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Video Clips

Quoted moments from Alaska public meetings, hearings, and press conferences.

Clips from City of SewardClear
0:31

Chair Sullivan (City of Seward)

“Handicap capability, and there is a full ADA room. Okay, in the building, in the ground floor.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:51
Courtney Bringhurst“And so this is the first stage of that process to divide out the land that would encompass the Jesse Lee Cemetery. So if you look on page 41 of the packet, you'll see parcels highlighted in yellow and red. Everything highlighted is currently city property. City cemetery, but the red portion is what is known as the Jesse Lee Cemetery, and that red outline will now be what is proposed to be the boundaries, the actual lot lines for that cemetery. And then once the plat is finalized, then the city manager and city council can enter into negotiation with the Katoochick Tribe about that parcel of of land.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:11

Chair Sullivan (City of Seward)

“I have a question, Mr. Swan. You have a lift identified in your, um, I believe in one of the— in the building itself.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:06
Courtney Bringhurst“And then of course making sure that the building is in compliance with all building fire and life safety code requirements.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:08

Thomas Swan

“I have to have something to get people up.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:11

Chair Sullivan (City of Seward)

“You just gotta cut it into a little block so they can make decisions. Yeah, carve it out like that.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:43
Courtney Bringhurst“this conditional use permit application is showing that the Renovations to the building will increase the number of nightly rental rooms from 5 to 12, which then puts it into that hotel category, which requires a conditional use permit”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:16
Courtney Bringhurst“Exterior lighting shall be children-directed downward. The half space— half off-street parking space per guest room. Providing a watertight animal-resistant waste container.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:37
Courtney Bringhurst“Yeah, so that is the existing cemetery road. And, and you'll— you may have seen in the packet that there were some exceptions that our surveyor is requesting from the Kenai Peninsula Borough, and those exceptions are because Typically, the borough will require much wider access easements, but being this is a cemetery, there are burials located quite near to the road. That's why she's requesting the exceptions that it just be a 15-foot access road, and that's like the exact width of the current road there.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:16

Chair Sullivan (City of Seward)

“lifts, elevators are required, but lifts, the state was no longer certifying.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:14

Chair Sullivan (City of Seward)

“That resolution has been approved.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:28

Chair Sullivan (City of Seward)

“You might be rolling over somebody's grave.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:37
Courtney Bringhurst“So the site will accommodate approximately 8 off-street parking spaces, which previously, on the most recent hotel CUPs, Commission has required half a parking space for each room.”

Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting 11.3.2026 ·

0:45
Kat Sorensen“On the designs that we initially received, there was designs for step-down like bleacher seating that is in an area separate than what it's referred to, than what Council Member Calhoon referred to. It was part of like the broader boardwalk aspect. And so as we've pared that down, that stadium, like that cool stadium diagram is It's still in the long-term plan, but we pared that down to focus on the building and not do the boardwalk and the buildings there.”

Seward: City Council Work Session 10/29/2026 ·

0:18
Kat Sorensen“it's not a— It's not a huge earth-shattering thing that that depreciation is so high, but it shouldn't be as high as it is because things do happen. And if you look to some of the cash— the revenue and cash expenditures do get dangerously close.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:07
Kat Sorensen“the two funds are not generating enough revenue to cover those depreciations.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:28
Kat Sorensen“And so you'll see here on this slide, in FY24, that admin fee was $1.10 million, just shy of that, or $30,000 shy of that. In '25 and '26, we budgeted for that to drop even further, or drop further, down to about $700,000. And in '27 and '28, we're budgeting about $678,000.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:22

Harbormaster Tony (City of Seward)

“where Seward is different, that we run and operate our travel lift perform all our maintenance, where Kodiak, for example, they contract out their, their lift to, to another vendor.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:10

Harbormaster Tony (City of Seward)

“The first one we're going to propose is a rate increase of 10% plus CPI for our travel lifts for '27 and '28.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:09

Harbormaster Tony (City of Seward)

“One proposal that we're gonna go with is we'll pass our credit card fees on to the end user for the upcoming year.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:21
Kat Sorensen“It would be paid for by the sales— the seasonal sales tax. So instead of dropping the mill rate, we're not accepting— we're not collecting that $678,000 from the electric utility. Rates are going down and the mill rate stays the same, but we can bring rates down for everybody.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:10

Harbormaster Tony (City of Seward)

“After COVID, we skipped a few years on our inspections, and so we've had a lot of expenses going out and repairing some of these items on those machines.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:35
Kat Sorensen“And so with that, we would be able to reduce rates in 2028 by either $0.01 in the winter or $0.50 all year, which is a smaller impact than dropping property taxes, but it's spread out over the entire community to all ratepayers.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:27

Harbormaster Tony (City of Seward)

“At the end of last year, it was $35,000 to replace the cable, and we do that every 3 years.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:24
Kat Sorensen“We didn't do it 2 years ago. Decrease rates, but rather than pushing off all the CPI increases and like we had in the past and doing them at once, would be more effective to increase by CPI annually. But no, it's not mandatory.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:29
Kat Sorensen“No, yeah, we are trying to change also the credit card processor, so it's a lot of changes in the background. But as soon as we have all of that set up, it will be communicated to the customers.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:19
Kat Sorensen“I would maybe put onto the proposal plate for us to bring back later of getting rid of that administrative fee entirely. So that there's no administrative fee between the City of Seward and the City of Seward Electric Department instead of dropping by $1 mil in 2028.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:52
Kat Sorensen“Usually in the Harbor and SMIC, those gaps are addressed with state or federal funds, grant monies, but over the next few years, we want to steer both of those funds more towards a greater self-reliance”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:27
Kat Sorensen“We're just trying to make sure that both of the funds that Tony is operating come in with a little bit more revenue so that they can handle those things if and when they come up, like cable replacements and the increased costs.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:11
Kat Sorensen“We don't have to make— we're not making decisions. Nope, no decisions today on that, but I just did want to put it out into the ether.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:10
Kat Sorensen“We don't necessarily anticipate ever seeing a jetty, a breakwater replacement in Tony's tenure here.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:15

Harbormaster Tony (City of Seward)

“we're seeing an increase in our track lift maintenance that is hard to keep up with. For a great example is our cable for the 300-ton lift has gone from historically $10,000 to $12,000 for cable for that machine.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:20
Kat Sorensen“And I do know that over, over the past, this has been a pretty big contention, spot of contention for the community. And so it's not in my proposal. It was just something that came to mind today as I was looking at the numbers we were discussing last night and the number on this slide today. And I wanted to throw it out there.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session Oct 28 2026 ·

0:17
Kat Sorensen“we'll bring an ordinance that changes to a seasonal sales tax that you'll also have to vote on and pass and drops the mill rate, which you'll also have to vote on and pass. So there's kind of three levers that are being pulled.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:36
Doug Schoessler“even in our loans when we had to present the financials, our wastewater, they said you got to finish that rate study or we're not repaying all your grant that we gave you. So we are working to get that done. We can take those two projects when it's tied together and bring that back to you. And like I said, I'd love to have it by the end of the year, but we're kind of— there's some things that have really major data issues that we've needed to work through, and both finance and ourselves are working through that to get our consultant those— that information.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:21
Doug Schoessler“we have a big rate study going for that. We're hoping to have it by the end of the year for water and sewer rates and how to get there and, and what that needs to be to happen. We haven't had a rate study since 1993. This came up, this came up 2020, 2021, maybe it's 2022.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:24
Kat Sorensen“definitely something to be in mind— keep, keep in mind is once again that depreciation for 27-28 does have us exceeding our revenue. So we have to be mindful of and plan for that as we look towards that rate study in the future.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:49
Casie Warner“I'm wondering if there's a different way to maybe look at that where we could potentially keep that 1 mil rate, um, inside city limits, but allow for some property exemptions around primary residences and those that are currently operating as short-term rentals, um, but are willing to make the move into a long-term housing and allow them a little bit of that property tax relief.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:17
Casie Warner“there was a House bill that passed at the state legislation, uh, last legislation session, House Bill 13, that allows municipalities to have a little bit more control around the way that they, um, do property exemption.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:09
Kat Sorensen“all 3 of those levers have to pull for this budget to pass.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:42
Doug Schoessler“We were right to council to pass the rate study, and this is the same one we're working on. It got— that was right when, uh, I believe Jeanette just started that month, wasn't comfortable with it, and it never came back. And then COVID hit and everything is just kind of fallen back. But we have done some cost of living type of raises in the rates, but not a rate study to show where we should be.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:23
Doug Schoessler“We're looking at all those bigger buildings— businesses should be metered and working off a water meter. And how does that rate work? And getting that dialed in so it matches up with what most communities would be doing on it. So hopefully we can really simplify the rates and get that rate study done so we can bring those both back in there, both water and wastewater.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:56
Casie Warner“I think kind of where I'm getting hung up is with that 1 mil rate reduction, and I personally myself would like to see us keep the 1 mil rate and then look at how House Bill 13 could help support our year-round residents through that reduction if it's a primary home and/or supporting owners of short-term rentals that may want to become long-term rental units.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:45
Lori Draper“it does deserve some looking at because if I'm not mistaken, what it also allowed us to do is to allow these tax reductions without having to go to a vote of the people because it used to be that the state only allowed you to do $75,000 homeowner exemption.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:19
Doug Schoessler“It certainly helped to be able to keep the rates where we are right now, but as we're going through the rate study, I mean, these are all projects that would have had to come out of the rate pairs price, you know, when we do those rates. So it's been a good thing for the city.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:08
Doug Schoessler“just kind of a simple thing that helps the year-round folks is just match the borough's example.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:22
Kat Sorensen“And the mill rate is $500,000. The mill rate change is $500,000.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

0:21
Kat Sorensen“But with the loans associated with it, it is a good deadline. It's like Doug said it. It came up in 2021, '22, kind of fell to the wayside, and we're excited to re-up that and bring that forward with you. But we haven't planned for any of that in this budget. This is a very status quo budget and may address that in the future for both of these enterprise funds.”

Seward: City Council Budget Work Session 10/27/2029 ·

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