Nome Joint Utility System Board Meeting- Sept. 22, 2025

I guess we can call the Nome Joint Utility Board meeting for September 22nd to order. Can we have a roll call, please? Dave Barron. Here. Larry Peterson.

Yes. Pat Knoedle. Here. Karl Emmons. Here.

Derek McLarty. Here.

What do I do? All right, uh, business of visitors. Do we have any visitors?

Uh, do I have a motion to approve the agenda as provided? Motion to approve the agenda as presented. Second. I would like to, uh, add— okay, yeah. I'd make a motion to add, uh, discussion of our audit and where we are.

That's going to be with Joy, and, uh, I don't see her on this either. She's here under the executive session. Well, I wanted— I want to talk in public. I wanted to— I want to talk about our budget. I want to talk about the— I don't think we want to hide that from the public.

No, uh, but she would like to have a few minutes with you. Okay, well, I still would like to put the audit and the budget on the agenda. I think there's a whole bunch of people in this town are really curious about what the hell's been going on, and I think we should be upfront. I don't, I don't think going to executive session to discuss financial stuff is necessarily a good way to do it. Sure.

Um, do I have a motion to—. I made the motion. Somebody wants to second it? I'll second it. Okay, and that's open up to discussion as well.

I think if it is already something that we're going to discuss in executive session and John thinks that it's appropriate to discuss in an executive session, I don't think we're hiding anything from the public. I think it's pretty clear at this point that we're trying to get things out. Okay, then double down on it, both of them. Sounds good. Executive session still though, right?

So yeah, I'm not saying nothing, executive session. I just want it to be important to the, to the board because it's important to the community to have that at least on our agenda. I mean, it's been 5 years, guys. Let's have it. You know, we don't even have a budget now.

John said last meeting we'd have a budget. Well, that was several months ago at this point, but, um, we need some kind of something I believe, for a budget in here to operate on. I mean, look at the money we're spending and stuff, and who knows even who's, who's okay and who isn't okay and where it's getting spent. What's going on? So let's have a roll call for the, um, amendment to the approval of the agenda.

Then after that, you know, approve the agenda.

Would just be approval of the amended agenda, right? Well, we can—. No, yeah, we got to approve the adding it. It's how the agenda is amended, or agenda as amended. Yeah, yeah, I'll change my second if you want to change your motion to, uh, make it that way.

Yeah, motion to approve the agenda as amended. Second. Roll call. Dave Barron. Yes.

Larry Peterson. Yes. Pat Canoodle. Yes. Larry— or Carl Emmons.

Yes. Derek and Clardy. Yes.

Then I would, uh, have an approval of the minutes, a motion to approve the minutes. I'd make that motion. I'd second that. Call for the question.

Carl Emmons? Yes. Derek McLarty? Yes. Dave Berry?

Yes. Larry Peterson? Yes. Patrick Canolo? Yes.

That brings us to correspondence. We did not find any correspondence to include. Okay, then that brings us to utility manager's report. Written report for operations is included in your packet. Happy to take any questions.

Looks like there's quite a bit of stuff going on with 15. I think that's in your report. Is everything, uh, for lack of better, hunky-dory now, or is it, uh, 15 is running reliably? After we had a tech come up from Hugo Stamp to correct what was wrong, and yep, it's running fine. It looks like— not judging there, but it looked like a faulty nozzle that was a manufacturer's thing and maybe a few installation errors.

Is that an accurate assessment? That's correct. All right. And we're in the middle of settling that issue with Hugo Stamp and other vendors.

Okay, sounds good.

I would ask you, in your—.

With the—. With 15 now up and operational, are we going to wait till next summer to take 16 down? We're going right through the winter and take it down. We are— we have a timeline of about now 5 weeks of downtime for 16. Um, before we can get that—.

Go about— lasts a lot longer. That was the reason I asked, you know, right? I mean, 15 is not done yet, even though a lot of people have the impression it's not. We're not recovering any water off of it or heat off of it that I can see. That part is not finished, correct?

Correct. Yes, we're— uh, Ken, you can speak to that. So we've got a little over a month for the exhaust gas boiler to be installed on Engine 16. Following that, then we're going to finish all the plumbing needed in order to tie the ORCs in. So that's going to follow, but both generators are going to be operational by the end of October.

Okay, because I'm concerned about the exhaust itself getting out the building, getting retied in and stuff. That's the one thing that will stop us from operating that engine is if we don't get that. The rest of it's just going to be plumbing around, you know. What's the—. Yes.

So we're pretty confident the end of October, yes, that both engines will be out back online. Okay, so that's good. And it's good that we've had experience with the other powerhouse now, I think is a good deal.

So we still have work to do on the EWT after they came back after the 500 hours? Uh, there's maybe minimal maintenance work to be done. Some safety issues, fire hydrants, but they did come back and they did their semi-annual maintenance checkup and they addressed some of the lingering issues from the work done when they were here last time. So both towers are operational and both towers are producing.

Let me ask you this on that. Um, the one that failed kind of catastrophically, that we need to get the crane for, what are the odds the one— it's, it's cousin or brother there doing the same thing? Have they come up with anything that's going to prevent that, or are we just hung out there until it does it?

UWT, you indicated that the degree of damage that they saw in number 1 was unlike anything that they've seen before.

That caught them by surprise. We do not anticipate that to be happening, and the newly revamped DWT is doing a better job of the preventive maintenance than its former letterhead.

So we— yes.

Did they get both obstruction lights working? I only saw one, the one they had.

You can see it. You're looking for an outside job? No, long time without any on there. Then I see Aurora Inn fire hydrants and stuff. Have we done an inventory on all our fire hydrants and all of them are working, or do we have some that are failed?

We have some that are not working or could be made to work if there is a fire, a matter of small leaks, but we do have a handful of them that we need to address.

There's one missing up there on— is it 5th and 5th? 5Th and N? On the— the canister, but there's no hydrant. Oh yeah, we might have pulled it to rebuild it in the shop. Well, it's been a year or two now, so you're probably tripping over it.

I'll look into that. Yeah, the can is laid over, you know, on a pretty good angle. The hydrator's gone. Oh man, that's the one by Minelock, whatever that road is off of Nathan Nathan Alley. Oh, Nathan.

Yeah, trash can, trash bag on it. Severe lean.

Yeah, they have various degree of issues. Some require excavation and some require just to change a few parts. Like I reported in, I think it was the last meeting, uh our crew could benefit from a rebuilding class in how to rebuild these fire hydrants. Yeah, that would be a good training.

You know, I would have a comment on the, you know, the Spring Creek Housing Authority's North Iceview housing project they've got out there. My understanding is that somehow they got approved for those life water above-ground septic tanks. I don't think anybody knows how those function. You know, they're, they're a septic tank, but they've got agitators and grinders and pumps inside of them that all have to work, and they digest the, uh, oopie in there, and then it goes out through an outflow, and they, they kill all the bacteria that might not have gotten digested with, uh, ultraviolet light. But then they just dump them out in the yard.

So that means if any part of that quits instantly, you've got to quit using them, or they dump that out in the yard, you know, the waste. And, uh, and you've got to— they're real management intensive. You know, if you were— was in your house and you lived there and you took care of it, because there's a limited amount of water, or maximum water you put through every day, and you can't exceed that. And so somebody needs to really care that they're not going to work, you know, if they don't follow it real strict. And I mean, I would never recommend that anybody put anything like that in.

You know, they'd be far better off like a community septic tank. Or something that— or holding tank that you could— utilities could go pump on a regular basis if you didn't want to put a lift station and of course main in right away or something. But to put those on, it's going to be nothing but a heartache. And I've seen how this happens when people do that, the, um, and then it becomes a mess, you know, and it's flowing out on the tundra and all that. It seems like utilities always winds up involved in the cleanup.

At our cost, you know, sending our crew to empty honey buckets, get piled out the back door and all that stuff. You know, I think that, uh, that people just don't understand how these things work. And to put them into a housing project where people there don't necessarily understand how a flush toilet works, it's going to be pretty tough to, uh, to, to maintain. I mean, they're gonna— the housing authorities I mean, when they're out there and they're up to their elbows, you know, trying to fix a pump or a grinder or something, you know, it's, uh, you're not going to find anybody around here that hasn't got a real best friend, a whole bunch of money to do that. I thought they were— they're not doing sewer.

Not— no, my understanding is it's light water. Water's okay. Is there a commission approved that? Oh, they did. I was going to ask, like, what's the approval for process for something like that?

And does this—. Well, whoever's have to review it, well, whoever approves it had better be ready to take over the maintenance of it. Yeah, that's—. Those are—. And then the other thing is if the people that are— it's not going to be living in there and paying the electric bill, you got to have your heat trace on.

Heat trace is on all the time in the winter, you know, and all that. So that's going to be a cost. So it's an interim measure until they build they expand that development, expectation is with later phases they will put a proper lift station in and then collect all that drainage, you know, further to the south— I'm sorry, further to the north towards Bourbon Creek, and then pump it up to our, our force main.

It was just a little early for them to put a lift station in. Well, but in the meantime, I, I hoping that utilities won't incur a bunch of costs in there going out there and babysitting something that never should have been there in the first place. You know, if they had to put a holding tank out there and, and put a, uh, a sump pump in it and pump the whole work community over to a, to our forced main or to a collection point into our gravity main, um, I mean, I can see where you can make that work. For the short term, you know. But to do something like this and expect people to maintain these and to not say, well, I'm gonna wash my clothes Saturday here, and I don't care if it's 1,200 gallons of water going down, you know.

So I, I think that in there, somebody should at least point out to the people that are putting this together that it's going to be real high maintenance.

Utilities writes a letter to the owner of the property saying that they're responsible for until they get it properly hooked into city water and sewer. There is no question on that. It is their responsibility, and that is a known— so if they call us and need help, then we'll build them for it, right? We absolutely— and we have an agreement in place for that. Okay.

But really about all we can do is give them some line. We don't have people that—. We don't have to give water and that'll stop that. Yeah, they're magic boxes. Okay.

All right, well, I think it's worth people going into that with their eyes open, you know. Yeah, I've been involved in several of those and I would never put one in or recommend anybody to put one in. Unless it was the last option you had and you were gonna— it was your baby and you were gonna take care of it. Then I see we got a couple new vehicles and stuff. Um, hearing a lot of ratepayers talking about seeing vehicles of Nome Joint other places where they're not supposed to be.

I would— I know the board has asked, and now the board I think is telling the management that we want decals on all our vehicles. Um, these vehicles aren't for personal use. These vehicles aren't the second home, second vehicle. They are for Nome Joint work and callouts and stuff. Vehicles shouldn't be going past anything out of town that doesn't have a power pole on it.

So I would like to see all our vehicles with the Nome Joint decal on. Okay.

Okay, I know we have numbers on them, but it seems like everybody with a white truck has numbers on them, so we still don't know, right? So, there you go. Yeah, we have that coming. It will look real neat, and it will probably look something similar to this, you guys. Awesome.

Used to be in the '80s.

Then they were all yellow ones too. Anyway, um, any more questions on operations?

Yeah, Front Street is is still— well, it's past scoping. Design has not started in earnest. The project will slip beyond 2028, even though that's what it's currently budgeted for.

That's just DOT's processes, pretty engaging.

Cepula is shown to be advertising in October. Expectations are that that will happen here relatively soon and that the water line will be replaced along Sepala next summer.

The BES last month, we tried to update the firmware for the power converters, and you can see that one green box there, and we had some trouble with that. And early next month we're going to make another run at getting the firmware updated for the power converters. And that is a cost that we're fronting it early on, but it's a SunGrid cost that we will push back to them just for this punch list activity.

On the tank farm relocation, uh, Got a grant submitted to EDA in April. They showed up on September 2nd wanting to talk about it, and I think John visited them, so that was good to answer some of their questions, but no other involvement has happened.

Yes, who administers the use of the tank farm or the Air Force pad? Is The city, is it? Okay, because I'm hearing a lot of different uses by the port folks, and then our plan to put a tank farm there. Is, is there communication between the port and the utilities on the uses of that pad? Yeah, absolutely.

Planning and all that. Yep, we've got a pretty good stakeout location, uh, have presented at the Port Commission some years back, so at least at that point there was clarity, and I know that Joey has clarity. And as long as we're keeping up on that, because I'm hearing a lot of ideas coming from the port side about uses for that property, and just makes me wonder if it's going to supersede the tanks. Well, like, they're going to just take it over and then, and then there'll be something there, and then we can't put our tanks there. So I think stay on top of it.

We've got a guy who's on the port. I could probably answer that. So it's, it's come up quite a few times, and it is a known thing that we've got designs and plans and use coming up. But in the interim, make money off of it, use it for rock storage and use the property. And so we know that there is a tank farm potentially coming.

We don't know a timeline, and since we don't have a timeline, then we're just gonna keep using it as laydown yard for rock and everything else. And what we're doing on the Port Commission will not affect anything we're doing as far as a tank on in the future. Okay, well, you know, that's great. If they would—. And maybe they want to take a designated tank farm use, because that's Bonanza Fuels.

I'd be looking for somewhere before too long. They're having trouble with their ground. We're not the only ones. Yeah, you know, and to have something that's pod to bedrock, you know, that you can count on. That's been a discussion, including Crowley.

Interested in, and that would be a location. Um, just want to make sure that if we're—. Yeah, we want to make sure we have it locked in or some kind of commitment or something so it doesn't get— the rug doesn't get pulled out from under us. Along those lines, the port has some money from the— I believe the Denali Commission to replace some of the fuel lines just because they're going on 40 years old. And the corridor that they're looking to reroute them on would be— what do you call that— valve assembly, cross the road there, hug the, the bank behind the GARCU on the west side, and it would line up right towards our future tank farm.

It is a coordinated activity. Yeah.

The heat exchanger project, I think we pretty much talked about that earlier. It's plugging along.

The CMAP project, it's nothing that anybody's really ever going to see. There's not going to be anything shiny sitting up on a hill you can point at. But we're going to upgrade our transformer and our feeder protection relays. We're going to work on SCADA programming, that type of thing. Grant-funded effort.

It's going to be great. It is great. For us laymen, what is a CMAP? Community Microgrid Development Partnership. So what's a CMAP again?

So NREL which used to be one of the government energy labs, but different management now.

It's one of their programs to where they're helping out microgrids. We're microgrid.

Yeah, there's about— we're in, I think, the second cohort. There's probably 10 projects in that cohort.

Okay. We had it under negotiation for a year.

Awesome. Yeah, so it should be done by now if you look at our original schedule, but we're really just starting.

And then REF-19, Renewable Energy Fund, we submitted another grant application, range of $4 million for a solar farm, but we're not going to hear much about that for a fair while because the legislature ways in, and that's a ways out. Is that going on the roof?

This one is penciled to be along, uh, Windmill Hill. That's the spot. But the roof could be a pretty good spot too, but maybe not for— this is pretty big for that. Yeah, say, what kind of panels are those?

On Center Creek Road, we were supposed to be starting our HDD work under Center Creek Road right after hunting, but materials that the HDD firm had coming in, it's on a barge that's not going to be here till probably the end of the month at the earliest. So that's not happening until 2027. Uh, Barron Straits helped us out with the utilities in it, so we're good there.

2027 Is going to be a great year.

Stipped again. What I printed off and I did not bring, um, is on the final fuel. Are you planning to cover that one, John, or, uh, the—. I guess, um, oh, as far as pricing and, and the like. So by the time you got our final price and you add in the wharfage, it's another nickel that goes to the port, and you've got the legal fees, uh, with preparing the bond package, a little bit of work that we did— well, inspection work that was done this summer— I think it's going to be around $4.55 a gallon before we do the weighted average.

So obviously the price of fuel is going up, and the fuel surcharge is probably going to go up at least a dime is my guess, but I haven't done the final comps. Well, we don't have the final numbers. Yeah, well, until we deliver, so that would be an October item.

Are we still getting that fuel group for that purchase, or are we— to have— we missed that window? No, we are, we are in the fuel group, and we also are doing tax-exempt financing.

Okay, but you know, I guess I keep hearing the price of diesel fuel is higher than it's ever been right now, and so we're not the only community in that predicament? Other people bought theirs and it was cheaper? No, uh, the The, uh, well, I believe most of the people have it based on August pricing, but we don't. We do. We do.

Yes. So we're not hung out for what's going to happen here next month? No. Okay. Nope.

It becomes a lot cheaper next month, it's not going to help us. That's okay. I don't expect that to happen, not before everything ice is over. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't wait. But probably is— last time we chatted with them, they were up north.

They're coming down. They're going to stop at Kotzebue, and then we're next somewhere near the end of the month.

And how did the power purchase agreements work for Village Solomon?

Are they producing? They are producing a little over 1,000 kWh for each of the sites, or somewhere around there. That was as measured, um, on the 15th of the month.

So no, it's a good addition.

The other question I had was, you know, with the hospital going getting diverted over through, uh, N Street lift station. Um, do we have, or have we thought about at all, some kind of backup power to run that? So we have a project that's designed that we're ready to advertise pretty quick here, which will replace the lift station, and it will include provisions for a backup power, including a generator. Be a— I don't think it'll be a permanent install. I think it'll be something that could be on wheels, but we'll leave it there.

Cord back up to the hospital and plug it in.

I mean, there are options, you know. They have their own power in an emergency situation. And we've got— by going to the N Street, now we've got another lift station into their works, you know. So we've got the N Street lift station now, front and end. This is going to be the same one, just shifted over a little bit to the east.

Okay, so we'll be net neutral in the number of lift stations. And it will, uh, well, the other way they're going, the way that goes now, it goes down I Street, I think, and misses the N Street lift station entirely.

But that's just a comment. Um, it, because it goes around to down, uh, down K, part of it, and turns on, on 6th and goes down I. As I remember, we have flow from the hospital complex that comes down K Street and also N Street. It's not a straight shot down N, it jogs a block to the west, heads south, and then comes back to N Street for its—. Well, that's got to be their new building.

That wasn't the original old hospital. The hospital came to High Street and went south there.

And that—. And the reason for doing that was it eliminated one, one more lift station. But, um, that's neither here nor there. It's, it's just I want to make sure that— because that N Street lift station where it is is oftentimes inundated with fall storms. And, uh, but if they put a source of power that's up on piling or something, you know, the bottom of the flood, you know, and it's substantial enough to stand waves, I think it would be okay.

And that's all, all factored in. Yes.

Someone want to go over the contractor and operational housing? I see you guys put something together for that. Just that, uh, it's justifiable to have another unit based on the number of people that we have coming through. And Thomas did a good job in writing up a, uh, the scenario.

Good to have something like this when, uh, you guys bring those things to us, and then it's like, then we can justify it, right? Yes, I can sleep— sleeping on, uh, futons at the moment, so fitting them in. Uh, power production— oops, financial report, my bad. Yep, got a good, uh, note today saying that our loan is paid off from Northram, so that's fuel loan, so that was paid off, um, for last year. Yes, sure.

Do you want me to say anything more? Do you have any other questions? Anything in particular that we should be paying attention to that I just wouldn't be able to notice without you telling me? I don't think about that. I don't think so.

Um, did have interviews today for a new AP person. It's exciting. A little bit. No, I don't, I don't think there's anything abnormal in there.

I didn't see anything that jumped out at me, but I thought perhaps you would tell on yourself and show me where to look.

Well then, after financials, I think we can talk about audits and budgets.

So I know audit 2021 is done and she's ready to make a presentation, uh, to board on that. And 2022, uh, she told me is, uh, just a little bit of, um, uh, finalization. Um, 22 or anything. So, and 23 we're gonna plan on getting done this week.

What's been the holdup? Time and, um, going through various, um, getting, uh, getting everything in order. You know, when we had a lack of people there for a bit, it— we made sure that we paid our bills and paid our people.

And then Chris has done a great job in going through and doing the general ledger side of things to get things in the proper proper columns. So I guess I'll just ask the real high-level question. As far as, uh, the audits and their completion, what's our estimated, uh, time till the finish line to where we're looking at current?

Uh, that will have to be a question that Joy, um, answers. The They—. She has several other clients that she's working with presently, but she is going to have more time to put into the utility.

Real high level, like by the end of the year or halfway through, something just some—. Yes, something like that. By year end. 2025 Is what you're saying? 24.

That'll give us through '24, and then 25 should be right behind it, hopefully. And 2026 will be done by that time too, so yeah.

Yeah. Is there any one particular thing that's holding it up? Other than scheduling, uh, getting final reconciliations on some credit cards, and, um, then depreciation and fixed assets.

And going back to budgeting, Carl keeps bringing up, um, can we have a— can we do a budget without having audits? Or—. Yes, we can. And I'm going to plan on taking a couple of days to not work from my office here to be able to get that done. Okay, because, you know, if you— we need somebody to help, let's hire somebody.

It's, uh, it's a matter of time. Well, yes. But that— I mean, you shouldn't have to do it all. I mean, there's a whole bunch of people out there that are in the accounting business. We could hire somebody to put a budget together.

We don't— you don't have to do it. There's no reason that we operate without one waiting for you to do it. Well, I'm going to take a couple days and get a budget by the end of this week.

Okay, perfect. And expect not to see a lot of me during that Unless the fuel shows up.

It's amazing what can happen between midnight and 6 AM when a lot more can happens than happens the rest of the week.

I get more done on a Saturday than I do on a Monday or Tuesday. Any more questions about, uh, budget and audits?

Our production says missing reports. We'll have next month.

Close. Wind production. Power. Gotcha.

Um, that moves us to unfinished business. There's nothing there. And then we have new business, labor contracts. We're going to move that into executive session.

Do we have to do anything after executive session? Uh, I don't believe so, but if you want Joy to make some, um, uh, you know, report directly—. I think she just texted me and said that she's going to dinner, or emailed or something. I can't wear my watch.

Did you get it? I was just—. I'm just going in order to executive session to get board comments now then. That's what I was thinking of doing, just do board comments now. Okay, well, why don't—.

Or I'm sorry, um, I guess, oh, um, Uh, she is going out with her team. I hope we can reschedule and have a chance to go through the '21 results and the plan for '22 to '24. Uh, current status: have all the requests for 2022, few outstanding samples need to send to the team. 2023 Waiting on the final trial balance with credit card expense allocation and samples. But the rest of the— most of the rest we have for audit preparation.

2024 Have not received much documentation for this year. We have something working on 2022 again this week. I'll keep you all updated. I hope the meeting goes well.

Okay, uh, could we have a special meeting for that presentation from her? Uh, let's chat with her. Chris can call her tomorrow and find out when that might be a good time to do. Okay, sound like a plan. Sounds like a good plan.

Okay, uh, let's go ahead and go board comments. Derek, um, A lot of information in this packet. I'm going to assume that that was you over there adding a whole lot of extra to this packet, and thank you because I do like the detail and the justification for the facility and all that stuff, and just the added, the added detail, which I'm going to just assume is you. Um, it looks very good. It's much easier to read and kind of understand what's going on, so thank you.

Thank you for all the financial updates and for keeping us to our schedule, and by the end of the year We'll be good. That's all I've got. Thank you. Um, I guess I kind of use this to update on other things going on that I might be somewhat involved in, and that's one of them is the Pilgrim Hot Springs, the geothermal power plant. Uh, it's fully funded.

Um, we're having a pre-construction meeting the second week of October. All the engineers and design folks are going out to site to kind of do a walkthrough, and it's planned to start construction next year. Um, one thing that in one of our meetings, um, meetings, a question was raised as to maintaining the thing, and they brought up approaching the utilities maybe to provide some— of course you'd get paid, but that was a concern of mine just coming from this side, like do we even have that? So just be prepared for them reaching out, um, looking for support potentially on maintenance. So maybe it's a contract, I don't know.

But the organic Rankine cycle units that we have, I believe, are the—. Of—. Going to be the same manufacturer as the one that you guys have slated. Yeah, they're— I think they're at— they're testing it next week in Georgia. So cool, it's already procured and being— it's manufactured and being kind of run through the cycle, all that.

So it'll be coming in on probably the first barge next year. So anyway, just some updates. I don't know if they're keeping you guys up to speed on that, um, probably not. Okay, okay. And remind them we need to pitch the boat.

I thought I was just gonna ask. Well, just gonna figure that out. That's—. You can't get that unit in there without fixing the road, so they're, they're coming up with funding to fix the road enough to get the equipment and everything that's needed in there for construction. So we don't want that thing falling off the trailer or anything like that.

I'd be buying a helicopter and bringing it in. That's my case. Anyway, so just an update on that, just, just so you guys are all aware. I'm not, like I said, not sure if they're keeping you up to speed on that part. Outside of that, what I'm hearing is hoping by our next meeting we'll have a budget.

Is that what I'm hearing? Okay. And thank you for the reporting and giving us all the info we need to keep moving forward for our consumer base. So thank you. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm glad to hear about the audits getting closer and that our fuel loan is good, but I really don't think it should be a fight every time to do this. I just don't understand why the audits, fuel loan, it's always a— it happens every year. Yeah, we're supposed to It seems like it's a surprise that it's happening.

Uh, so we started in early with, um, North Rim on the financing. Uh, the schedule was, uh, kind of being driven by Crowley at one point there, um, and then once the information was transmitted from the bank that it was approved, they were going to get right back to us. And it took us, I think, 3 weeks to finally get a price out of them. And, um, the, uh, so we just got that a few days ago, and we are Uh, have not closed on it yet, but we're ready to any day so that the funding can be available.

Well, should we start out next year now?

You know, I mean, like Pat's saying, it happens every year. Uh, well, um, we can, uh, put together a— I mean, our packet is essentially the same. With them. And so, um, I want to say it was May-ish that we started conversations with the bank, um, but, uh, we can certainly put another one out to them, um, immediately. Well, I mean, we I mean, they have to realize, and we have to realize, we have to do this every year.

So I don't know what the problem would be. I would just rather change a few numbers here and there. Our thing is that we haven't had our audits, we haven't had our budget, we haven't— you know, last year it was balance sheets and stuff like that, no audits and all that stuff. This year is like, well, we really need some audits. I mean, the 2022 audit isn't quite enough because we're in 2026.

So we gotta get our paperwork done. We gotta have the paperwork that they want so we can get that lower interest and stuff and all that. Well, maybe this will drive getting the paperwork. Yes, that's a different story than I, um, am told by the bank. Yeah, so, but, um, But it's so—.

It still goes down to we need to have our audits done every year. We have to have our budgets every year. We don't wait 5 years and stuff. So it does fall on us to make sure that gets done.

Yes. And we're not fighting until the last minute to try to get all the stuff that they need. Well, it just makes you wonder how much more is this costing our ratepayers when we do this. I mean, nothing's free, you know, and when you go playing catch-up all the time, it's got to be expensive. And I think that falls directly on us.

I agree. You brought up interest rates. They're higher probably because of this, right? I'm sure. So, but, and they're lower because we went through the cap have took the initiative to go through the tax-exempt financing process again.

So we're trying.

Well, I want to thank all these people for their patience and putting up with that, and I think that we're trying to get going in the right direction. Um, and I don't— I, I think that The whole thing is, is we got to get over this putting stuff off, you know, and just get it done, you know. And I'm serious, I'm not— we're not asking John to do anything but manage. He doesn't have to sweep the floor, he doesn't have to do all the books or anything like that, just manage. If we need help, hire help.

I mean, it does not need to be painful, and I keep saying that, but Nothing seems to change, and I, I'm really serious. I think that, that, um, I mean, look at where we are now. We started out with an estimate from BDO that our audits would all be done in the first part of July. Now we'll be lucky to get them by the first of the year, I think, you know. And we need to— they need to become important to us, and our budget needs to become important to us.

And not something that we just let slide, you know. Well, you know, it's— well, you know, everybody's busy, you know, um, doing other things, you know. That has to be the important thing. The rest of it will come, you know. But we've got to keep our paperwork so that we're not embarrassed to go try to get a loan somewhere, you know.

Um, and I think that we will get there. And, um, in that— and I hope that, that's the case. But I want to thank you guys for coming and wanting to help straighten everything out. So yeah, I want to thank everybody for what they're doing. I mean, Chris, John, you guys have been putting in the work, and, uh, Thomas and the crews, appreciate you guys.

But We got to get our stuff done. So I'm going to echo what everybody else said and everything. And, um, Tony's not here. It would have been Tony's last board meeting. I want to say thank you to Tony for all your work that you have done for Nome Joint and enjoy your retirement.

And Dean Red sits there and listens to the news all the time. I'm not going to make any other comment at all. Email you guys about that. Any more vouchers needed, Gov? We gonna have a little recognition or anything, or—.

I don't know, it's being planned. It's being—. I will send an invite out. Okay. Or Steve will probably send an invite out.

So, and I'll take a motion to move into executive session.

Call. Um, Larry Peterson? Yes. Pat Canoodle? Yes.

Carl Emmons? Yes. Derek McLarty? Yes, ma'am. Dave Barron?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay, what do we say? Approved.

Approved. Meeting adjourned or something? No, not adjourned. Oh, we're going into executive session. Congratulations.