Do you mean agenda topics?

I don't know what you mean.

Even what kinds of topics this assemblage of three of each of us would talk about.

Yeah, like yeah.

What what decision making authority did you have on the playground?

Is that even why is that?

Do you talk about I would think you would talk about joint facilities projects at that committee?

And yet that process we've all identified didn't work.

So I'm asking before we meet again on another project that we outline what that committee is going to do, and that that both bodies, all members of both bodies understand the authority of that subset of three of us.

Because that has not been clear in the past.

Yeah.

To be fair, I don't think the joint committee met about the playground.

Yeah, you did.

And you would district would buy the equipment, which only three of you cannot decide to do.

So anyway.

Okay, and I do think it's mentioned in our rules and procedures, just so you know.

Is that a formal motion there, madam?

I I'm looking at whether anyone is interested around here in doing that.

I know we don't have authority to make a decision tonight as a group, but I would say if you object and say that's not a good way forward, then we can drop it and pick it up another day.

Any questions, comments, thoughts.

If there is some reference and you have something.

Yeah, I would I don't think that I've seen that.

Um, so that would be useful for me in this role.

Okay.

There's some sort of rules or governing document or something.

It's very like three or four lines, so it's not a big deal.

Um, I will take some of this credit because when I was on the assembly, this didn't meet much.

And I what was problematic then is we would go through our CIP process, and then the school district could say, Oh, we need something like this.

And so it wasn't in our CIP process.

So my thought was why initially got this backfired back up was let's work, which we did for a few years and it went well on COVID probably killed it, is where it probably died a little bit.

Is we came up with um projects that you guys needed that we could get into our CIP.

So that's where we get did three roofs, and I think a couple boilers.

So we did it did work good work, good work then, and then I think COVID kind of hit it, and we've never quite caught the stride back up.

So that's what we were initially planning.

So um my only problem, I'll talk um, Ms.

Wall is I'd rather not have staff do it.

I would rather have us do it.

That's fine.

This feels like a hard way to do anything.

So that was my idea was to kick it back to somebody to make a straw dog.

If someone here wants to volunteer to work on something, that would work for me too.

I I just think this is hard by committee without something on paper, at least for me.

Um Ms.

Siddon has a different thought process of what we should do differently.

I'm open to that.

Well, it didn't work for me for the Zontacini playground.

You have to use the mic.

It didn't work for me for the Zontighini playground.

Okay, I there's more to that story than what we'll get into tonight.

That is all I've heard all night tonight.

Is there's like a bunch of things people don't know anything about if we're going, I mean, maybe I'll just I'm walking away from this with a real unclear understanding of how communication works between these two bodies.

Not very well, apparently.

Um okay, well, I'll just throw it out.

No plan to do anything about it.

No, we're open to suggestion.

We're trying, but um so I'm I'm speaking for myself here and not the body, because there were some members that were here and some members that weren't.

Um I think we got I feel that we got blindsided by the Zonta Kini playground at a very huge price, and we were told that we were paying for it, and that's I think where it started to go downhill from there.

Um, that was very um troubling.

And so, and that's where it came to the public works committee, and that's when Mr.

Smith said, I think we need to cut the price tag down, and so it was a difficult topic to go through.

So, Mr.

Whitney, yeah.

And this one, I mean, through the mayor, I mean, Dr.

Sidon and this one, this case that we're on March 31st that we're meeting on.

Um, the city brought forward the possibility of issuing bonds, and we in facilities we revisited our CIP list, and then I mean, we were informed that that's why we're doing it because this was happening, and then we presented that at the last board meeting.

It's in the it's in our packet, and everybody board member was a encouraged to look at that in light and give comment to the committee members before this March 31st meeting, and it all seemed pretty clear to me.

I'm not really sure how we can make that more transparent or I mean to me, it's pretty I don't understand what's not working there.

It's I mean this from our I'm assuming that um Adam Walls uh motion is still on the table.

I would second it.

I think uh we don't we don't suck it anyway, and we would do two different problems.

I'm so used to saying that but thank you, Madam Clerk.

Like we I guess I'm just wondering how we can move forward with a plan of communicating.

Um speaking to where um member Whitney has mentioned the intent and and his his clarity.

I'm just wondering.

Um I guess a signal for me looking thinking back to the last meeting would a signal to me of would be like would would the liaison would C B would CBJ be sitting at the table having and having to unpack the question and the request.

Um it's just a simple i action and trigger.

I don't know what it's something that I'm thinking, but I just we have to figure out how we're gonna communicate, otherwise, because we can't we can't be we can't have another playground debacle.

I would agree, and yes, uh, I apologize, Ms.

Wall, your motion is on the table.

So um we'll deal with that right now.

Um appreciate your seconding, but we don't second, and you can't vote on our motion.

Um Mr.

Smith would you would you remind me?

Would you remind me what the motion was again?

Ms.

Wall, would you repeat your motion?

I would move to direct CBJ staff to work with JSD staff on a proposed process for both bodies to better communicate and make decisions about JSD facility projects.

Joint joint projects.

All right, so um it would I I appreciate everybody wanting to jump on this, but it's our member, and we'll have to vote.

So if you guys want to follow up with your own vote, that would be perfect, but I don't know that a mixed vote's gonna work.

So um, any objection, Mr.

Steininger.

I think you're objecting for the purposes of question.

Yeah, I guess I'm trying to understand uh a little bit better.

So a process for communication when we're dealing with projects outside of the normal budget process.

I mean, I don't even know the answer to that question, which speaks to after six years, how confusing it is when we work on a project that is supposed to be we're supposed to be communicating together about, and so um so I'd like some clarity on that follow-up, go ahead, Mr.

Stein.

Um I'm I'm kind of struggling to think of within the you know, kind of bounds of our normal government process of refer to committee, committee does work, committee refers back to assembly.

How what other than that basic process are are you looking for, I guess is is what I'm asking.

What I would expect that that's a helpful question for me is right now the assembly has their process and the school board has their process, and never the twain shall meet how do those processes work together, and then things happen on the staff side that I really don't understand.

And so if if I think they can help us with our governance processes and how they interact, even if it's just explaining how it currently works is supposed to work, but also you know, on their side that that's where I think a lot of the confusion is for us.

Sometimes we know they're talking, but we don't understand how you guys approach those things.

So some framework would be helpful for me.

I and I am just throwing out ideas here based on this conversation, so we could put a pin on it to get more specifics later.

Okay, Mr.

Steininger, you have an objection for purposes of question.

Are you still asking questions?

No, I guess I'm hearing like a table in a demilitarized zone between the two bodies to come to and have conversations.

Oh, remove my objection.

I see Mr.

Kelly, you had your hands up.

Uh yeah, also for the purposes of the question.

What I guess where would it be for the maker of the motion?

Where would your intention be for them for staff's input to go?

Would it go to a specific committee or is that just kind of left open at this point?

Good question.

What I think would be great is for it to go to the joint committing, knowing that when you guys come up with the proposal, it may be that it's supposed to go somewhere else, but some col we already have a body that is supposed to meet together, and so that seems like the right place to take that proposal.

I'll remove my objection.

Okay, anything further from the assembly?

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

I'd object for the purpose of an amendment.

I go ahead.

Definitely like the um the desire and want to do that, but I think getting a um working group with a couple assembly members, a couple of the board members and city staff to do an update on what the rules, procedures, and obligations of that subcommittee are and ir amount between all parties involved in a discussion and then uh bring it back.

I'll object to that um because we have a committee that already that could do that.

Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, madam mayor.

The only reason I wanted all parties to be involved for hashing out what the updates of rules and procedures would be for what our obligations are on the subcommittee is because when it was just I think part of the reason of what happened with the playground was because it was just mainly in staff's hands for decisions for a lot of it.

So if we're all wondering what is what is our roles and our purposes here, do we want like do we want to discuss and refine that, or we do we want the staff to just tell us and then get confined to that?

I think what correct me if I'm wrong, Ms.

Wall, you wanted the staff to just come up with a starting point to discuss to go to the committee.

Did I get that wrong, or is that right?

That is correct, and you know, it doesn't have to be that way, but I think they have a better understanding of how they work together on some of these things, I'm guessing, than we do.

And so I'm hoping that they can help if to have a starting place.

That help or not, Mr.

Brooks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

It it helps.

I I just thought that the issue was between the communication between us and the school board, not necessarily this the staff's abilities.

You know, I think the staff have it on lock.

We're the ones who don't have it on lock.

And so us getting together and defining exactly what our roles are, I think would be more beneficial to the underlying issue.

Okay, well, we have an amendment and we have objection.

Anyone else want to talk about this before we take a vote?

Uh, Madam Clerk, Mr.

Ms.

Hall.

I guess I'm objecting to the amendment.

I just feel like it muddies the waters at this point.

We're we're asking for staff to tell us, you know, kind of how they they do it and and uh you know the process that works best for the two bodies, and um, and I feel like getting too far into the weeds on this is just gonna make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Mr.

Brooks.

I I definitely appreciate that.

And I mean it already seems very complicated as is.

Yeah, could you repeat the amendment from uh Ms.

Wendell's sake?

Yes, uh, it would uh be to have uh members of each of the organizations, CBJ, JSD, and city staff get together and work on updates of what our um uh rules, procedures, and obligations are from the subcommittee body.

All right, with that, we have an amendment and objection, madam clerk.

Will you call roll?

Assemblymember Brooks.

Yes, assembly member Smith.

No Assemblymember Kelly, no Assemblymember Hall, no Assembly Member Atkisson, no mayor Wolden.

No, so that brings us back to the motion, main motion.

Is there an objection?

Seeing none, that motion passes.

So I'll send it to you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Do we want to make a motion to on our side to support those?

So I think it would need to be something very close to member walls.

That's why I'm looking at I the clerk, uh Madam Clerk, will you repeat the motion that we just passed?

Thank you, Mayor Weldon.

The motion was to direct CBJ staff to work with JSD staff on a proposed process for both bodies to better communicate and make decisions about JSD facility joint project projects.

Can I move the previous motion on behalf of the school board?

Sure.

Let's do that.

Let's do that.

I'm seconding.

So Dr.

Sinon, you moved I did the previous motion on behalf of the school board.

And we do do seconds.

So yeah, Ms.

Romhurst was our second.

Okay.

Any objections?

I have discussion.

Okay.

Objections for discussion.

We just discussed.

We're much more agreeable.

We're learning so much about each other.

Mr.

Whitney.

Yeah, so I mean, in the facilities committee, that I mean, regular members are the city engineers and along with our operation director.

I don't I don't know if I've since I've been back on the board.

I don't know if there's been a committee meeting without city staff present.

And when Mr.

Kelly and I, we got to work pretty closely with Nathan Coffey when we were on the committee before.

So I mean we do have a process and a procedure, and the city's engineers and our operation director are jointly informing the committee, and then that goes to the board, which is exactly what happened with this current issue before the meeting.

So and that's been when I first came on the board in 2016.

That was the well-established procedure too.

I don't know what happened in the pandemic.

I don't know what happened with the Zonkatini playground, but that seems to be what's working now.

So I'm I guess I don't understand what we'll do besides that, or if we're going to reinvent what we've done forever, or I think the idea is to like outline on paper what this process is.

Um Dr.

Sinon.

As a maybe because I have a tactical example person.

I see it in the facilities committee report.

Do you so it has not come to the full board as an action item?

Um if I can finish, okay.

This is so this is what I'm trying to avoid.

And this is what happened with the Zontakini playground.

It never had consensus with four board members.

It's three members in committee, and then it's three members on the project team, and it never came to the full board for a vote.

And that is exactly the process that's about to play out for the CIP list going to the project team.

The three members going to the project team on the 31st have no authority to speak on behalf of the board, and that's a problem.

Follow up on that one.

So the CIP list did go before the board.

Well, this most recent one, but that's the one that we already voted on and approved in previous meeting.

I did it.

I I believe we did.

Um, but that we brought it back because there's going to be a potential bond issue.

And we don't have right to, we don't it was informational item in this last meeting.

We and then with input from the board, the members of the committee will go to this committee, and then that'll come back from the board.

And I believe I actually haven't voted on a bar, but I imagine we'd have to vote on it in a regular meeting after the committee brings a recommendation back.

So we're not that far.

We're still in the committee process.

Okay.

So let's circle back though the to the motion that's on the floor, which is we ask that staff work together in outlining this process on our end.

We need to direct the staff.

So CBJ has now directed their staff.

Are we going to direct our staff to again help line out this process that hopefully might resolve some issues and clarific provide some clarification?

So I'm guessing you can tell where I stand on this.

So there was objection for discussion.

Is there more discussion?

Ms.

Collum.

I'm just going to reiterate for um board member Whitney that we still don't have an idea of what's going on.

So I think this is the reason why we need to um creating a framework that we all understand.

Further discussion.

Seeing none.

Is there still objection?

All right.

Then I'll ask if there's any objection to passing this motion.

Seeing none, the motion carries.

Thank you.

Mr.

Bricks said, do you have something we we didn't want to talk when they were doing their thing?

Did you have anything to add?

Thank you, madam mayor.

And it's just the taking a few steps back and looking at the direction here.

And you know, maybe someone can correct me if I have a misconception, but I thought one of the issues, one of the the reasons that led to the issue that was facing was a playground was because of the system that's already put in place.

So now we directed staff to come back and tell us about that system, but that doesn't fix the fact that it got us in the scenario.

So what I was trying to suggest is that hey, there's obviously an issue with this process, so why don't we all get together and hash out a way that this process can work better for everyone?

Well, we hope that's what happens, but we'll see.

Um other topics.

Okay, sorry, school board, but one of the best ways to communicate is we have a liaison to your board.

You do not have one to ours.

Just put in it out there.

Um Mr.

Brooks does report on it every uh every assembly meeting, he does report on what happened with the school board.

So just a thought.

Put it in that.

Mr.

Smith.

I don't want to belabor it because it's nine o'clock and we already have too many late meetings.

But I mean, we are separately elected boards.

We have our own purview, we set our own policy, set our own budget.

I don't know if the liaison is the is the correct pathway to transmit information personally when I was liaison, I would have not felt like that was uh in terms of like, yeah, in terms of like a direction from the assembly.

I mean, I guess or from the school board, I might say they passed a resolution asking for this, or you know, there's some official motion, and I could transmit it, but I would also imagine they'd send it in an email or something.

Um anyway, like I I think this this is a good discussion.

I do we are just that we are separately elected boards with different with budgets and policy.

I mean, I don't want to say like the assembly to the like, but it you know, we've had to figure out how to communicate with our delegation and the legislature with priority lists and um and those type of things, but anyway, it it it's it I I there is room to improve and I'm I'm fully for it.

But um Ms.

Wall Maybe in my experience, I don't know if this is what you're trying to say, Miss Mr.

Smith.

But like if the board wants to convey a message to the assembly, uh writing it down and sending it to the body is the best way.

I have seen you all do that.

You did it to us recently.

We all got that.

There, but not, but probably if you didn't hear me say that, you might say, oh, Mr.

Brooks is gonna relay that message, or the mayor is gonna relay that message.

And my experience, no, that not calling you two out, but like the best way is to make sure we all get it, which may sound um obvious, but isn't always the case.

And if it's helpful to do it the opposite direction too, we can do that.

Yeah, anything else.

Sure, Ms.

Hall, give us a celebration.

I'll just say I I feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel.

You know, the BSA additional money may be sent towards it, even if it's in one-time funding.

We're about to have a switch out in leadership at the state level, and I I feel like all of you that have served during this time these last 10 years or so of flat funding, it's just been so challenging.

And um, you know, I I think we need to look ahead and be hopeful and um and thank those of you who suffered through the past 10 years.

Yeah, and thank you for the cell phone ban.

Yes, we appreciate that.

Anything else from anybody?

All right, going once, going twice.

Uh giving it back to you, Ms.

Wall.

Thing.

Oh, I'll take it to agenda too, though.

Thank you.

Um that brings us to agenda topic number four, information only.

You have an updated AFC budget calendar, members of the assembly dates and such have not changed.

We just moved a few things around on the April 1st meeting, which is our next meeting at 545.

Oh, because that is introduction of the budget.

Okay.

Um, Mr.

Smith.

I'll I'll just say that I'm gonna ask you about where the finance committee might talk about bonds on this schedule because I I didn't search.

I mean, I looked at my I searched with my eyes, but I did not, you know, do an actual search, but wanted to see if that would be on there, but we can we'll figure that out.

Thanks.

Yeah, thank you.

We have you're you are correct.

We have not chosen a place for it.

I assume it's going to be down here somewhere, but um we'll work on figuring out what makes sense.

Thank you for bringing that forward.

Um with that, we are adjourned.