To our special meeting of Wednesday, March 25th, 2026.

Please join me for a flag salute.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

The Assembly of the City and Borough of Sitka would like to respectfully acknowledge the traditional first people of Sheepka.

With gratitude, we proceed on Clinketani.

Sarah Roll Call, please.

Mayor Eisenbais.

Mr.

Pike.

Here.

Ms.

Carlson.

Here.

Ms.

Riley.

Here.

Mr.

Saline.

Here.

Mr.

Christianson is going to try and join, so he may be late.

All right.

Well, we'll uh send best wishes to Alaska Airlines.

It'll be by Zoom.

Oh, well, I hope the internet works then.

He's at a conference in Gino, so thank you, Sarah.

That'll bring us to persons to be heard.

This is public participation for any item off of tonight's agenda, not to exceed three minutes for any individual.

See none.

So tonight we are gathered to talk about our draft fiscal year 27 budget.

I think we have quite a few things to go through tonight, so I will uh just turn it straight over to John and we can jump right in.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um as you said, we're here to uh talk about the general fund budget tonight.

Um you've been uh you've received the draft version of the budget, and I know we've got uh a deficit to work through.

Um this is where the hard decisions come in.

Um Brooke will have a presentation for us.

Uh and but before we jump into the presentation, as with any iteration of budgets, we find um some minor errors along the way, and uh what you've seen for a deficit was uh a bit higher than uh than what we're actually seeing now, so there are a few corrections that have already been incorporated in there, and we'll we'll hear about that in the presentation.

But uh just a reminder for everyone we're we're at that point now where any changes to the budget, we would appreciate uh a motion and a vote so we can incorporate those changes.

But with that, I'll let Brooke jump in.

Okay, good evening.

Before I jump into the presentation, I wanted to give kind of a little uh do a little bit of housekeeping.

So um the first thing is that um a lot of the information that I put in the narrative for the packet is not gonna be covered during the presentation.

Um it was meant to serve primarily as background information or things that would be useful, but I'm I'm not gonna regurgitate some uh a lot of that information.

Um the other piece is that there are a couple of differences between what you're gonna see in the presentation and that packet.

Um the health insurance one I will explain when we get there.

Uh there's a small, there's like a four about a four hundred dollar difference in the sinking fund payment amount.

That is um from rounding we did when we entered those numbers into our system.

So um, I'm aware that those are in there, and the um the material one I will talk to you about why it looks like that.

So, first off, um this is a slide that I've had in some of my presentations before, and and John kind of covered the most important part of it, which is just that at this point um for the assembly to make changes, that should be through a motion.

Um, and so that we can actually incorporate that into the final draft.

Thank you.

So, kind of some preliminary information on um understanding the general fund budget, governmental funds, like the general fund work a little bit different than enterprise funds.

So there's a few things that are the same for both kinds of funds and then other things that are unique.

So it's important to remember that the adopted budget um it does represent a plan for revenues and and expenditures that actual results are maybe you could say may differ, it will.

It's that I don't think anybody's ever passed a budget that was dollar for the dollar exactly what they thought when it came to the actuals.

Um but the important thing is that our spending can't exceed appropriations.

Um another kind of important thing to consider with governmental funds is that they're budgeted based on outlays, so how cash moves, um, which is something a little bit different for governmental accounting, too.

The revenue estimates that I developed, much like how Melissa did hers too, are um developed pretty conservatively to avoid overestimating our available resources.

And kind of going back to my first point, that that budget it reflects spending authority for the year, but um it doesn't address year-end financial results.

Another kind of good thing to cover is what the balance budget requirement actually means because the general fund has a available unassigned fund balance.

Technically, the assembly could approve the budget with a deficit.

Um what charter uh includes is that your expenditures can't exceed your total estimated revenues and available reserves.

So fund balance is actually considered a funding source in the budget, um, and your your budget could rely on this fund balance to balance your expenditures, um, which would be planning to use reserves.

Um that's not to say that that's a good practice.

Um that would not be best practice because um using your fund balance for ongoing operations isn't a sustainable long-term approach.

So using your fund balances is better suited for things like one-time costs of emergencies or in cases where there's some extreme revenue volatility.

So the first section we'll talk about is revenue.

Um for the general fund revenue is concentrated in a few key sources.

So changes in smaller categories of revenue have a pretty limited impact on the overall budget.

Um are mostly this would be transfers in are mostly purpose driven.

They're not actually new revenue for the most part.

Um again, revenue projections are developed conservatively to reflect uncertainty at this stage.

So we do have a fairly stable source of revenue in property tax, and then a more variable source in in our sales tax.

So kind of some of the highlights overall about um revenue, the total projected revenue in the uh for that 2027 budget is 45.6 million dollars, um, which is actually about 4.5% lower than FY26 if you include transfers.

Um if you exclude transfers, it's about um 3.5% higher.

Um for property tax, um, the projection reflected general upwards trend of about 3%, um, as well as some reappraisals and and new construction.

Um sales tax, I think you guys have been hearing this for a bit, but um that revenue has generally kind of flattened out.

Um we had some prior gains uh from improved remote seller compliance, but that's kind of tapered off as the sales tax commission has made big moves there.

There has been some kind of unusual variability in the most recent quarter for sales tax.

So we're gonna talk a little bit about that.

So overall, um, and this is budgeted revenue.

So out of our budgeted revenue, 44.4% of that revenue is attributable to sales tax for the general fund, um, with property tax being the number two at 19.6 percent, and then um transfers, which like I said, are are not true revenue, um makes up 12.4 percent, and that you expect to be variable because it's very much based on how many capital projects you might have going on, how and and how much you're transferring in from the public infrastructure sinking fund can have a pretty big impact on that percentage.

I guess that is kind of that is a good uh important point to make.

So between sales tax and property tax, that's about two-thirds of general fund revenue.

Okay, so the sales tax um trend, the charts it's kind of ugly to look at sales tax is a bit confusing for people anyway because of the difference between how it aligns with the calendar year and what that means for our fiscal years.

Um so I put both on there.

Probably nobody is gonna care about that except for me.

But in the most recently ended ended quarter, which would be calendar year 2025 quarter four, um, we had about we're seeing about a 7.4% drop in sales tax compared to the same quarter in the previous year.

And um when we did some digging in to look at what why that might be the case, it does um there's a kind of a combination of things um happening.

We've had some more challenges with compliance this fiscal year.

Um I would say it's been trending that way anyway, but I think it's it's probably gotten a little bit worse.

Um, and so we are actively working to get um businesses compliant, and that that can actually make a difference.

Um, another piece of it is when we looked at the detail for individual uh businesses and and what their trend is, it it is looking like the things that we consider more luxury items, um things like eating at restaurants and actually even I mean I don't know if people would consider it luxury, but the bars were not doing quite as well or not reporting as much uh as many sales as they did the previous year.

We don't see that same level of fluctuation in the largest contributors, so the grocery stores weren't showing that um, but we were seeing it, we are seeing a little bit in online sales as well.

Um the quarter before that uh performed as a little bit better than we even expected, so it's not enough to be fully alarmed about, especially because we um there's been government shutdown, there's been some uncertainty that may have impacted um spending decisions that people were making, um, but it is something to keep an eye on if this is reflective of a of a longer term trend that we're going to see.

And so for transfers in, you'll see them depending on what part of the budget you look or which section of the budget look you look at, you might see a called um cash basis receipts, I think.

So uh transfers in for the general fund for 27 are primarily driven by uh CPV, um, the public infrastructure sinking fund and then permanent fund earnings.

Um so they're largely purpose-driven funding sources, they're they do not function the same as general revenue.

So of our budgeted amount for uh of transfers in for 20 FY27, um CPV represents the largest share at 31.8%, followed by our transfer in from the public infrastructure sinking fund at 31.2%.

Um, and then you know, these are all kind of standard transfers in that you would expect to see in our budget, but we have our permanent fund interest amount, and then what we transfer into the general fund to pay for the uh capital projects related to the buildings occupied by the school district.

And we kind of we did talk about this um a bit last night at the assembly meeting.

Um, so I I won't go into a full reminder of of what the uses allowed uses for CPV are, but um, in the transfer in to the general fund from CPV fund for FY27, um, it includes about uh 1.2 million um in that overhead indirect cost amount.

So kind of what is important to note about transfers in and out is is some of them are fixed, like some of them what you see in the budget is the amount we'll transfer, and some are variable.

So that overhead indirect cost is my estimation of what um we will uh transfer in, but it's based on a calculation that's only possible once I have enough information to get the cruise ship passenger count.

So uh it could be up to that amount, but it could also be less depending on what happens there.

Um direct costs make up about uh 490,000 of that transfer, so that's things like the cost of the portable restrooms and the desk attendance that we um hire in the summer for Centennial Hall, all of that kind of stuff that the staff codes internally.

So you would see that coded there.

That's another one to note that if we if that position is vacant, we do not automatically transfer that amount in.

So it's based on what we actually incur in costs for that position.

And then the original like standard amount we were giving the ride was about I think 25,000.

And we did increase that to 100,000 in the FY27 budget with 75,000 of that coming from the CPV fund based on some support that we were given that did justify those numbers.

So that's made up of the CPV portion of the playground, restroom, a CP, a larger CPV portion of the Crescent Harbor restroom replacement project.

That's a 26 project, and then some work that was done on the Sea Walk gazebos this last summer, I believe.

Anyway, I know you've heard it from me a lot, but so the public infrastructure sinking fund is uh restrict restricted by code for repair and replacement of general fund infrastructure, um, typically used to address deferred maintenance and and kind of capital needs over time.

Um it is funded through transfers from available general fund resources.

Um, and my uh recommendation for the FY 2027 transfer from the public infrastructure sinking fund is 1,773,000.

So that's what's included in the draft budget.

Um then we have the school building infrastructure fund, which is a little bit newer.

Um so that is funded by the 1% seasonal sales tax that's dedicated to school facilities, um, and it supports both capital improvements and maintenance.

So the FY 2027 recommended transfer to the general fund is $850,000, which includes the $430,000 in capital project new capital projects for FY27, and then a portion of the maintenance costs.

So that $420,000, I it's I believe it's about uh 60% of the total amount that it actually costs, uh, which is about $720,000.

And that is normal.

We have been doing that.

Um we have been adjusting that amount by um an inflationary increase each year.

That's the end of my section on revenues.

I don't know if anybody wants to ask questions about that specifically or or wait till the end.

Might have bored everyone to sleep.

Okay.

Okay, and now getting into the expenditure side, so kind of the general framing.

Um our expenditures reflect the cost of maintaining current service levels.

So there are a lot of costs in our budget that are fixed or externally driven, things like personnel benefits, um contract.

We don't easily have the ability to eliminate some of those things.

Um increases are the result of prior decisions or commitments, um, and the budget does include both the ongoing operations and then the general funds portion of the internal service costs.

Um, and another reminder that expenditures still they have to remain within our appropriations a lot happening on this slide.

Okay, so some highlights about the expenditures for personnel and benefits.

Um, it does reflect the compensation study and the new collective bargaining agreements from this last year, and uh it does not we have not completed the um the process for PSCA yet, but that will happen soon.

Um it also includes organizational changes, um, so the creation of the assistant municipal administrator position and then that HR specialist.

So now we're getting to the piece that I talked about in the beginning of a number that changes so or changed in the packet under the health insurance projected increase.

I had that as 647,000.

When I was doing my analysis for the presentation, it's not really fair to say that all of that is attributable to the projected rate increase because it is pretty normal for us to have significant fluctuations in health insurance costs from year to year because it's um it's individual staff member specific.

So if we have if we if somebody leaves their former position and they didn't opt into health insurance, and then the new person in it goes for the full family, that's a pretty significant increase in costs without us actually changing anything.

So it is pretty standard to see fluctuations there.

So based on my estimation, about 500 and 500,000 of that, you know, 650 ish thousand increase is attributable to that 15% projection that we have, and then the rest of it is due to those kind of position changes.

This is normal, this timing, it sucks for a budget process, but I don't think it comes as a surprise to the assembly either that we get final rates probably within the next month or so.

Um at that point we'll know what we're actually uh looking at.

Um, and then for another like key highlight area, school support, um, the draft budget does include funding at the maximum allowable level as well as 100% of the secure rural schools funding.

Um internal service costs are another piece, so the version that's printed says increases in IT and building maintenance, it should have said transportation costs.

That's where the increases are building maintenance for the general fund actually did dip down a little bit.

Um again, this does reflect shared services across departments.

So the type of insert in the internal service funds include building maintenance.

If you look at the actual budget, you'll see this uh line item is uh building repair and maintenance spelled exactly like that.

Um fees, and then the central garage allocation is transportation slash vehicles.

Um these costs are allocated across departments and funds based on usage.

Um it does include shared services and direct costs for things like software, fuel, and repairs.

Um increases in these costs uh reflect system needs, facility maintenance and and rising equipment costs.

Um it does the central garage allocation does include the sinking fund payments for vehicle and equipment replacement.

So for sinking fund payments, I don't know if it's been presented this way to the assembly before, but this is kind of what the outlook is for the sinking fund payments.

You would not be able to identify this individually in the budget because it's part of transportation costs.

Um, but the amount for FY27 for the general fund is $670, um, $488.

This is up from 484,915 in FY26.

I'll explain it's not a not all of it is a true increase.

Um so part of this is driven by higher vehicle costs, and and there were some um vehicles and equipment added uh between FY24 and 25 that now is is on track to start making sinking fund payments, but sinking fund the sinking fund has been an area that we have historically used to uh that we have adjusted in order to balance the budget.

So there's been quite a few conversations when staff brings forward requests for new vehicles about sinking funds not having as much of a balance as they should, and that's kind of how you end up there.

Is it ends up being one of the easier costs to cut because it's often not today's problem, but uh eventually it will be.

So I I did think it was worth noting that a portion of the payments relate to newer vehicles that are pretty early in their replacement cycle, which give gives some flexibility and timing because there's more of an opportunity to fund them.

So out of that total 675,000, uh about 189,000 of it is for vehicles between one and five years old, um, another 299,000 for vehicles between six and ten years old, and then 188,000 for vehicles that are 11 years or older.

So this is just kind of a regurgitation of what I have before, but um the school support, so by funding at the maximum allowable level, it is about $178,000 higher than what we had in the budget for FY 2026 for the direct support, and then because it does include 100% of secure rural schools funding, that's another increase of about $300,000 compared to FY26.

Um so we also consider that the fist facility maintenance costs as part of this discussion, and and like I mentioned before, that's about $720,000 for FY27.

And it is um, I think relevant to note that FY 2026 is gonna include some secure rural schools back payments because of the uh bill being authorized.

So this will end up resulting in higher than anticipated funding in the current year for the school district.

Um, we'll have to bring forward a supplemental for to work out the mechanics of that, but so far we haven't received we don't have enough information to know even exactly the total of what we're gonna end up with.

Um so just like we talked about transfers in, these are our transfers out.

So they're primarily um transfers out to the capital project fund, and then um voter directed purposes, i.e.

the seasonal um sales tax increase, um, and it represents funding allocated outside of the general fund rather than um direct operating expenditures.

So the highest the largest amount of this is what we estimate um we'd be transferring into the school building infrastructure fund for that seasonal tax amount, and then second highest is our is our transfers into the capital project fund, which are um significantly lower for FY27 uh than prior years, and and we'll talk about that a little bit too.

Question on that one for you for fisheries enhancement.

Uh there's a split there with the fish box tax uh and harbors is an enterprise fund.

So it the portion of it comes into the general fund and then goes over to fisheries enhancement.

So 100% of the fish box amount starts in the general fund, and then I do an entry once a year that transfers the appropriate amount out to fisheries enhancement into the harbors, but it's a little bit lagged, so we have estimates in the budget, but I I want to say it's probably like a four-month lag.

So it's not you know, you might be receiving prior year amounts.

So the tobacco excise tax just goes straight into the hospital fund, it doesn't go one place before the next.

Okay, thank you.

Correct.

Okay, and then going right into the capital project.

So I I'm not gonna cover too much the I will admit that that capital project summary sheet is pretty ugly to look at at the moment because there are a lot of projects on there.

We know there are significant amount of active and ongoing projects, and and we are working to close some of those out and identify our inactive projects to kind of clean up that list.

That's part of the reason we're requesting a minimal transfer into capital projects for FY27 to give us time to deal with that.

Um and our existing commitments do already represent a pretty substantial level of investment from the general fund.

That is my last slide on the expenditure side.

Okay.

So good news.

And then I think I believe we can reallocate some library tools and equipment to the library endowment fund, which uh reduces the deficit by uh just under 86,000.

So we that revised deficit is down to 883,250.

This next piece, I'm gonna talk, I spend a little bit of time talking about this because this looks a lot simpler than it is.

Um but when we talk about our you know the primary operating costs that are you know driving some of this, uh the largest chunk of it is that projected health insurance increase.

I think that's pretty normal.

Um the secondary amount is that additional funding for school support.

And then the benefits line, this is where it needs a little bit of an explanation.

So how I split this out is that 500,000, like I talked about is what I'm estimating is just the rate increase.

And then when you see that benefits line that has staffing and plan changes and the health insurance impacts, that includes the rest of the health insurance.

Um that the change would be attributable to changes in staffing and turnover.

I'm gonna jump in here and put it in a little more plain language.

It's but it's positions like mine, right?

Where I was here um coverage elsewhere, didn't need it, but um planning for a replacement for me, um, and and any moves like this, um, those positions will have to be forward budgeted for uh um a full health insurance plan for ever the next employee is and then the sinking fund payment piece.

I already kind of covered that, that that is a larger amount than the previous year, not because we shouldn't have put that much in, um, but because there was also a deficit that we were working with last year.

Um IT fees are kind of a good one to talk about too.

There's IT create um costs have gone up quite a bit, partly because of how much more cybersecurity we need.

Um that landscape has changed a lot over the last few years, and it just becomes more and more important for our data to be secure, and that unfortunately is not for free.

Um central garage, that increase in cost line.

I I would a lot of that is just the increased cost of vehicles and and the parts that are associated with those um for the IT fees.

How much of that increase has been from subscription increases that happened year over year?

Don't think I could tell you that offhand.

I have an allocation spreadsheet that could probably dig that out, but we don't that's not how we code it.

So I would have to work between two different sets of GLs to find it, but I could.

I would not the majority of it.

A lot of it is network switches and Microsoft licensing costs a lot.

Granted.

Right?

Yes.

Okay.

Thanks.

Maybe I didn't spend that much time on it.

Also on IT.

Now here's cybersecurity.

Uh and I pair that with past conversations about moving to the cloud.

Um, when we are an island with one cable.

Um there's a bigger discussion there on on why we are seeking cloud-based services when um where liability is an inherent and increase in cybersecurity expenses are significantly increasing our our budget.

Bigger conversation.

There's just a couple more slides left.

So I covered this a little bit in the packet as well.

Um, but not all of those resource, so the resource proposals included in the uh draft budget could be reconsidered um in order to balance at least partly balance.

Um, but only the resource proposals without offsetting transfers from other funds actually reduce that deficit if they were removed, um, which is a smaller amount.

So the total potential deficit reduction if you uh eliminated all those resource proposals that did not have offsetting transfers would be 663,000.

Brooke, is that that it would reduce by 663,000 or the balance would be 67 or the deficit?

It would reduce the deficit by 663,000.

So the last piece I have yet is the last is talking a little bit about our fund balance and and kind of what that means is a lot of boring accounting words there.

And you can see this in the AC for you can see pieces of it.

Um if you so chose page 22 in case anybody wants to look at that later.

Um but we do have an unassigned fund balance as of the end of FY 2025 of $9 million.

Um this is a little bit higher than normal to make sure that there's funding available as matched for some projects.

Um that was discussed in the uh the memo for the public infrastructure seeking fund transfer a few months ago.

What this does, what that nine million doesn't include is uh emergency reserve that we have of two million dollars.

Um we have a required working capital amount for liquidity, that's nine point four million dollars.

And then um we've talked about this on and off over the last year, but um there was an advance to the hospital fund related to um uh liability that they had in order for us to return those funds to the general fund.

Um, there's some escrow account resolution that has to take place.

Once that does take place, it it will add another 3.1 million.

But right now that's considered non-spendable because it's not actually available.

Um we talked about this a little bit last night too, but um, an important thing to consider is the impact of any FY 2026 supplementals on this fund balance.

So there's been about 1.8 million dollars so far in additional appropriations.

Um this doesn't include the E911 funded appropriations because those come from a committed fund balance, which is something different.

Um that may end up being funded from current year revenues or the unassigned fund balance.

It depends how it depends on the results of FY 2026, and and we won't have a good feeling on that until we get to the end of the year.

Question on that hospital piece.

Um, what's the expected timeline for resolution of the escrow?

I don't have an answer on the timeline.

All I can say is it's not off our radar.

Uh, we've been working on it actually for years.

I think there's um not many of the liabilities that still exist to any level that we need to be concerned of.

Um the biggest concern right now is the attorney that was working on this for us, just recently retired and has handed everything over to someone else.

Um so I hope we're not starting all over again on this process.

But there's a lot of people on the team that are still familiar with it.

Okay, and it is it is still in my inbox and to-do list to uh to address.

Thank you, because that could um solve quite a few budgeting challenges.

I should have put it the end maybe, but no, that's the last slide.

I will I I want to add some things if you're if you're finished with the presentation.

So um we obviously don't want to come in here and say here's a $900,000 deficit, figure it out.

Um, you know, we've we've got some options that uh have been put together, and I just want to throw these out there to stir some discussion, and I know there will need to be some tough decisions made.

Um, but uh Brooke has run them by me.

There's uh there's two potential sources where we could get the uh the deficit eliminated.

Um our first option, and there's there's a list of them here.

Um I know this will be a sensitive topic.

Our our first option is to for this this next fiscal year go back to the traditional 50 percent school funding for uh secure rural schools.

Uh we remove the athletic field sand project that was 250,000, um move that forward into another year.

Um, we just bought three two or three three new police vehicles.

Was that a three?

I can't see that far anymore.

Um three new police vehicles.

Um, and I know we had we had some more vehicles in this ask.

Um we could push the the interceptor purchase for that next round another year.

Um we could not make sinking fund sinking fund payments for vehicles or equipment that are just between the one and two-year-old phase since they're new vehicles, um, and we could reduce the um the project delivery resource proposal um for public works by 10,000 dollars, and that would come to a total savings of 886,000.

And we could reduce the project delivery resource proposal for public works by 10,000, and that would come to a total savings of 886,000.

Our other option, this is more favorable for the schools, but still a reduction for them in this next year is do a 7525 split.

So reduce uh by 25 percent, that's a savings of 150,000 to the city.

Um again, the athletic field sand goes away, the PD interceptors are gone for this year, um, and then sinking fund payments are deferred for equipment that's between one and six years old, a little more risk there.

Uh $15,000 reduction in the planning code resource proposal and a $15,000 reduction of the project delivery RP out of public works, and that'll get us to $886,000.

But those are two options for consideration and and areas that we've looked at.

Uh and of course, the the RPs are all open for discussion as well.

And Brooke has kind of outlined what uh what savings can be experienced there.

Uh great, thank you for the the presentation.

And John, that uh kind of answers part of how I wanted to start this conversation was you know, are you looking for suggestions on resource proposals?

Are you looking for suggestions on pencils and pens, right?

Um how deep are we going into the the budget at this point?

Um you know that I also had another thought that uh it's it's kind of the easy way out for us, but maybe it's the more polite way out because we we don't know the in intricacies of the budget.

Um, but just to hand it back to you and say no, we want a balanced budget.

Um the flip side of that, you said you would uh reduce the uh in or the um sinking funds for vehicles, um which to me is a non-starter that uh that fund needs to work as it does as it's supposed to, and all that is doing is kicking the can down the road to a future assembly.

So I'm I'm not in support of that, but yeah, I think the the question for me uh to start the conversation is you know, are you looking for thoughts on resource proposals?

Are you looking for thoughts on individual line items within the budget?

Like how how can we best help this process along as we go forward here?

Because uh it's a rather large deficit, and I don't think we should be cutting it by ourselves in uh in a somewhat blind spot.

I mean, I I think I would start by saying are any of the options even a mix of any of the individual items in these options first are are those on the table because we we've already heard that if we cut every one of the resource proposals we're gonna save 663,000 and still have a couple hundred more thousand we're gonna have to come up with.

Um like I said, the resource proposals are fair game, those are the things I if we are looking for areas to to cut that aren't in here.

Um those are the new things.

Um of those new things, and do we have that in the it's in the packet, right?

It's in the packet.

And I it is important to note that one of those is the uh lift for the central garage.

It's a general funds portion of that equipment that is um pretty important, and if we eliminate the general fund portion, that eliminates that purchase altogether.

So I think questions around these RPs, and we can get back into the discussion of of how critical they are and and um balance that risk of of uh deciding to take it on or not.

Um I know that me personally when I see the IT costs, that's one of the first areas I went to is do we need some of these new IT packages?

And uh I'm very uncomfortable stepping away from some of those, especially the uh the lease and contracting software.

Um that's uh it's huge for us and the um the records request software, although we we put that in the last budget.

Um but there's a lot of things that um are much cheaper than the personnel costs that we're taking on to do these things.

Um but yes, everything everything in the RPs, I think that's where I'd like to start along with the with the options that we've presented.

Yeah, sounds great.

Um, if assembly members have thoughts on resource proposals, um, whether they are dead set on keeping them or could have a discussion to remove them.

Um I have several that I have questions on as well.

So where's this sand stock coming from?

I don't see that anywhere.

So that um last year I was not the finance director, but I was here for the budget meetings.

There was a desire from the assembly to make sure that what we're including in resource proposals was not for things that we were replacing like kind or things that were repairs, it was for new things.

And so that athletic field sand is in the repairs and maintenance area of the grounds budget.

And that was one of the 50,000 or 30,000.

That is 250,000.

250,000.

I think that we just bought three police vehicles, and that uh that is something that I would like to postpone.

Um given the growth in that budget, especially over the past four years, um, which is what I think it doubled uh from some three million to some six million.

So um that was just somewhere that I thought that we could postpone that infrastructure investment.

Um the other thing I was looking at was the zoning code update.

Um the telecommunications tower uh zoning code supplemental that we did was really important, but we already did that one.

The other one is for improving um our zoning code uh and especially for like stuff like ADUs, and while I think this would be very useful, um I want to improve our ADU code uh like I I have separate ideas, you know, that that uh Gary mentioned yesterday I've been working on with him.

Um from my understanding, the updates to this would be um specifically around like liability and updating legalities and making sure we're ADA compliant stuff.

I think that is important.

I do think that can be accomplished in the due course of the overall code rewrite project that will take longer or postponed at least a year.

Um so that is something else that I'm willing to postpone.

And then I would love to hear just how critical the building security is.

But that was something that I was wondering if that could also be pushed off for a year, it seems like it it would be very good to do, um, but also potentially not like mission critical.

So love to hear everyone else's thoughts on those three that I was thinking about.

Yeah, should we just handle those one by one then?

Because I don't want to get too many all stacked up.

Um I'm with you on the police vehicles.

Um take home cars for everybody are nice, but when you have 12 vehicles in the fleet, I think that uh definitely increases the cost there.

Uh John, my question on that.

So uh if I remember correctly, when we had just a couple interceptors for a bunch of officers, we were getting about six years out of them.

Now that we have about one for every officer, it looks like we're still getting six years out of that asset.

Uh, why is our our lifespan not increasing on those with the the reduced usage on each vehicle?

I don't I don't have a good answer for you on that one.

I I didn't come prepared with the uh um with what we're seeing on life span mark.

Do you know any of the the vehicle information off it's okay if you don't?

Um I I don't know.

I I think the focus of this was mainly around uh as much as we can start on a fleet recapitalization.

I I don't um personally want to increase the size of the police fleet, but the uh um the age and the condition of the vehicles we have plus the mixed fleet uh is a is an issue we'd like to resolve.

So um I agree that uh potentially waiting on this one or addressing it in another few years is uh is an option.

Um but we still have other aging vehicles that will will eventually need to be replaced at a sooner rather than later pace Tim.

Yeah, I think so.

This is a conversation that the police and fire commission had a little bit about the age of vehicles and and re um re-upping them and why they have a shorter lifespan than regular vehicles do, and that has to do with the necessity of them being there, right?

They have to be reliable, they have to be able to operate, and they do have a harder life than in general, and they're run pretty continuously.

So I think those are the main reasons, and the recommendation actually, interestingly enough, is not six years, it's actually three years that you replace your police vehicles.

So we're running them longer than the sort of general recommendation on police vehicles in in general.

So I mean, some of these cars are running 24 hours a day, so you know, even if you know, as such, so I think that's an answer for why they have a shorter lifespan, even though we have more of them.

So that's the recommendation.

Having said that, I think postponing at least one of those makes sense.

And switching to hybrids.

We just don't have enough information if that would lengthen or shorten lifespans.

Is that was the switching to hybrids and the use of electric power part of that conversation?

I don't think it changes the recommendation on the lifespan, though.

Okay.

Whatever happened to this city.

I know in the 90s uh the kind of office staff would get the old police vehicles.

Um when was that switch made and is there an option to go back to that if we're looking for longer term if vehicles increasing in expense and we have this supplemental conversation all the time for needing more to buy the one thing that we thought we had saved enough for that's not off the table at all, and as far as I know, that is still a practice that uh exists uh at least on paper.

I think we I don't know who wrote the policy.

I've seen some other people's names signed on it, and it uh it brings up what uh what Mr.

Pike said in that policy, which is really nothing more than a word document about as complex as this.

Um it says that the uh the police vehicles will you will be used for three years and then uh equipment taken off and then absorbed into another department for usage.

So um the the six-year, as he said, is is pretty much double from what he'd planned.

And uh yeah, I I think those interceptors, if there is still useful life in them, um they would be transferred to other departments as necessary.

Brooke.

I I would like to say um while that might be the ideal cycle, that is absolutely not what we've been doing.

We've not we have not been afford been able to afford to do that.

So uh, even in the case of a few years ago, I can't uh recall the exact fiscal year when uh we had purchased new vehicles, they were used.

Um and so those vehicles already came in with um uh uh miles on them and and we still have them.

So we are certainly not um replacing them every three years, and and to be honest, not even every six years at this point.

Um there may be a desire to go that direction, but it has not so far been a feasible option for us financially.

Well, and I mean I think we also had part of the conversation when when uh Chief Gaydon came up talking about changing the sinking fund numbers because they weren't reflective of what the costs were and the fact that their lifespan was less.

So I mean I think there's a lot of factors in involved in that.

Yeah, I think we're you know there's a there's a cost curve as soon as you reach a certain point with a vehicle where the maintenance costs more than it's worth, right?

So you know, I think we we can easily cross over into that in Central Garage gets a bigger number.

Um, but that you know, I think it goes back to that reliability piece, right?

Like we need the police cars to work when we need them to work.

So I would move to eliminate two police interceptors from the resource proposals.

So second.

That's been moved and seconded to remove two police interceptors from the resource proposals in our budget.

Is there any public comment?

Back to the assembly for further deliberation, Tim.

Yeah, I think I'm I'm in I'm in favor of one rather than two at this point in time, and and I'll explain that.

So you pointed out the fact that the police department is up from three to six million dollars, and that's actually a good thing because what that three million reflected was the fact that we were struggling to find officers, and we were struggling to staff our department, we were struggling to get it up to where we needed it to be.

So I think that was an artificially low number and as opposed to fully staffed, what it would actually look like.

And I think Chief Gade made a pretty strong case when he came up here and talked about the interceptors about making sure that we had enough of them for the officers as we got more.

You know, it's you know, we want to make sure everybody has that.

And I'm not sure it was a take-home thing as much as it was uh making sure everybody had it had one so that we could have more officers on patrol, we could be more prepared, we would have more resources going forward.

So I think that was you know, he even talked about if they were at home, they were basically on call.

So I think I'd be in favor of one, but two seems to be um shooting ourselves in the foot here.

JD?

Uh question from Tim as liaison to police and fire.

Uh did the commission vote on a recommendation, or was it a discussion?

It was the sense of the commission, I think would be the case.

Yeah.

I mean, I there was no formal action taken in terms of this when Chief Gaydon, you know, came forward to talk about the fleet.

He made a very, you know, he did essentially the same presentation that we saw, which was how important it is to upgrade the the fleet.

I mean we they were also talking about the fact that we'd had one crash, right?

So we needed to replace that vehicle anyway, which is happening regardless.

So um so I think those are you know it was the same basic presentation as to why.

And reflective of the fact that we are now as the chief pointed out just our last meeting Chief Hall pointed out we are getting more officers online and they're gonna need vehicles remind me of the timeline it takes what two years to get a vehicle made shipped stickered all of that I thought there was a pretty long lead.

Two years more critically is when you order it right so um because they only manufacturem I think from January to March or something like that.

So if you wait too long you won't get in the queue until the next year so you know if we if we wait too long then we're three years away from a vehicle so I think those are is as if we if we postpone these then it's very important for us to realize when we put it back in to make sure that we put it back in in a timely way so that it's not then a longer term wait.

Thank you for that I appreciate that explanation that's gonna be weird for me to say but I guess I'm gonna be a little old school on this one.

I I remember the days of three vehicles um no police chief vehicle and you know a truck if needed so um I'm okay delaying these for now I think if the police chief has a large issue I think just like when we had a vehicle crashed right and they came to us and we provided a vehicle right away if this becomes an issue I think uh they know the route to come back for JJ I remember the days of four and you just had to drive by the police department if you were a teenager and count and be like oh good we don't talk about those secrets nobody also knows what time changeover is either I'm just saying any further discussion on this item Sarah all right the motion before you is to eliminate the resource proposal request for two Ford hybrid interceptors from the budget.

Mayor Eisenbeis Yes Mr Christianson he's not here Ms.

Riley Yes Mr Celine Yes Ms.

Carlson yes and Mr Pike no motion passes 41 perfect uh Katie we'll come back to your other two after our break at the top of the hour um and we'll handle those ones and we'll keep charging tonight thank you all right the assembly is seated we'll continue on uh Katie you had two other ones which one you want to tackle next um can we learn more about the building security 40,000 dollars for replacement of the door security upgrade John please Connor you you can come up I I think I can get the answer right but um as far as city hall security we've got uh lots of keys out there that's one one of the issues the other is the uh um what do you call that push latch I forgot what that's um yeah so we've like a lot of our yeah our crash bars our door hardware um door closers we've just got kind of widespread issues it's old doors old systems um and then there's the issue of the security with the keys so um is it a project I think should happen yes uh we can line up cans and start kicking them all down the road I think it's one that will need to happen at some point um do I think we can survive another year without doing it yes what would uh it says here that the project could be scaled what does that look like it would be just mean like prioritizing certain aspects of it so maybe we would just re-key do cores um maybe not do some of the door replacements um get new key hardware and and call it quits there so but you know we could probably eliminate 20 thousand dollars of it if we wanted to just go that route uh thank you for lining this can up for me to uh give a swing at I really appreciate that um since you did that um so the the best keystone software uh does that have a staff time savings associated with it yeah when it comes to when it comes to uh our key security and like uh

So you know, we could probably eliminate $20,000 of it if we wanted to just go that route.

Uh thank you for lining this can up for me to uh give a swing at.

I really appreciate that.

Um since you did that.

Um so the the best Keystone software, uh, does that have a staff time savings associated with it?

Yeah, when it comes to when it comes to uh our key security and like uh distributing and creating keys once we have all of that information logged into the software, which is going to take a bit of staff time initially.

It will result in staff time savings later down the road when we're reissuing keys, recoring all of those things.

It should all be able to pull that information straight from the database without having to flip through like these old binders of penciled in key information.

Okay, that's kind of what I was feeling on that one.

So I mean I'm a I'm okay with this.

This is another one of those that seems to me like it should have just been built into the budget.

Like I'm not exactly sure why the doors are a resource proposal.

If we've known they were failing, should have just been built in.

Um, but I I understand this one.

I understand it, but I think that we are every can't get a kick tonight.

And um, like sounds like we could cut this one in half and put some of it off uh for later.

So I think you know, the equitable distribution of these cuts is uh is what I'm looking for.

And if everybody just got half, we'd still have to cut more money.

So I would move to um to scale this back to $20,000 if there's a second.

Second, it's been moved and seconded to scale our uh door security upgrade project uh from 40 to 20,000 dollars.

Is there any public comment assembly deliberation?

JJ.

Yeah, where is the um information about if it came from general fund or there it is?

It would reduce the decision.

This one reduces the deficit.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Anything further?

Sarah.

All right, uh the motion to scale back the door security project for City Hall from 40,000 to 20,000.

Ms.

Riley, yes.

Mayor Eisenbais?

No.

Ms.

Carlson, no.

Mr.

Pike?

Yes.

Mr.

Kurt uh Mr.

Selene?

Yes.

It fails.

Three, two.

Thank you.

And Kitty, there was one more.

I think it was the um Yeah, the zoning updates.

Um I think if we could call Amy up here, I'm interested in scaling that back as well.

Um, what was the split that you recommended, Brooke, for that one?

It was shaving off a fifteen thousand dollars from it.

Okay.

And can you share um about yeah, how that would how this would impact um department operations and uh staff time?

Sure.

We have been so this is probably this is a project that has been you know, kind of a couple of years um already kind of delayed.

We've just just with um work level with other projects.

This is this is just kind of something that we've been putting off already for a bit.

Um, and it is, you know, I think a couple of you know, some recent challenges that we've had on on zoning cases and stuff, just really at least to me highlight the importance of being proactive about making sure that our code is up to up to up to date and defensible, um, which is part of the reason I've prioritized it coming into this year.

Um given that we were able to move some of the the funding out um into this year for you know for certain pieces of it and seeing um some other pieces like the ADU code kind of progressing separately.

Um I think that you know one of you know, as the item in Brooks proposal to reduce it by 15,000 to bring it down to 50,000 flat.

Um, you know, I think we could probably still get a fair amount of work done with that level of funding, um, but ultimately it's up to the assembly to determine whether or not we want to put this off for another future budget year.

Okay, sorry, I'm seeing a whole bunch of numbers on this one that aren't so uh redu.

So the cost of resources 100,000, but then we said reducing it by 15.

There's a summary sheet that I put in the front of all those resource proposals that kind of explains there were changes that have been made since that meeting.

Yeah, initially it was proposed at 100,000 when it was going to include the cell tower rewrite.

Understood.

Um so we've already reduced it by 35.

Yeah, okay.

Tracking.

Uh for me.

Um, you know, I think the assembly has already affirmed the uh priority of the cell phone tower project.

Um I think that was about 25,000 originally is the rough thing that we we had talked about several meetings ago.

Yeah, 35.

35.

Okay.

Um so I'm easy to go with 35 um for this project and just hit that one at this point if we need to scale further.

We already supplemental budgeted 35.

So I think the current request for this is what 65?

Correct.

Yes, we already did a sub because that was because that was prioritized, and the assembly wanted to see that happen in this fiscal year rather than waiting for FY27.

It was included in the mid-year supplemental, the 35,000 for the cell tower piece specifically.

So that's our that's already taken care of in FY26.

So there's still an outstanding request for 65,000 for the remainder of that project, and the motion is to remove 15,000 from that remaining 65 to bring the bring it down to 50,000 total.

And there's not a motion on the table.

I don't think that's what we're discussing now.

Uh anything else for Amy while she's sitting here staring at us and we're looking back at her.

Yes, yes.

Um, so that would then complete funding for this project.

Uh, how long would implementation take?

Let's see.

So the funds would become yeah, funds become available in July.

I would guess about probably nine months or so, um, depending on contractor availability and um how also into you know how much how much of the code they're able to address and therefore how complex the ordinance to then change the code becomes is part of it.

Um and if there's you know, if we're just able, you know, if the fifty thousand dollars covers just sort of again that kind of baseline review of you know, is our zoning code compliant with other you know, with other laws and case law for land use.

Um if we're able to go beyond that, there might be some like kind of discretionary things of hey, hey, there's this is something that could be improved in your code, um, kind of see how far we're able to get in that.

Um and some of those, the latter part there would probably require more public, you know, more public input because it's a little bit more discretionary.

So um, so yeah, kind of kind of thinking probably about nine months-ish.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, anything else for Amy?

Thank you, appreciate it.

I moved to strike fifteen thousand dollars from the zoning code update and amendment resource proposal.

Second.

I said we moved and seconded to cut fifteen thousand dollars from the zoning code update and amendment project.

Is there any public comment?

Assembly deliberate further assembly deliberation.

Sarah Right on the motion to reduce the resource proposal request for the zoning code update um and high priority code amendments from 65,000 to 50,000.

Ms.

Carlson?

Yes.

Mr.

Celine?

Yes, Mr.

Pike?

Yes, Ms.

Riley, yes, and Mayor Isonbise.

Yes.

Motion passes five zero.

Did we hit all of yours?

I think that was it, right?

Um I'll throw one out for consideration because I think it is worthy of discussion is the Crescent Harbor playground restroom.

Now I understand this is not an entire uh general fund funded facility.

Um but here, you know, and my thoughts on it, um even being a parent who goes to that playground.

Uh we did just build a brand new bathroom about 50 yards away.

Uh, if we were in a if we were in a mall, um, I think the bathroom would be much further than that.

Uh so I I don't see it as an inconvenience to walk just down there.

Uh it's unfortunate at the time that we didn't see this need and we could have shifted that over perhaps a little bit.

Um but I'm I'm happy to cut that one down not only for our current costs, uh, but then the future costs associated with the facility too, which are identified but not solidly identified, right?

So we will have ongoing yearly costs of these or this, and I'm I'm just not ready for that.

My understanding was that that doesn't reduce our deficit though, because that's coming from the public infrastructure sinking fund.

I'm still not ready for the project.

I I see it as a lower need for the community with a brand new facility within earshot.

Okay, but are we talking about projects that we don't want to see, or are we talking about reducing the deficit, or are we just doing both simultaneously?

Is that fine?

Okay.

I think this one was split between a couple of different funds.

So the 88,000 was just the general funds portion.

Um are you interested in just the whole project going away and then the CPV money stand, CPV and the visitor enhancement stand visitor enhancement?

Correct, yeah.

And I I fully understand it's coming out of infrastructure sinking, um, but that reallocates that for future needs as well.

Um we all know that our existing infrastructure needs are great, um, and investing in new right now.

It's not it's not the direction I I would like to head, but I'm happy to follow along with the body.

Someone from Parks and Rec or Planning or remind me about this project.

I I know that there's a bigger thing happening in that whole area.

Um yeah, refresh E, please.

Sure.

Um just to just to start, um, you know, I think um, you know, I think I think the message has been has definitely been really clear through um, you know, this body's direction in the past and our asset management approach that we are more focused on replacing our existing, you know, maintaining our existing assets.

Um so very much understand if this is an item that the that the assembly doesn't want to pursue at this time.

Um the reason that we did include it in the budget um is sort of twofold.

The first is there's been sort of long-standing community demand for this for this facility.

Um it was identified as a need as you know, going back to even the 2022 short-term tourism plan, um, and has continued to kind of stay within public conversation about um infrastructure, especially available in the summertime.

Um, but secondly, it kind of resurfaced when we were talking about doing the um Crescent Harbor um the uh sorry, the tennis court project that we got with the that we were pursuing with the LWCF funds.

The bathroom was originally included in that scope of work.

Um, but after we when we put that grant proposal together, we didn't have quotes in for the Crescent Harbor restroom.

The one that we that we just put in that Mr.

Eisenbeis just referenced.

Um and that came in significantly higher.

Asphalt quotes started coming in significantly higher in that time too, and so now the bathroom does not fit within the project budget for you know that's under the grant for the rest of the tennis corp project and the other sort of you know, kind of fencing and lighting improvements.

So the idea was that if we had available funding, we could bring that back to the community, um, just not through that project and proposed as by proposing it as a separate project.

When is that courts project happening?

Would we have another you know, funding year to throw in a bathroom?

The bid package is still under development, and uh it the plan at this point is to get that out and hopefully have an award.

Uh at best, we're gonna see construction happen this fall.

More than likely, it's probably gonna be next spring.

Um LDWCF uh funding uh within this that particular project could not be expanded per se.

Uh there are other opportunities uh that could be explored, uh, but nothing that's uh solid at this point.

Okay, thank you.

Um so it says here 200,000.

So if we didn't do it in conjunction with this other project, 250,000, what would be the the increase that we'd be looking at if we wanted to pursue a family restroom at another time it's hard to it's hard to say um given that we haven't we were hoping that if this if this project was approved in the budget um that we might be able to put out both bit packets around the same time, both to just increase interest in doing the project isn't a bit of the larger project um doing them together, um, and also to see if there you know if there was a cost savings in in having them together.

Um I don't anticipate the cost savings would be as high as fifty thousand dollars.

Um I can maybe turn an info on a friend, but um is really the cost savings is a would be you know, like mobilization onto the site for site prep when there's um when they're working on the tennis court to to kind of destroy that, you know, bring up the old asphalt and bring that in and just having the equipment on site to then be able to move into the bathroom.

So I I don't imagine that it's quite as large as $50,000, but I don't have a more precise number for you.

Thank you.

Um, because I know just what we added this year to our strategic plan was that 4.5 identify resources overlap and to align efforts to improve, and it's kind of seemed like which we were going after here and voting against something that kind of hit the strategic plan item.

Fortunate, but um it's a lot of money, and we don't have enough.

So thank you.

Anything else for Amy or Kevin at this time?

Thank you both.

Appreciate it.

I'm not sensing a whole lot of uh interest in that one.

Um the only other one that I have right now that I'm somewhat interested in.

Well, John, I guess just a reasoning.

So the the pool bathroom, um that's a high priority project for me.

But I see that one falling under the school building maintenance fund.

Um, why is that not included in there it's a good question, and uh, I think it ultimately comes down to I'll use air quotes.

We we have taken over management of the pool.

Yes, it still falls within a any school building.

Um, but that uh but that bathroom and the upgrades there are for basically for operations of the pu of the pool for the uh um for our program.

Of course, the schools will benefit from it as well.

I think a little more clarity is exactly that is that the sort of in the grand bargain, the pool became the city's responsibility and was no longer in the school's domain.

So the school doesn't have school has access to it and certain uses of it during the school day, but but it is a city asset at this point in time.

It is not a school asset, so it was left out of that particular fund for that reason.

So just sort of like the pack is not part of the school anymore either.

I can definitely agree with that line of thinking.

Um, and it does make sense that the school uses it less.

Um, but that whole building is a city asset as well.

Um, the pool was one of the large reasons why I wanted to introduce that fund to begin with.

Um, but I'm not gonna this is not my hill today.

I I just want the bathroom done one way or another, was trying to reallocate some funding.

Well, I have some questions for Mark and Connor if they're willing to come up here for a minute.

Yeah, thank you.

So you got two projects in here that are engineering, one for the public service center and the other one for the pool.

What is that is there a scaled version of that that we can talk about too?

Is there some like some of this stuff talks about getting it ready to do stuff, and then if there's anything left over spending extra money?

Like what does that look like?

What what is that?

Sharpen the pencil on that one for me if you would.

Yeah, public service center.

Um, I think there are scaling opportunities there.

A large portion of that project is aimed towards electrifying the facilities.

So we've got an oil fire boiler there.

We would like to upgrade to an electric boiler.

Um, along with that, we are which will likely be tied into that project.

We are near capacity for our electrical distribution at our public service complex.

Um, so we need to upgrade that as well.

Um what some of the additional funds were anticipated to utilize there was for uh a space study and utilization.

We have a lot of different departments and divisions utilizing the building.

Um we think there's improvements to be made there as well as how we interface with the public at the facility right now.

We often have because it's I think partly because it's called the public service complex, people will show up.

They will come walking through central garage, through workspaces, places we shouldn't have the public looking at potentially adding some sort of lobby or greeting area where people can uh interface with the electric department or the public works department is needed.

Um so I think there's some scaling opportunities with with that piece.

I thought we bought you a gate for that.

Two years ago, we bought your gate.

Wasn't my gate.

It's nobody's gate, it doesn't exist.

Your power distribution there, is that like Y or Delta?

No idea.

So, like you got one phase that's 177 to neutral, like how the city made sitka sound, get a transform to drop that wild leg.

Are you is it you know, like is that where you're out of power?

Um, I'm I'm not electric guy.

You wanna I don't have all these details.

I'd have to go back to Ron, but we were also heavily looking at trying to add more EV charging at the facility, which we we've seen the troubles with the shipping for EVs and the drop of the primary asset that we were looking at with the F 150 Lightning.

Uh but we were looking at adding more capacity for that, and that is also one of our facilities that does not currently have a standby generator.

Uh we have the building wired so that it's in theory the there are several outlets dedicated to having a standby power source.

And as if we were to have a power outage, that would be one of the primary facilities where our crews from both public service and the electric utility would be showing up.

There's there's no standby generator to light the area where we're starting our all of our diesel generators to get power back to the community until it can be restored from hydro, uh, and then the rest of that facility would still be dark.

So we're looking at both increasing capacity from the transformer to add capability, and then potentially a study to look into getting a standby generator for that facility.

So if we make this a two-year project, what does that do?

Is that a possibility?

Yeah, I think that's yeah, I think that's a possibility.

And part of that space utilization was also looking at the allocation of office space.

So we're we have some more employees that have moved over to that facility, and we have some larger offices, so we're looking at potentially moving some walls, reducing some office sizes, and trying to better break out the space between who's over there.

So if we make this a two-year project, that's that'll work for you guys.

Talk to me about the Blatchley situation.

I know there's some real issues with like spares and all that.

So, like what what's the scalability on the Blatchley engineering project that you have listed here?

Um I'm drawing a blink to what resource proposal that is.

Is he talking about the lighting and then the chlorine, the chlorine pump as far as mechanical?

Nothing with the dehydration system, it's just Blatchley mechanical, specifically the chlorine pump and then the lighting that you're requesting to is this the pool pool mechanical mechanical.

Yeah.

Um that that's geared largely towards upgrading the existing mechanical space.

Um it's pretty scary down there in the basement, and uh it is a ticking time bomb.

Um it's just far out of date.

Most of the components that are supplying the the mechanical side of the pool are beyond their service life.

Um this was an increase to an existing resource proposal that we received last year, um, which is not going to be sufficient to complete uh a total a total prop redesign project.

So wanted to engage um aquatic specialists to evaluate our system and give us recommendations before we move forward kind of blindly into unknown territory.

And that that did not address the chlorine generator.

We actually have a new chlorinator ordered and coming in.

This was looking at primarily there, there's a single circulation pump for the entire pool right now, and that pump as it was designed, is about half of what the current recommendation is for what the circulation should be at.

We've also seen the the surge tank as a failure point as far as the level indicators are trying to upgrade that system, and then additionally the the piping and the rest of the pumps down there have not been addressed in quite a long time.

So no sharpening of the pencil opportunity here.

Is that or you you're saying this is what you're gonna need?

I mean, obviously you probably need three times this amount of money.

But I mean, we're where are we at on that?

I don't know what the opportunities for scaling this back would be.

I think it's I think it's a fairly safe bet to address the needs in that facility.

Thank you.

Um I have a question about the contract to support for the public works engineering budgets.

Um what does scaling that back look like?

So scaling that back is uh an opportunity right now.

My goal for that, and I realize that I'm still relatively new in my position, uh, is that I am still yet to see us formally close out a single one of our capital projects.

Uh and that's a list that I think every process continues to grow.

Uh and I don't think it's because work is not getting done, it's because there's not really a formalized policy in place to get a project from start to finish.

Um so my goal with that contract amount is to formalize a project delivery manual that'll basically be administrative policy that will apply the workload across all the departments because uh a project like that doesn't just happen within my department, it happens with finance, it happens with legal, it happens with the owner sometimes, whether that's harbors or someone else.

Um so there's a lot of different players, and the project delivery manual is mainly in-house us working on getting the staff low portion.

The two pieces that I wanted to address with that is that our standard specifications haven't been updated since 2002, uh, and we don't we haven't really looked at formalizing the different contract construction templates that we use.

So to improve efficiency, if we can get consultants in one to standard help us update our standard specifications, and then two develop standardized contract templates that could drastically reduce the amount of time that some of our projects go through the review phase is each one will go through uh the contract manager compliance finance legal, and then to the administrator.

So if we have a standardized template that not each person, and we can outline what every person is supposed to look at and review, then we can push some of those projects through quicker.

If I can add to that, please.

Um this is this is one of the that I've talked to the assembly about the the goals that I want to complete in in my last year.

This is this is one of them.

Um as Mark said so well, uh, we don't have a lot of standard policies or updated policies on a project delivery, how it works across departments, and this is going to pair very well with the uh the software package for lease and contracts that's gonna come out of legal.

Um, I think we spend a lot of money with outside consultants when we need to put complicated bid packages and contracts together.

So just the savings there alone, if we have our own standard templates and updated specs, we're gonna be able to push those project um push those projects out sooner and uh and be able to close them out sooner as well.

So then this is in conjunction with legal's request.

If you approve one, you approve the other.

No, not necessarily.

This will this will pair very well with legal um because the the package that we'll get with the uh the software will take whatever whatever standard templates we get for public works projects, and it will get put into our system as standard language.

So when it's time to build those, um that system is really just a click click which section you need, and it builds the contract out as uh as people fill the information in.

Okay.

Um, but having those having those templates and especially bid packages and specs uh is is huge, and I I can't stress enough the uh the just the project delivery aspect of it.

Who is the project manager?

What are all the phases you need to go through, and what is a formal closeout look like?

So we don't have a lot of open projects sitting on the books with small amounts of funding still remaining in them.

Okay, the global view on that is helpful for me.

I I do think there is some scalability in that, and we had we had talked earlier about the the 10k cut coming out of that.

I do have a hundred thousand dollars in engineering right now for contracted services that are unanticipated in this year's fiscal budget.

That is one of the light items that we identified as using to allow the procurement of the additional contracted snow removal.

So it's the 75% of it is on hold right now.

Uh, but my plan is to use that funds, those funds to start now this fiscal year, uh, and we're already working to address the standard specifications.

Thank you.

Um I saw you know, capital projects here focus on completing existing projects, right?

Adding new ones.

I see this as being an important part of executing that plan.

Is that correct?

Is that it is.

I again as being relatively new to this position.

I I would feel better coming to you and asking for more money because we're ready to do a project if I have less on a backlog list of projects that we've already put money towards and have not completed yet fully.

Yeah, I think we'll see in our budget that we still have the library um remodel project that hasn't been closed out.

I've seen that year after year.

It's like, no, that's been done for quite some time.

So I can agree.

And we do have some more, and I've been working with uh the divisions to identify the projects that that probably should be closed out now.

There are some, I will say most of you probably look at the critical secondary water and the UV membrane filtration.

Some of those remain open nearly a decade after they were happening because there's still formalized opportunities to get our final approval to operate, and we're we have to get that closed out because when we close that project in New World, then those funds are no longer available.

So rather than trying to open up a project again to get the final aspects of it finally closed out, we we're leaving them open on purpose.

But there are plenty that have been completed that we need to formalize closing them out and alleviating the funds that are remaining in that balance.

One more question if maybe it's a Brooke, maybe it's you, I'm not sure.

Uh, how come this one isn't coming from that public infrastructure sinking fund?

Um I do kind of well, I do kind of want to start this with the transfer that I have in there for the public infrastructure sinking fund and for the school building um fund, those are recommendations from staff, but what that looks like exactly is the assemblies decision.

So if there are things that you find more or less appropriate based on how those are intended to be used, um that uh makes sense.

I could not see that being a direct repair replacement of city infrastructure, um, which is why I didn't include that on my recommendation.

That replaces the okay.

Um thank you.

If we need to review that language to see if it fits, but I think it's in spirit fits.

But if there's actual language, uh I'll have to review that.

But that's a I think that's an option to kind of move that money around so that it doesn't impact the general fund, which is our goal for this evening.

I do have one question for you while you're here.

Oh Scotty, I'm sorry.

You know you haven't spoken yet.

Mark, I just want to thank you for your apprehension being expressed here with your new job and that setting aside a hundred thousand bucks for engineering, and I hope that like for the Blatchley deal with leadership saying that they're intimidated or scared to go look at the stuff down below and the lack of a maintenance log or an operation log for everything that draws amps in the city.

Uh I hope that you go to two pool specialists, that you're not just relying on one technician that comes to town so that when you weigh what they're telling you as you guys learn your way around stuff, it'll it'll be key to keeping Blatchley a viable place.

Uh thank you.

Uh so my question is gonna circle back to the uh public services complex um planning.

Um so I I understand there's a lot of different levels on it, um, and part of it is adding some electrification.

Uh obviously green grants are not quite a thing anymore, but I would think that there would still be some money out there for some of that, um, whether that's true or not.

Uh but then the the larger part of this.

So if we if we start, if we do the the research to figure out what we can do, what we should do, when is funding going to be available for that?

Do you anticipate having the funding to do this project anytime soon or because I don't want to spend the money to design and anticipate it without knowing that the funding's there right afterwards because then we've done a project, the the scope and scale will increase decrease, the cost will increase decrease by the time we actually have that money.

Yeah, um, I think very valid question.

Um with this one, I'm sure there is a little bit of putting the cart ahead of the horse.

Um, we know there's a need.

I don't I haven't looked into timelines for when we would secure funding or how much the potential upgrades uh that would be proposed would cost.

Um rather focusing on we need to find out what we need to do so that we can create a plan around that um that we can then present.

I think within this resource proposal, if it were approved, we could perform some of the work that's proposed.

Um I'm thinking the electric boiler upgrade, uh possibly increasing our capacity for electric vehicle chargers, things like that that that may fit within the uh allocated funds where there could then maybe be a phase two of that plan that we that we move forward with afterwards.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And then when you say electric boiler, it brings me back to one thought like we're working so hard on electrifying, but everything we electrify takes off lifespan of our current generation facilities.

So, what is the balance there in a pretty large facility getting completely electrified versus the long-term lifespan and capacity left in our facilities?

I think that's a bigger question than this discussion tonight, but that's on my mind as well.

One aspect of this uh is because there's so many different departments, and some of them are enterprise funds.

I saw this kind of planning as like, well, who does what, and then how can we divvy it out?

So maybe it's not all general fund when it becomes a project, um, but the planning would be general fund, so that's how I justified it in my head.

If if that makes was that part of the idea.

I think there's an element of that, but I I believe the the building is owned kind of by a central garage.

Building is very complicated.

The funding, I talked to Melissa and even looked in Jay's old files to figure out where funding had come from for this thing when it's needed work because the ownership is so strange, and it is kind of weird for one of our internal service funds um to own a building asset, but it is the general funds.

It the other um funds that are in that space pay rent for their area.

Um, and so that's kind of how we recoup costs.

I'm not sure it would be appropriate to then have those funds pay a portion of it.

Not saying it's impossible, but it's just a little strange.

Get a condo agreement set up, kind of like the city-state building.

We love that one.

So the central garage never pays into it.

Um, I'll I'll go to you first and then I'll I have a question for Connor.

Um last year there was 50,000 put into electric charging infrastructure or well, for this year's budget for the same public service center facility for EV charging.

Um is this PSC complex design and engineering is this in addition to the 50,000 that's already been appropriated, or could that 50,000 be rolled in to reduce the request for this year?

Um, there's potential to roll that in.

The $50,000 resource proposal last year was to include as well City Hall and the police department, um, which were also at the time looking to get electric vehicles.

Um with electric vehicles currently being kind of on hold and us not knowing the future there, um I think we can safely say that that $50,000 could cover a few charging stations uh at the public services complex uh for any hybrids that we may get in the coming years.

Thinking long term, if we are looking seriously at options to get electric vehicles, there's gonna be uh there's gonna be need to be uh major infrastructure uh that's gonna be well over that fifty thousand dollars.

So thanks.

And I don't necessarily expect an answer on this one now.

This may be one that we tackle at our next budget meeting.

Um but it sounds like some of some of this resource proposal needs to happen immediately.

I think you've justified that.

Um some of it sounds a little bit more aspirational and in preparation for in the future.

So if we cut this one down to a hundred thousand dollars, could you get the immediate needs done?

Um, and and again, you might have to come back with that answer, but um, I'm looking for a number that gets us with our immediate needs, and once we have a better idea of funding sources for these potential larger projects, I'd be happy to go down that road.

But I think I'd like to just tackle what we can right now.

Yeah, I I know for me I would I'd have to get back to let you know what a reasonable scaling would be.

Is there other assembly support for that before we have them do something that might not?

Yeah, absolutely.

We do.

Okay.

Wanted to make sure I wasn't the one guy, and you do all the work and everybody votes for it anyway.

So anything else?

Questions for these guys if they're up here.

Um 250,000 in athletic field sand.

Uh if I were to make a motion, what fund am I taking that out of, or what category am I taking that out of?

Or that's already been done.

It comes out of the grounds maintenance operating budget.

Okay.

Okay, grant.

Thank you.

Could could I get some clarification on on that last item?

Um, because we didn't make any motion, and I think it's because you don't want to make the motion until we get some information back in another meeting.

So we're we haven't reduced anything yet.

We just need answers still.

Correct.

I think we're looking for, at least from my perspective, and it sounded like the assembly agreed, a scalable solution to this number that gets us the immediate needs done while um the future planning could happen at a another date when we actually have a line of revenue identified for that project.

And can you just clarify your understanding of the immediate needs might I I thought it was like the boiler um the space thing, the lobby.

I you guess we'd close the gate first for a couple years or something.

I mean, for for my idea of the immediate needs.

I mean, we have the is it a resolution I can't remember to um reduce decarbonize operations, and that's one of the two facilities that still has primary OFL boilers between that and the animal shelter.

Um so that would be my first priority, and then there are some I believe some regulatory requirements for the electric side with what the access should look type to some of the infrastructure, and it may just be displayed that they have on their side, so securing that and kind of formalizing a change to a waiting area and how people are brought into the facility and go from there.

And then I think the the pieces given the uncertainty for the electric charging.

I think we could start with just a basic design or evaluation of the electrical infrastructure, what what needs may need to be changed if we identify our future growth?

And and that would be the the prime part we're scaling back.

And I don't yeah, I have some ideas, but we're um you know, standby power generation would be another the next interim goal for me is to have that facility have standby power as it it is where people show up if the lights go out to to get them back on and would that facility be on interruptible power, like other city facilities or with the electric with the electric boiler, yeah.

Uh currently in place is a oil file boiler and a waste oil boiler.

So I think we could put it on interruptible and still have the oil power boiler present.

It would just not no longer be primary.

Anything else from the assembly?

Do you need any more clarification from us on that one?

Great, thank you.

Yes, um, John, can you repeat your two options that you said earlier at the summary of Brooks presentation on what um we we could do to to balance things?

I need a little refresher.

Sure.

I'll go through even some of them we've already talked about just since I have the whole list here.

Um one option would be uh go back to the uh I'll call it traditional 50-50 split for secure rural schools for this next year.

That's a $300,000 savings.

Uh the athletic field sand for 250,000, uh the police department interceptors, which has already been done for 220,000, and um sinking fund payments for the uh vehicles that are between one and two years old.

Um not doing that this year, that's about 106,000 savings, and then uh reduction of the project delivery resource proposal uh reduction of ten thousand dollars there.

That would get us to eight hundred and eighty-six thousand.

So that's one packaged option.

Uh the second one is a 7525 split unsecure rural schools.

That's 150,000 back to the city.

Again, the uh the field sand, the PD interceptors and sinking fund payments deferred for vehicles that are between one and six years old, that would be 236,000 in savings, a 15,000 reduction of the um planning code RP, which has already been done, um, and 15,000 reduction in the project delivery RP, and that would get us to what 886,000 savings as well.

thousand dollars there that would get us to eight hundred and eighty six thousand so that's one package to option uh the second one is a seventy five twenty five split unsecure rural schools that's a hundred and fifty thousand back to the city again the uh the field sand the PD interceptors and sinking fund payments deferred for vehicles that are between one and six years old that would be two hundred and thirty six thousand in savings a fifteen thousand reduction of the um planning code RP which has already been done um and fifteen thousand reduction in the project delivery RP and that would get us to what eight hundred and eighty six thousand savings as well thank you we've gotten fifteen thousand done from that list no plus the two hundred yeah yes um so I moved to remove ten thousand dollars from the capital projects manual and templates um rp second as been moved and seconded to remove ten thousand dollars from the manuals and templates RP is there any public comment assembly deliberation I'm gonna need to find that one and read it again because that was not on my list we just discussed that that's the one that pairs well with the legal one right yep it's like uh what is it a hundred thousand correct it's the capital project manual and templates for a hundred thousand dollars so it would be reducing that to ninety thousand so the effect on the overall general fund is minimal what is the effect on the project itself John I'd have to ask do I get ninety percent done because it's thumbs up you don't need to come up unless you want to can you get it done for ninety thousand I think what I heard before was he had money in the current year and was just gonna use that to supplement but you can say that too come on my goal would still be to get the project done uh we have a hundred thousand in our current budget that is 75% of it tied up for this no removal that we talked about last night um so to use that to get the first portion of the standard specifications done this fiscal year and then come July uh try and use that funding uh we haven't reached out to get quotes yet but I feel like we could get it done with the 90k okay yeah because if that's not adequate to finish out the project like we were uh we were just talking about how we haven't quite finished a bunch so I don't want to get 90 percent there on this one too um let's do a project was not but not complete that one so and again if I if I got that further towards the goal line and identified that I did it I would feel better coming back and saying I need more than getting to the end and giving it back later further assembly discussion Sarah all right on the motion to reduce the resource proposal request um in public works for the project delivery manual with standardized contract templates to 90 000 Ms.

Carlson yes and yes Mr.

Selene yes Mr Christensen really want to he would just show up it would make it real easy to cross him ah um Ms.

Riley yes uh Mr.

Pike yes the motion passes five zero motion to remove two hundred and fifty thousand athletic field sand from the grounds maintenance operating budget second it's been moved and seconded to cut 2500 from the sand budget um any public comment assembly deliberation I don't know if I want to talk about it or not Sarah um all right on that motion to remove 2500 um from grounds maintenance uh budget for athletic sand mr saline yes mayor eisenbys yes carlson yes mr pike yes and miss riley yes motion passes five zero what about Christianson I know I almost read it well that's not bad it took us two hours to do the first two hundred thousand and two minutes to do the next two hundred thousand so um with that let's take a brief recess as it is about the top of the hour and we'll keep whacking and can we get a total from Brooke and John where we're at right now 495,000 reduced no thanks that math's too hard um about about 400,000 cut about half of our deficit down so far this evening um there may be some potential future you know in the in the realm of a hundred thousand dollars perhaps coming our way if we agree to that um so we didn't want to do this earlier we wanted to look at these but if we punted it back your way were you how are you feeling about a 400 thousand and

Cut about half of our deficit down so far this evening.

Um there may be some potential future, you know, in the in the realm of 100,000 perhaps coming our way if we agree to that.

Um so we didn't want to do this earlier.

We wanted to look at these, but if we punted it back your way, where you how are you feeling about a 400,000 and the work that you can do on it?

Brooke and I will work on it.

It's it's not gonna be an easy one.

Uh because I think we put a lot of work into it now to find where we can uh make the cuts, but we'll we'll probably end up going back to the uh uh to the RPs and seeing which ones we can uh that we can push down the road a little bit, but there's not a lot there that are really gonna affect the the deficit side.

So a couple things.

I think um so we're in the same pool of health care as the school district, and the school district has gotten information that the increase is about eight percent.

So now whether that's qualifies with us or not.

I mean, I understand, but I I think we have some pieces of information that that can come forward as we go along that we are gonna know more.

So firming up some of these numbers will help with some of this as well.

I think now maybe eight percent is the wrong number, I don't know, but um I think that's an important piece of it.

The other thing is I know the school board's interested in firming their budget up next week, so I think we want to make sure they understand what what we're giving them and what they have to work with.

So I want to be real clear on that too from here.

We we have our meeting with um our health insurance broker tomorrow afternoon, I believe, so we'll have a better picture then.

I as Brooke said in the presentation, this frustrates me every single year.

We outline that to them every single year that we're already at the finish line when they're presenting rates to us.

But um if we get some good news from them tomorrow, um then that'll help a whole lot.

Can you um tell us what an eight percent increase in health care costs looks like?

Is that an easy figure to it's in there now for about $500,000 if we assume a 15% increase in our health insurance rates.

What is an eight percent assumed increase look like then?

What like half that of 250?

Yep.

So that would be another two, we'd still need two fifty or so to cut 200.

Okay.

So we would not be able to at our meeting tomorrow get the final answer because they use um March information in part of the calculation that determines the rate increase.

So the preliminary information that we received from the broker from just their side was that eight percent, but that doesn't talk that doesn't speak to Premera's side, that's um from the broker's side.

That's why ours is not eight percent.

Oh, I totally understand that.

I've been watching this for years from the school district side too, which is the school district has to firm their budget up before everybody knows this number as well, or they're or they're puzzling it out.

So it usually ends up with putting everybody in a pretty bad spot because like it would be a good thing to know.

This is a big number, not a little number.

So I mean, I'm just offering the eight percent by as a as an example of the fact that it's likely we're not gonna we'll know a better number.

There will be some savings there, hopefully.

Um, because I don't think people are talking about it more than 15% at this point, hopefully.

But you know, I I think that's that's kind of where I'm at with this at this point in time.

I'd like to see um a little firmer number on that.

We uh we have a little more time than the school district does in order to do that.

So I'd actually like to um invite Philip to speak to us about the school board budget and what a uh 25% reduction in SRS might do for you guys, or if you have um what kind of trimming of your budget to address your deficit you have done ahead of tomorrow's meeting, if you're willing.

Better be ready to speak if you come to a meeting.

Everyone Phil Burdick, second school district.

Um we had a work session last night with three scenarios that were given to us by staff.

Only in one do we have a balanced budget, and none of them included our eight percent health insurance increase.

None of them included any secure rural schools because we weren't certain what the number was going to be, when it was going to be.

So you know it's it's dire and it's not your fault.

Let's just put it that way.

That's just teachers.

We're also looking at one and a half administrators, not rehiring positions.

That's included in that.

The uh one full-time counselor position that we'll fund with grant funds, um reduction of classified staff.

Basically, we're cutting in every area, no matter no matter which scenario we look at.

Um 150,000, so that's the 7525 split, 150,000, then would be you know, another teacher is what it roughly boils down to.

$300,000 would be two more staff, because we just don't really have anywhere else to cut.

Um this has been happening, you know, it's been 15 years coming.

We've nickel and dimed and done exactly what you all are doing tonight, finding 10,000 here, 20,000 there.

And so this is where this is where we are.

Um don't make me talk anymore.

I thank you, appreciate it.

Um I will say another thing.

So just but it's also staff, right?

So that's one thing staff losing staff, but then what that does is the cascading effect is that it increases class sizes, it cuts programming, it cuts offerings and electives.

Mr.

White from Blatchley spoke about what those scenarios would do at his school, and basically it would just we just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, and and we wouldn't have space or time to do anything else.

And Sitka has always you know been crafting these letters to staff because they're asking me about what we're gonna do.

Um I lost my train of thought.

So um, so that's that's what it would do.

Um I know that um you all are also in a deficit, and we rely on you real heavily, so we will follow your lead, and we will do the best that we can, you know, and our staff is amazing, and they have continued to do more with less.

And they're awesome folks, they'll do it again because that's what they do, yeah.

More with less.

Um I'll always remember the zero percent pay increase that they always agreed to.

So we we see the effort on that side as well, and we know that it's not without the personal sacrifices of the teachers to to make this work.

Katie, I think you had some more.

I just really want to acknowledge the um human and social cost that that has on our community, and yeah, I think these are really tough discussions, you know.

We're all trying to make things work for the best of the community, and um, that's just really stark when you describe it in terms of like that's a whole person, you know, that's a whole teacher.

So I don't um I don't know if you have any updates on that uh school funding proposal or if it matters.

Um I don't I don't think that's far enough along to make a difference, but well, there's two, you know, again the legislature has two, one in the Senate, one in the house, one is again I should just pull up this email because staff is asking good questions.

Um and I have the numbers um which you know are potentially important for um for what we can do because again it's you the one of the pieces that I say is that it's it's tough for sitka teachers to advocate because our representative and our city already does so much.

Um and um and so when we advocate we only have one uh one direction to go.

Um I should have been a little bit more here we go.

Um yeah, I should have been more prepared when I came up, but um I can't find it now.

But it's 125 dollars, I think, from the Senate, $600 from the House, $125,000 is $250,000 to our budget.

Um actually I do have it here.

Um yeah, $125 per pupil is $300,000 to our budget.

Um and if the Senate bill was $600, so that's you know times four 1.2 million, which would certainly help.

Um, you know, we also have a transportation increase that is probably gonna hit there's a bill that or an amendment to one of those bills that includes some transportation uh funding support.

Um and if that doesn't go through, then there's another hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars that we're gonna have to pull from our fund balance and do something with so um it's it's a long game.

Yeah.

Anything else for the school district while Phil's sitting in front of us.

Appreciate your participation, even though you weren't 100% aware you'd be jumping in tonight.

Uh I was hoping I missed yesterday.

Yeah, I think the school funding is a always a uh challenging situation, and you know, even those are even though the numbers he speaks about are fantastic and could be great and wonderful.

I mean, we still have to get past the governor, and I think um my advocacy for the secure rural schools this year was is based upon almost exclusively on on getting past as governor, right?

Like giving some stability to the school district, um helping them not have to, you know, cut the guts out of the schools because we have a state that is not stepping up to the plate.

Um the governor's not on board with either one of those proposals at this point in time, so they can he can you know he was pretty mad when they got the BSA increase last year.

He could certainly turn around and just zero everything out.

So um, and I don't know that they're gonna come back and override it like they did last time.

They're all running for re-election.

So, you know, these are these are puzzles in front of the school board um where you know they can't count on the state, which is an unusual circumstance.

It's been that way since we've had Dunlevy.

But um, so you know, I think what this point in time, although Phil says it's not our fault, I think it is certainly on on us to help them work their way through this because every one of those jobs is a person or a family that leaves our community at some point.

So I I think they have impacts beyond that.

And if we can find our way to solving this problem without um changing something for the school district, I think that's important.

And again, they're trying to finalize their budget next week, so uh are on the eighth, is that correct?

Yeah, so I think um that's an important thing for them to know what we're um offering them to work with so that they they can make some decisions about secure rural schools, for example.

I mean, they're being careful and cautious as they are required to do um because they can't if they can't count on something that that they don't know, then they're not gonna put it in their budget, but you know, hopefully they're gonna get some more clarity on that going forward, and they'll have the opportunity to help bring back some of those electives at Blashley, for example, because it literally is that it literally will be the core classes and the required classes, such as PE.

Other than that, those kids elective opportunities could very much very often vanish.

And I don't know about you, but middle school is that time where you're gonna either go this way or you're gonna say school's not for me.

And I think we want um we want our students sitka is pride itself on its schools for a long time, and I think we want to make sure we continue to do that.

So my advocacy is not just because I'm a teacher, because I will be not be one at the end of this year, but um it's important to uh make sure that we have a community that we're proud of and that we that meets the what our students need.

elective opportunities could very much very often vanish and I don't know about you but middle school is that time where you're gonna either go this way or you're gonna say school's not for me and I think we want um we want our students has pride itself on its schools for a long time and I think we want to make sure we continue to do that so my advocacy is not just because I'm a teacher because I will be not be one at the end of this year but um it's important to uh make sure that we have a community that we're proud of and that we that meets the what our students need and I think we've already talked about the fact that families struggle to make it here so we want to make everything possible so question for you John with this almost half million dollars um we need to find um you said you and Brooke will we'll work on it um we heard from the school district you know uh that school secure rule schools I mean in reference to people um what would that be for city staff how many people the 450 started what was the number again the the remaining deficit we have uh 495 wasn't it or is there a refresh number I think it's 388 there's about three eighty eight even better um on average likely three employees yeah I mean I I wanted to have this discussion because I think that tonight we're having to make some really difficult decisions and when we say no stone unturned like we need to consider everything and I really appreciate you know the sentiment and um and the description of what that does to our schools and what that does to our kids and you know it's it's it's so it's so hard to to hear that and to know about the cascading impacts of that and then be like oh my gosh okay let's just cut a piece of equipment and then you look at this equipment and it's like we've had this asset for 26 years old and or you know 26 years is discontinued 15 years ago and like we don't know what to do without it you know and so it's like uh just balancing these things I think is um is extremely difficult but I think it's important that we have these conversations uh and and do our due diligence to look at all those options um you know I don't know we could just put the rest of this on john go find some more field sand that we don't need um but really it seems like a direction that we need to give as the assembly this is 388000 that we need to find um this is a policy decision right otherwise they're just going to be we're just asking someone else to bear that burden for us and uh you know that's what that's what we were elected to do so I would I mean I don't have much other than you know maybe can we in what we're doing with shaving can we take 30 thousand dollars from secure rural schools can we take um you know what what else can we take off these other proposals but that's the kind of you know can we can we consider I know you said public infrastructure sinking fund was a non-starter for you but I'm very willing to consider that one to two year vehicle um adjustment like it just seems like you know we I think we have some good plans for raising revenue um that we need to discuss but now is not the time now is the time to balance the budget and so that's kind of like the position that we're in right now.

If you are looking at uh secure rural schools um I'm very much in between Tim's position and but so the the previous years that we're gonna plus up our budget's done our budget's over with it that money isn't necessarily going to help us right but that'll help the schools significantly so I'd be in favor of leaving that and if you wanted to find a little bit um give and take on both sides we can go back to a 5050 for this year which gives us some money for this year's budget gives them all the backup money which they can use to continue um and still gives them some of the secure rural schools for this year.

Yeah no I was I was just referring to the secure rural schools for this year which I mean we haven't gotten yet right but we're expecting some six hundred thousand dollars is that we don't know what the amount is so we got we received one payment on Monday 2025 um at I believe it was 577000 the the dates that the state talks about and how they apply to our fiscal years is not the same.

I believe it's the um makeup payment for FY25 the year that we received uh 3000 dollars instead of our typical between 550 and 600 so I believe this is the makeup but we did not receive any information on what the subsequent payments would look like just that they're they would be coming and when you say subsequent payments and that's fisky year 26 and 27 or do we use 26 money for 27 well I think it's a year behind on on what the state talks about so my understanding of the bill is that it reauthorized funding for what we would consider our FY25 what we would consider our FY26 and what we would consider our FY27.

And when you say subsequent payments, and that's fiscal year 26 and 27, or do we use 26 money for 27?

Well, I think it's a year behind on what the state talks about.

So my understanding of the bill is that it reauthorized funding for what we would consider our FY25, what we would consider our FY26, and what we would consider our FY27.

That is my I could be wrong.

It's very confusing to try and line up what they're talking about, but that's what I believe.

And so I wasn't um I had my staff reach out when we received the payment because there was uh almost no information attached to it, and they uh indicated that there would be multiple past payments, but that doesn't line up with what I've seen in previous years.

So I'm anticipating that we get the we got the 577, that's done, and that we'll get our standard payment that we would get in in 26, probably around the same amount, probably 600,000.

Um, because they're saying that you know we received the 30 already, and here's the additional 57 for the year that was shorted.

So I think it's a pretty good guess that that's what we'll end up with.

Uh but this wouldn't be a normal time of year for us to have received our SRS payment.

So it's very possible that we won't know what that looks like for another couple months.

Another small point I want to throw in there is the um the 288,000 that uh that Phil discussed is from that 577, and that payment has already been appropriated, and we're making that to them very soon, right?

Um the the intent is still based on past assembly discussions to come back with an appropriation, and they will receive an additional 288,000 on top of that from that to fund that to 100%.

So that payment will be coming once the appropriation is done.

We only have the authority for 50 percent up to 300,000 from the 26th budget.

So that's what we're limited to.

I did already talk to um the superintendent about the timing of uh me bringing something forward to the assembly to make sure they didn't have an urgent need for for me to deal with that before um I got through the draft budgets, and and she said that indicated that that would be okay.

So sometime probably in in April, uh, you'll see something from me to get that appropriation right.

But I don't know that at that point we'll have any information about payments except the one that we already received.

So it's also hard to decide.

Like, do we bring two separate ones back after we receive the payments?

Do we wait till we actually get all of them?

I don't know.

Thank you.

So you we received that money on Monday, it's now Wednesday, and the school district already received their 200.

Thank you for working so quickly.

No?

What did we don't get quite that much credit?

Um, it'll be in next week's AP batch.

Okay, gotcha.

Thank you.

You you just got your promise note, and then you appreciated the promise note.

Okay.

Yeah.

We issue IOUs.

That's that waste oil burner you got there.

Good deal.

Uh Sarah, um talk to me about our next meeting dates for this.

Um, I'm not sure how much more is gonna happen on this.

I think there's still some stuff out there.

Uh when are we gonna meet again about this and how many more meetings do we have left on the budget?

So we have one budget meeting left, and that's on uh focused on enterprise funds.

That's April 16th.

And then the next one would be adopting this budget.

That's the first meeting in May.

Okay.

Yeah, so as in years past, we've thrown additional budget meetings out there.

It sounds like that's gonna be a necessity on this one.

Um Sarah, I'll work with you on finding a date for that.

I'm getting a lot of concurrence from the assembly.

Um another meeting to focus on the general fund.

Correct.

Okay.

And be is there a timeline that we are looking at on that, Brick?

One of my biggest problems is I had to like sell my soul to get this reservation for this meeting because Centennial Hall is so booked up, I would not have preferred to do it on a Wednesday, and that was my only choice.

So we might be slightly at the mercy of when that could be squeezed in, but for the next all the way until I have to submit the enterprise, it's not only enterprise, it's every single other fund except for the general fund.

So I won't be able to do anything again until I get through that.

So it'd have to be after the 16th.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I think we need a little bit of time to let a few things settle still.

Um, so um that's good.

I'll work with you on finding another date and perhaps an alternate location if need be.

Katie.

Um I I don't think these are live streams, but just for it is.

Oh, fantastic.

Hello, everyone.

Um participatory budgeting is you know, just something that I would like to raise and encourage for this community to consider that these are extremely hard decisions.

Uh, you know, like as I said, we've been elected to make and that staff has tried their very best to equip us to make, but I would love to hear from the community about the things that are extremely important to them and um where everyone thinks that they you know can see uh consolidations being made.

Um this this is something that affects us all, and therefore it's something that I would really like to have everyone's voice involved in if possible.

Uh there's there's many communities that are having to deal with this in a much more drastic way.

You know, Juno's having to cut 10 million dollars, and they're asking for community input.

We're very lucky that we're not in that situation, but um, you know, that's that's not unprecedented, and so I would just say to community members, please participate in our budgeting.

Uh, you know, this is for resources for us as resources for our kids, and it it's gonna take all of us um to tighten this belt.

So that's all.

And Juno took away the food tax.

Like, how can we do that here?

I just I'm like and the raise property taxes, cheapest property taxes around, and it's tough duty.

Yeah, I think I think you know, Katie, when you spoke earlier about you know, we need to do this as our responsibility.

I agree with you.

Um, but at this point in time, I think there's some pieces of information that still need to come out, and so I don't think we're shirking our responsibility to give ourselves a little more time to come up with some of these information, like let's find out what this healthcare thing's gonna end up being, at least firm up some numbers.

I know there's usually a negotiation in there somewhere too, where we start saying, Well, what about this?

And what if we do that?

And so I think um, you know, I think we've done a pretty good job getting where we got.

I think the you know, I'd like to see, you know, see what comes up, see what kind of things shake out.

Let's see what the school district budget looks like, see if they can afford some of what we're talking about, and if not, you know, that'll give us some more clarity too.

So I think probably one of the worst things we can do is jump down this hole first and then come back and say, Oh, actually, you know, we have quite a bit extra money here.

Let's figure out where to put it back, you know.

We've already wrecked things, so uh we're not wrecking anything.

This budget doesn't take place for a few months yet, so let's give ourselves a little bit of time.

John has JJ and then John.

Um looking through the packet on what we discussed at the six o'clock hour, and in that revenues section, um, we talked about there's nine million in reserve.

Um what's the kind of healthy round what we like to see range of reserves?

I mean, you could talk about the math behind it.

I can talk about my comfort level is between the seven and nine million.

But as things become more expensive and the operating budget gets higher, I'd obviously like that reserve amount to go up.

Um, but without getting into the detail, my comfort level is between seven and nine, and that's what usually what I use for my recommendations at the end of the year for the public infrastructure sinking fund.

Yes.

Um, so it's one of the things also that our auditors talk to us about after um the audits completed, and um they believe we're about right at the level we should be, partially because it also allows us to respond to some things quickly.

So if we have an opportunity that comes up for a grant that has a matching component, having um money set aside that would not, you know, it does not cause significant problems for us to use it, is really important because we actually fairly frequently do get opportunities that we have to say yes or no to quickly and and not having the funds accessible would would prevent that from being a possibility, and that's even part of what auditors talk about too.

So and I'll um I've got one more part to that too.

Um we have a recent example, right?

When we had this balance is here for those emergencies, those unforeseen circumstances.

Uh we look back at COVID, and uh we knew that we weren't gonna have visitors that year, we knew we were gonna be cutting services, and even after cutting all of our general fund funded projects that year, um, and cutting 10%.

Um and cutting 10%, we we were I mean, the budget was ready to be signed at that point.

I had just come into the job and said let's go back to the drawing board and everybody cut 10%.

Um I think we ran our reserves down to around four million, maybe a little bit under, but um that's the purpose of that uh of that balance.

Absolutely.

Thank you for that.

Yeah, and that nine million paired with this potential three million that's gonna come at some point from that advance that we gave to the hospital fund.

You could have said earlier that, oh yeah, six weeks we'll have that all wrapped up.

Um this would be a very different conversation.

But um, thank you for your work and all that.

That the stuff that you track and that you have on your on your plate is um it's really impressive how you keep track of it all.

So thank you uh for that.

And these are all these pieces that we have to know are here and uh know when to utilize them and and when not to, and yeah, we're stuck here in a deficit, so I think another meeting is a good idea.

Yes, please.

John the Jeb.

Yeah, the other leaves.

Not on this one.

I oh yes, you said we're gonna call on me afterwards.

The um the other point I was gonna make is I'm I'm hearing the message from the assembly.

There is still some more information.

It looks like potentially another budget meeting in our future.

Um fortunately, we have a department head meeting tomorrow morning, so I think we all know what the topic of tomorrow's department head meeting is going to be.

AKA fined $388,000, and uh we'll we'll bring that back.

Brooke.

I do want to also um talk a little bit about the revenue projection piece, if that's okay, because I don't want um, you know, the fact that we're being cautious and uncertain to have uh you know lasting impacts in other places in our community.

So um one good example of this is um because of the way the markets have been working, we've been getting a significant amount of interest income that is unusual for us.

Um it's not unusual as in its one year, it's been the last I want to say two to three years.

We've seen that continue to rise.

That is not a responsible thing to budget for in your operating to the full extent that we expect to see it because that's not a reliable source of revenue.

It also doesn't mean that it's not gonna happen.

So the hard part with so many pieces in our general fund budget is that we we could absolutely end 27 just fine not cutting into reserves with that kind of deficit.

It's just unknown.

So I know that's not news to anybody here, but I also don't you know we've had some years of the had a few years where also because of staff vacancies that we've we'd ended up with surpluses, and so I don't want also the you know, it to seem like we're we're not trying or we're not doing our best to figure these things out.

There's just a lot of moving pieces.

Yeah, and your your revenue being cautious is exactly where I'd want to be, right?

Um, because my expenditures is cautious as well, and we all know that supplementals will come.

Um I feel like I'm channeling my inner tour here saying, well, it's just a guess, right?

Um no, so we will have we will have additional expenses come out too, and I'd much rather budget conservatively on revenue and cut back than have to go anywhere else.

Um, I'll throw it out because I have one thing I think we can still hit.

Um I might be in the minority, but we can get 88,000 if we don't do a Crescent Harbor playground restroom, plus the future costs of that.

Um would also say kind of in my wrap-up of this that uh um you know we've we've asked uh public works to come back with their their PSC complex design and come a little further down.

I think there could be up to a hundred thousand dollars there.

So that brings us down to you know, in that range of two hundred or so.

Those are public infrastructures that payment balance the I'm gonna stop talking now.

Good night.

Do we have any other things on yeah?

Um about the sales tax trends.

Um, is there some effort that could happen within staff to kind of get more compliance to increase our our revenues?

We already are, it just goes kind of slowly.

Um we've I mean, John and Josh could assess to how many letters they've seen go out lately.

Um we have been putting a lot of efforts in, and where you'll end up seeing that um eventually is through that previous quarter's tax revenue line, because um what can happen is is that we end up getting that that money over time instead of um all at once the way that it's supposed to be paid.

All right, thank you.

And the other thing um that was said earlier was you know, you're there's less luxury items and bar and restaurant spending.

So if anyone's out there listening, um support your local economy.

Anything else from the assembly on our general fund this evening?

John, you have what you need, Brooke.

You have what you need so far?

Okay.

Sounds like this process will not wrap up tidily like we have in in the past.

Um, but uh we'll keep working on it.

Okay, that'll bring us to item B tonight.

This is a wrap-up item.

Uh so discussion direction decision on anything involved with the budget if anybody wants to talk about anything at all budget related.

Uh so I'm gonna throw this out there because I told them I would.

Um I'm gonna go back to the harbor rate increase as of right now.

There is no recommendation for a rate increase.

So I'm going to make a motion uh to change the harbor enterprise fund rate increase to zero percent.

Second.

That's been moved and seconded to uh change the harbor rate uh harbor enterprise fund rate increase to zero percent.

Is there any public comment?

Uh back to the assembly for deliberation.

Is that more age or is that in the other fees and rates that are part of the department?

Uh it would be a zero percent rate increase on there's more a there's a couple other fees associated with that.

Um they did talk about parsing out one, but of course that didn't pass yet, and they still have an opportunity to come back to us.

They're gonna meet April 9th again, so they might come back with something, but as of right now, that it was the recommendation or lack of recommendation um from the Port and Harbors Commission.

Katie?

Isn't our Harbor Enterprise fund in not good shape?

Uh that is very much true.

There are a lot of capital needs in that fund, um, and it does need a lot of rate increases in the immediate and long term in order to sustain our miles and miles and miles of harbor system.

And so the intent behind this is um can you can you illuminate that a little further uh in terms of like if that body isn't willing to put it forward, what's our role in doing that?

Or can you just explain your thinking a little bit more on that?

Um I have put a lot of trust and faith in Port and Harbor's Commission in their rate increases in the past.

Um, and I told them that with no recommendation that this is what I would bring forward to us for consideration.

So I'm not gonna argue one way or another if it's the fiscally responsible thing to do, because I have an opinion on that, but I I told them I would bring it forward, and I'm doing what I said I would do.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Um yeah, I feel like that's fiscally irresponsible, and that concerns me considering the shape that that fund is in.

So I don't know that I can vote for that.

I think that we need those harbors.

We just built a haul out.

We are a very community very invested in our commercial fishing industry, charter fishing industry, like we need harbors and people need to make hard decisions, and there's fewer and fewer of them that are willing to make those.

Um but you know, who does the buck stop with, I guess?

Like that's what we're voting on tonight.

So one more clarifying question, Stephen.

Um at that vote of the commission.

Um, do you know what the split was, if you could recall?

I think it was four three, I believe.

Is that on?

It was actually three-three.

Was it there was yeah, there was one member absurd.

Yeah.

And there is an agenda item, like I said, on the ninth to talk about they don't have a a rate set, but there's a discussion to recommend a rate to us um and where that'll go.

I I don't know.

Thank you.

So it's they're discussing on the ninth, and currently what's in our budget is a four percent increase, right?

So that's what they're gonna be discussing.

So if we voted in the affirmative on your motion tonight to not increase rates, then we would be removing that four percent increase from the budget.

However, they could come back on the ninth and say we do support a four percent increase, in which case we would undo what we just did.

I think I would rather just wait until after the ninth before we remove and have to redo this work.

That seems kind of like a futile exercise.

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't ask staff to recalculate that number yet.

Um, and I would ask them to keep it as is until the ninth.

Um, but we again I'm passing forward what uh what the commission decided to vote on?

Yeah, I mean it's a weird situation in some regards, but you know, if we did all the other ones, everybody else came forward with their recommendations.

We were waiting on the harbor group.

This was their meeting to tell us their number.

They didn't come up with a number, so their number was by default zero.

I mean, that's why I seconded it.

Um I mean, is it is it more work to do it twice?

Sure, but there's also a point to be made, which is when you have this group, we were asking them for a number.

They and they gave us a zero, so zero is what it is.

Anything further from the assembly.

It's kind of like a historical grievance.

Like if you've been here for 30 years and you know that the reason why the harbors are bad is because nobody at the city watched driving piles to the point of refusal, and just like Ketchukan six percent, six percent, six percent from here on out, sitka's been the same way.

So it kind of reminds me of when we gave away a 300 bucks to every utility bill just on the premise of hey, we're paying attention to it, and so this thing, like I don't like it, just knowing if inflation is 2.8, whatever it should be going up 2.8 just because we're in the hole, but I can see how the board voted 4-3 or 3-2 or whatever.

So I agree with Tim that our board brought that forward, and we're gonna ride with that.

And if it was a mistake, it'll come out next year, and then it'll be that nope, we're always gonna be at inflation no matter what you wish, because that's a sandwich, and we all know what's in the middle of it.

Agreed.

Sarah all right.

The motion before you is to approve a mortgage rate increase of zero percent.

Mayor Eisenbais?

Yes, Ms.

Riley.

No, Mr.

Selene?

Yes.

Ms.

Carlson, no.

Mr.

Pike.

Yes.

Okay, the motion fails.

Three, two.

Okay, so uh four percent is still in the budget.

Um, we'll be anxiously awaiting the meeting on the ninth.

JJ, you're gonna be here for that one.

I will be.

Okay.

I'll pass it back to you then.

We're still on any open discussion on any item on the budget.

Is now the time to discuss potential revenue sources.

Um I don't think it is in the sense that they don't factor into this year's budget, like those are October decisions that would be for FY 2028.

But um, yeah, seems seems important for us to consider.

So look forward to having those discussions.

Your Honor, I guess I'd like to put in a clip on the full-time employee for the pool.

And under the aspect of the centennial building was built for the city, you know, for the people of town, and now that the pool is a city asset, not a school asset, and to be able to have more opportunities for people to get to the pool.

I think that that 71,000 should be coming like right out of the 200 grand revenue from having a cryout auction of the public space out front here in this building, that revenue should go right back to the community instead of going to pay for whatever slice of passenger vessel funds, or if that money's going to pay for something here that should be passenger vessel funds, and then use that 200,000 dollars to benefit the people of town trying to recreate and get through winter blues and get through not being able to go to the bar as often or whatever else we have.

And I'm gonna be looking for some way to make that lifeguard happen because I think that that service is directly related to health and well-being in town here.

And uh I'm gonna try to come back at you guys for that and try to invent that revenue stream, which is why I'm so hung up on having refrigeration skills work at the city and particularly at Blatchley from a circulation pump that's like a million circulation pumps we have here on boats and trying to get that to correlate with savings because we're doing it ourselves and then using that money to feed back to the benefits of town to get more seniors up into that pool by having more hours and maybe getting to make an aluminum gank plank where seniors could walk down into the pool instead of hanging on to the ladder, which hurts your wrists and all of that.

But thanks for listening.

Yeah, I would be um really interested to hear if you do conjure up some revenue.

Um let's talk about it for sure.

So if I heard it right, um earlier we have one maybe two more budget meetings before adoption.

Is that correct?

Well, there's one scheduled, another one to be scheduled.

Um and then I'm just looking thinking about the calendar.

So first reading would be May 12th.

So we would need to have everything buttoned up in that two-week probably time period right after the enterprise the 16th.

Is that right?

Yeah, okay.

So the other thing that we approve in that cluster is that capital improvement program.

Um so are we gonna be seeing that at the next meeting?

Before we adopt it, it is full draft.

So we had an initial meeting about the direction of it, and we talked about what that would look like.

There's not been any significant changes since then.

Um there'll certainly be uh, I mean, but the general fund, there wasn't a lot to cover there.

There's not been any changes to the the long-term capital program for general fund assets since that was presented um at the meeting.

I don't know if that was a couple months ago.

I believe the that part of the meeting for the enterprise funds is different because they have more to their capital program and more for their ask.

But um I had not anticipated a another meeting specifically for capital.

No, I I don't think so.

Just to meet perhaps an agenda item, just so we can see it before we vote on it.

Um, because I believe at that December meeting, general fund had been reviewed, electric had been reviewed, but harbors and a lot of the other ones hadn't been updated.

Um I'd like to see it before I have to say yes or no.

Anything else generally on the budget?

John Brooke, you have what you need.

Okay.

Uh that'll bring us to item C tonight, then, which is uh there's a motion for that.

Um I move to award a FY26 special emergency nonprofit general fund grant to the SICA all terrain riders, Inc.

at the amount of five thousand dollars.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to award a special emergency nonprofit grant uh to the sitka all terrain riders in the amount of five thousand dollars.

I'll put some parentheses around that.

Uh, this is due to and because of snow removal.

Is there any public comment?

Uh back to the assembly for deliberation.

John, please.

I just want to make a uh quick summary of what's going on here.

So the the nonprofit grant program funded for 45,000, right?

There's somebody is it 50,000?

And we get 45.

Um we do the process earlier in the year.

The assembly approves the uh the grants in specific categories, and uh there's for the past few years been 5,000 available in that program for special emergency purposes.

Um, and uh trying to find a way to quickly fund some assistance and not having to go through a full other appropriation process, and since this funding has already been appropriated, um I talked to uh Miss Riley about this, and uh we we agreed that uh asking for some folks to submit an application under that program seemed like the quickest way to get uh to get money out to assist with some of the sidewalk snow removal.

Katie?

Yeah, I just wanted to really thank the um all terrain riders and uh kind of everything I've been thinking about tonight is that sickins really um help each other out, right?

Like we we stand up to help each other out, and uh this volunteer group has been out plowing sidewalks.

Um there's been a lot of you know instances that I've heard about people have reached out saying they see people walking in the middle of the street and they can't walk on sidewalks, and yeah, I almost twisted my ankle earlier, so we're all we're all struggling out there.

Um, but this group I've really seen go above and beyond along with our public works staff.

Um everyone's just really working as hard as they can.

So uh really grateful to John for you know finding a way that we can help out with them getting a snowblower and you know, putting some of this towards uh towards gas and helping people move around town easily.

Um I and really just a shout out to all the sitcins that have been helping each other out during this time.

Scotty, I concur, Katie, and uh you know just imagine if I had my Harry Jimmy snow push gate down there on Catleann Street with all the quad runners running down Catleyan just to cruise town and being able to keep that sidewalk pushed and then all the drainages along from long liner all the way down with the clogged sewers, all that extra help, and with the grater, and then having quad runners run down on the sidewalk, and you think like three winners ago, four winners ago with over 160 broken bones of people walking down Catleanne Street, slipping on the sidewalks there without the snow that we've had.

Uh should be some kind of a stipend or uh throw a city kegger out in the middle of the street for people of coming together like Katie's talking about and try to enter into each winter with that on the premise that this is how we keep it together.

But JJ.

Um a third fourth um thank you to the sick all train riders and what they do for their neighbors.

Um the code says those adjacent property owners are the ones responsible for keeping the sidewalks clean, and you know, when we have snows like this, that is just such a huge task for like the machines and just their ability to just keep keep moving property after property is just really the scale that was needed um this season.

So thanks to them um for doing it for several years and really being so organized that they were able to meet um this particularly snowbagued in Yeah, very well.

I guess there's actually a lot of reasons I don't want to live in Juneau, but this is one more of those, right?

We uh we didn't get nothing compared to Juneau, so and we're still not even to 2007, we're only halfway to what we had in 2007, so it's still really a cakewalk, even though it's obnoxious.

Snow cake.

Sarah Right.

Um the motion to award a FY26 special emergency nonprofit general fund grant to the SICA all train riders in the amount of five thousand dollars.

Mr.

Celine?

Yes, Mr.

Pike, yes, Ms.

Carlson, yes, Mayor Eisenbais?

Yes, and Ms.

Riley, yes, the motion passes five zero.

Uh thank you all.

Uh that would bring us two persons to be heard this evening.

Any item on or off tonight's agenda, not to exceed three minutes for any individual.

Everybody's standing up.

I see two people moving.

Uh seeing none that'll bring us to adjournment.

Motion to adjourn.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right.

Any opposed?

Uh thank you, staff especially for being here this evening.

It was most helpful.