Thanks.

All right.

Well, let's get this work session started regarding the housing subcommittee's recommendations pertaining to the St.

Patrick's subdivision.

I'll uh kick it off to the city manager to tee off the discussion.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Love, uh Nate Valley City Manager.

Just to set it up, uh, I've got a mic laptop here with any visuals if we want to take a look at any of that.

Uh, but I will defer the bulk of the conversation to the housing subcommittee.

Uh part of the reason we came to this was as we looked at the goal of city council to add more housing units by the fall of 2027.

You know, we looked at what's the what options are available for a relatively short turnaround, uh, knowing what it takes to get design and construction going.

Um and so the the thought was you build out a subdivision, which kind of evolved into well, there is a subdivision that's built out that's not necessarily got construction happening on it, and so is is that uh a more opportune location to start looking at some cost benefit analysis that kind of goes into that is also subject uh to the conversation.

But uh the bulk of it was we have St.

Patrick subdivision, there's a number of lots there uh in the packet.

There's a map that kind of shows what's available, what's not available.

I provide a spreadsheet identifying what was uh what's the list price for those, the list price in a very preliminary conversation with Mr.

Bill Harris is not necessarily what he would sell it to us for if we were to purchase the entirety of it.

Um I'll defer to the housing subcommittee.

Um I don't know if the the mayor wants to take the the point from there, but uh I'll defer to you all and then I can provide any visuals or answer your questions and come up.

Thanks, City Manager Duval.

Um Mayor Fleming, did you want to kick things off or did you want to defer to somebody else in the room?

No, I I'll go ahead and kick it off, and then hopefully uh my uh other council members there will uh kind of uh that are on the committee kind of pick up where I left off a little bit.

So we were looking at uh Coast Guard housing uh to begin with.

We had uh 10 units, uh eight units that are actually, you know, we got um and I do believe we could possibly get another two, maybe even a little bit more.

The Coast Guard at this time is looking for turnkey ready to go projects.

Uh that subdivision is turnkey and ready to go, and so we could easily purchase 10 lots from it there and then at the same time.

The uh city is also looking for a grant for uh uh 750,000 for a work uh grant that would allow uh work uh work type housing built for like teachers, doctors, lawyers, you know, the the whole nine yards.

Um there's a potential seven hundred and fifty thousand dollar uh grant, which would build out about three to four houses in that same area.

So I mean uh we could look at it that way.

Now there are some drawbacks that I do want to point out early, and um I wanted the council to think about it is one, there's already four units as you see that are uh purchased in that agreement.

So if we purchase you know the whole entire uh St.

Patrick uh track, I would think that it would be unfair to us then to, and I don't want to be in the landowning business.

I think the city already has enough land that we've got.

I what I want to do is these are shovel ready projects, we can easily get them on the books, but at the same time I'd like to get rid of the land as fast as we got it, you know, type thing.

But that would mean us probably reducing the price of the lots on on the uh on the city side.

If that happens, then I'm sure that the four individuals that have bought the lots for 95,000 could then want, you know, to be we can compensated for them buying it at a higher rate in the city coming in and buying it at a lower rate and then turning them around.

So it's just something to think about.

I don't even know legally what our obligation is or if there is any legal opinion on that.

But uh I'll kind of leave it at that.

I really think that this uh uh subdivision could be used for the Coast Guard housing and our workshop housing that we were talking about that the city has put in a 750,000 dollar grant for.

Um and so I'll kind of let the rest of the council members on the committee talk about it.

Councilmember Devons.

Uh so uh basically what precipitated the discussion on this specific development is I guess multiple parts.

The first part is we made the same observation that everybody made that right now these lots are not selling at market rate.

It's because of uh development cost escalation has made it difficult for individuals and developers to find an economical path to develop these lots out.

Um and the second one, the the second motivating factor was our housing goals.

We agreed as a council earlier this year that we would like to keep pace with the housing needs assessment, which would indicate that we would build 22 units of housing every year.

Technically, we are on track to do that with the low-income housing that's being developed near the elementary school.

Um, but to meet that goal during next year, the the only realistic way to meet that goal from our perspective is to do it in somewhere that that the infrastructure, the sewer water and roads and snow lot and layout, plating and design have already been completed, and this is really the only space within the main town uh district that that's possible.

Um and then obviously the final consideration was exactly what Dennis was talking about the workforce housing grant and the Coast Guard uh expansion in Alaska.

Uh they're looking at expending some of their funds for growing their presence in our state.

Uh and also the state government is looking for opportunities to grow uh workforce housing opportunities for the uh economic well-being of the state.

So this seemed like an opportunity to be able to meet both of those needs uh in essentially the fastest reasonable manner.

Uh we did have discussion though as to the ongoing path in the future for how to meet the housing needs assessment goals, and it's going to require um development of other areas and and density housing and all sorts of things that this project cannot address.

This is just the what you might call the low-hanging fruit.

It's the easiest project that, as Dennis said, is shovel ready.

Um so first and foremost, um, the reason I think that we came to this point is because of the housing survey that went out.

Um public spoke and said that um housing is the priority, and council agreed.

Um so I just want to make sure anyone listening knows that um the reason we came to this point is because of the community outreach and saying, hey, we have a problem with housing here.

So when we started to look at all the different options that were out there, um ultimately we looked at several different locations.

When it came down to it, this was the cheapest option to be able to try this and see what we can do to help the community as far as um having locations for Coast Guard housing, having locations to build up with grants, um, some housing for our teachers and our uh and the hospital staff and so on.