Planning Commission Meeting 5.12.2026

All right, I'll call the meeting to order. Uh, please do the roll call. Chris? Here. Heather?

Here.

Sarah? Here. Joshua?

Here. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Mica. Mica is home with a sick child, so she's excused.

Thomas. Here.

All right, do we have any amendments to the agenda for today's meeting?

I don't have an amendment per se, but I do have a couple things I'd like to talk about, uh, without any action, but, um, several things I'd like to, um bring up for discussion? Uh, do I need to do that under Commissioner comments? Okay, I'll just wait until then. Okay, but it'll probably take a few minutes. Yeah, that'd be fine.

Okay, if there's no amendments, um, do we have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye.

Um, do we have any amendments to the April 20th meeting minutes?

Hearing none, do you have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Second. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Um, do we have any public comments that are unrelated to agenda items for today's meeting?

Okay, hearing none, we're moving on to the consent calendar. Um, we have acceptance and scheduling of an application from Suzanne Webb for conditional use permit for a home occupation at 500 Unimax Street. Um, any discussion? There's no discussion. I'm just saying, is it straight?

It looks straightforward to me. You just need to— yeah, if you're going to have discussion, then you need to move it out of consent calendar. But at this time, you would just make a motion to schedule for the next—. We have a motion to schedule. I would like to move to schedule it for the next meeting.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay.

Um, public hearing items. Consideration of an application from Brian and Carol Kendall for variance from the side yard setback requirement to rebuild a shop with a covered deck approximately 6 feet from the property line. We have any public testimony?

Hearing none, we have a motion. Yes, I move to approve Resolution 2026-502 to allow construction of a shop with covered deck 6.2 feet from the side property line at 411 Sandy Beach Road. Second. Discussion? It seems that it kind of straightforward to me, like, these guys are just unfortunate just to have that one.

Looks like a, like, just one corner that's, that's over the line, and that's kind of what we're, you know, what we're disputing this variance over.

I found the reasons in under the variance criteria in our packet at page 14 and 15 to be persuasive, specifically. The idea that if the concrete foundation is already in place and was— it predated the current setback standards, and I do think it would be quite a burden to have to change that concrete foundation. So I, for those reasons, I find it persuasive to approve it. I agree. Yeah, since it's rebuilding an existing structure, it seems fine.

I think it fits within. I like the design with the clear roof too. It kind of matches what's going on in the neighborhood, you know, that, that area. Yes, I do, for aesthetic reasons, appreciate a clear roof also.

All right. Um, please do the roll call.

Joshua. Yes. Sarah. Yes. Thomas.

Yes. Chris? Yes. Heather? Yes.

Okay, moving on to non-agenda items. We have commissioner comments. Our first one is the cell tower overlay. Um, have people got ideas, things, locations? Um, I would just— I I would say I appreciated reading the Marine Industrial Overlay Zone ordinance.

I, I had known about that process and been in part of the discussions, but this is actually my first time reading it. I didn't realize that this ordinance actually creates the ability to make other overlay ordinances of various types. So I thought that was really interesting. It covers our immediate desire to make an overlay zone for towers, but it also, I think, would interest Commissioner Adams in particular. The idea of an overlay zone for historical districts or certain aesthetic rules are in, in the ordinance and do kind of contemplate, um, you know, if you wanted to institute downtown having certain historical or cultural or aesthetic standards, you could do that using this ordinance.

And so I found this to be a very interesting ordinance, and I appreciated reading it. Appreciate that you noticed that. Yeah, my eyes specifically on Singly Alley. Looking forward, I think that— I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here, but ultimately, if we hold on to it long enough and we preserve our boardwalk, I think that Petersburg has a fighting chance of becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site if we preserve Singly Alley.

And the overlay is one way that we can, we can take a step toward saying that we want to preserve our history that way. Yes, good, good, good point, Commissioner Fine Walls.

As for towers, I don't have any other specific locations in mind other than what we've discussed, but I do, other than the fact that I do think that we should designate, make sure to designate locations that are outside as well as inside Service Area 1 to help encourage development of tower locations away from residences. These were some ideas I had just looking at the maps and stuff, uh, so of areas, and I kind of, you know, I didn't really follow property lines. It kind of within this area, and, you know, we, we can designate, and I believe Liz, correct me if I'm wrong, we can designate portions of a lot if it's a large lot that the overlay would be on, not We don't have to think the whole lot, do we?

We can, as long as we can create a clear legal description of that property. So, as long as, like, you know, the back 100 feet of said lot or something like that. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just trying to— I don't love it, but yes, we can do that because there's some lots that are so large that if they were put If the tower relay was put on the front, it would be really close to residential, but if it was put way up at the back, it's not a problem. Sure, I get what you're saying. Yeah, but it's nice if we have a map attaching so that there's a picture to go with the words, right?

Yeah. So these are just some different areas that I looked at throughout the borough. And, you know, I've got more copies up here if other people want to come grab some, take a look at them. And are they all borough-owned properties? Are some of them private property?

Some are Forest Service, some are borough-owned. They're just areas that I thought were good locations for towers, would meet what the cell companies want, but also are far enough away from residential that it's, it's not an issue. And I think, like, one of the sites is the, the site that's down at Papke's that has the radio towers on it. I thought if that property owner is interested, interested in having the overlay on their property, I think would be something that would be worthwhile saying, hey, it could be done. And if they say we absolutely don't want it, then I'd say, you know, we wouldn't, we wouldn't do that.

But, you know, I think we should approach private property owners and say, this is a good location to put a cell tower. Are you interested in being in the overlay? So, okay, that's kind of the way I feel about it. So, And then if property owners had a large lot or two large lots, like say Mr. Bushman, he could subdivide and just dedicate, say, the back portion. Well, he could.

He has the overlay, say, along the back portion. He could sell a portion of that area in the overlay for a cell tower site and then keep the rest of the lot as not a cell tower. Right. OK, and so I was of the impression too that we were going to think outside the box and look at private properties also. As well, I would say put it out there and say these are, these are possibly good locations.

Are you interested in having your property have the overlay or not? Because to some people it might be worthwhile, it might be beneficial to them to be in the overlay because they have more chance of selling that lot to a cell company. And on the other hand, it, you know, it puts cell towers in locations where, number one, they're at an elevation where they get better coverage, And 2, they're far enough away from properties that are not industrial. So, and most of these lots I identified are in here, all either industrial or something, or unzoned because they're large lots. So, so I just—.

That was my, that was my thoughts. So, and this is awful close to homes, but this is borough-owned property, and I I think that I have the, uh, plat number. I went down to see Molly and I don't see the plat number on it right now, but it, um, if you look at King's Row and you go up to the top— now you're not going to want to do anything right here, but when you get back, it's back by the airport cutoff road on the back end. Yeah, that could be a good site. That—.

Okay, but the only problem is I'd be worried about is proximity to the, uh, the runway end on, on that southwest side. Yeah, so that's not— is that the runway itself, or is that just part? I can't tell from boundary. I can't tell from that. Yeah, okay.

So I mean, that's one of the things we have to be concerned about, is spacing off that. But I— most of the time, once they're doing downwinds flying around the airport, they're coming over town. They're not, they're not going to fly on the mountainside. They don't want to be that close to the mountain. So putting towers on that side, I don't think it'd be a problem.

And as long as they're far enough back, you just got to meet that FAA setback. So, and then we talked about the Bushman property, and then there's this Forest Service property here. It's kind of right alongside Rock and Road's property near the Scow Bay Loop Road. Yeah. And did you have a picture?

I think that's part of the area I listed. If you—. There's—. You see, I went across the back of all of those lots starting with the rock. I went basically here and drew across the back of these lots there.

I, there I see where we—. So I said if we said the back so many feet of all of those lots. Okay, great. Then so you put in the other side, same ones. Good.

So I'm pretty sure we can include the state land right past it as kind of a an additional area. Yeah, something that I noticed when we were out looking at these sites, um, you could clearly see the mountain and where a tower nested up against the mountain. The other one, I tell—. That wouldn't be in the way of aircraft, otherwise they'd be flying into the mountain, hit the tower. And the other one that I didn't put in, in here but I think should be included is there's already cell towers on the top of Crystal Mountain and Lindenburg Peak.

And those areas should be set up with the same as part of the overlay, because if they want to put another tower up, up there, it shouldn't be a problem. I mean, they're far enough away from any residential property, and they're in a good high location to cover a large area. So that's kind of my thoughts. So, okay. Exactly.

Identified a lot of the same property. Then there's those ones up. Up Twin Creek, the back of those, there's 2 privately owned industrial lots and a state of Alaska lot. And again, it would be a strip along the back of those would be a good location, I think.

And then, and then the other one I was thinking of is on the next page down here is there's the, there's up, uh, Three Lakes Loop Road to where the mill is, and then there's some mental health land right around the mill, but this big Lot 12 that's right there is owned by the State of Alaska. And that would be a good potential location as well, because that is up at elevation. And it's close enough to Papke's, it could cover Papke's as far as cell towers, but it's far enough away that, you know, it's not obtrusive to view or anything else. So that's kind of what I'm thinking would be a good location to put a tower. So Liz, we've kind of identified a lot of the same properties, and maybe some of them that Joshua did last meeting too.

So what is the next step?

It's going to be an actionable item next month then that we could say these properties we want to bring forth to the assembly. For them to consider. So we need to create an ordinance like the sample one I gave you. Yeah. Um, if these are—.

Excuse me—. These are the properties that you want, I would need a listing of all the properties that you want included in those. I just brought in this as an idea of areas, but we'd have to go through and identify. Yeah, I would need, you know, clearly identified which properties you want included so that we could create a map. That shows the overlay in which properties are in, and then be able to create legal descriptions for each of those properties.

And then you need to create what's actually going to be allowed in that overlay, um, and then justification for why this ordinance is needed, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so basically using that MIO ordinance as a template I think you could take out what's in there and rewrite it for this. And can that be hashed out here at this meeting today? Like, just if you want to, let's check some stuff off the list. Um, I think the reason for the overlay, um, we— it's because of the community desire to choose and recommend certain sites to wireless communication companies, um, so as to limit surprise and have some sort of public input in the locations, um, and kind of ease that process.

Um, I think that's definitely a reason. Um, Commissioner Fine-Walsh, I'd like to add to that. Um, you know, dovetail under that, everything you've said is very valid and clear, but from, from our perspective as, as, um, elected officials, I think it's imperative to note the debasement of land in, in the argument. And that's, I think, one of our strongest arguments is simply the fact that these towers are being placed in locations that will never be able to achieve their full potential or even their intended use if they are allowed to be used for towers. And I think that's, that's a very important point that we should make in, in the, uh, CTO overlay.

For example, the, the, the site location on Mill Road will never be, um, will never be a single-family home as it was intended. The flower farm will never be a flower farm, et cetera, et cetera. The one above Skylark Park will never be, you know, a trailer park. It'll never, it'll never be used as anything other than a communications tower. And that's a huge loss to the community.

It also debases the value of the lands around it. I think that's a very strong argument. I just wanted to put that out. Okay, and so, Liz, do I remember things correctly? We have to give you at the end of the day today, or at the end of our meeting, everything in writing for it to be able to be on next agenda as an actionable item.

I don't think we're going to be able to do it on the next agenda as an actual item unless we can get all the legal descriptions, which is not— it's not an insignificant amount of— yeah, it's quite a bit of work, of work. I think, yeah, just from my experience gathering legal descriptions, just gathering one can be burdensome. Um, just FYI, if you could at least nail down exactly which properties you want included, at least in the first draft, and then nail down, um, what's allowed in this district exactly, and then we can work on We can work on legal descriptions. It just— it does take, depending on how many lots you have and how complicated it is, it takes a while to pull all of that together. But I would say allowed in the overlay would be wireless communication facilities as defined in our ordinance that we drafted.

Um, that just, you know, that, that doesn't include, um, non— WCF, like other things like radio, television, and other broadcast towers and things like that, relay stations. So if you want to allow those types of things in there too, you'd have to expand that definition. Okay, okay. I guess my impulse was just to have this, just to have WCFs because of the kind of controversial nature of them, and we're specifically trying to place these in desirable locations. But, um, I mean, I don't think— one second, Joshua.

I don't think there's going to be much harm. I mean, I'm okay with including radio towers and other broadcast facilities in there, but it just didn't seem like an urgent need, I guess. I agree, and because once it comes to our agenda next month, We can amend it to— I mean, if we had more time to think about it, we could amend it to include more properties or to include more uses. But just for the sake of actually making it an actionable item next month, we could just give our reasons why, give some of the major properties to identify, which is really easy to do if we go to the borough's web map viewer, you can see parcel numbers, you can see addresses and things like that. I think that would be a fine legal description at this point.

I would also say— sorry, just before I—. It's not, but that's OK. Again, they're identifiable. Yeah, as long as it's identifiable. A legal description, you have to go to the recorder's office. It's a whole kit and caboodle, but I think—.

But for today's purpose, that could suffice. It sounds like Liz is going to let us off the hook. I would say, before I forget, another reason for this overlay is the Telecommunications Act does not permit municipalities to totally ban towers. And so that's why we're— that's a big reason why we're doing this.

It also makes it easier for them if they do want to put in a tower, they can— they go and look at the map and say, obviously, these are the locations the borough would like us to put cell towers to give the most setback to the residential and everything else, but also is properties that have good locations, and then they can pick off that list what will meet their needs the best. So I think it's kind of a win-win. I think so too. I think Title specifically mentioned that in one of the sessions, that if there— if we had had a list, they would have just picked from it. And I think if, if, uh, um, you know, maybe what we need to be doing is saying, okay, we like this lot, but The south 200 feet of this big lot, we would say, would be in it.

And, and then if we can get the full legal description work from that, how it would work, but we can kind of figure it out because a lot of these are big, you know, square lots or kind of an odd shape. But we can say a strip along this side of the lot is a good location. We probably also need to know what the setback we have to have off of the airport is. So, because that's going to come on a lot of these lots here, that's going to tell us which of those lots would be good lots to put, to put into the overlay. And because if they're, you know, if we're limited by being too close to the airport, there's no point putting them in the overlay.

So.

We can start with putting what we think we should put in there, in there. And then, like you're saying, next month, should we find out that that is not appropriate, then we amend it to take it out. If we've accidentally put something in that won't fly with the FAA. Yeah, yeah, we can always change what that distance is. But that's any of those lots along the, along the mountain over there, I think.

Would be a good location to put stuff in. There could be a strip along that whole side behind the airport, which around the mountain. Yeah. And then come— then going south along the industrial lots above Scow Bay would be a really good location. I agree.

So, okay, so what do you need us to do first, Liz? Put in writing what we just now discussed about the reasons why? We want the overlay.

Um, well, I think you gave a couple of reasons already, and then this is some ideas, or is it what it's just to it? It was some ideas of properties I thought would be good. So, so then just tell me what, what you want included in there. Okay, so we could, we need to do, do, should we get together? Uh, you know, each person get together lots they think.

Do you want to do that right now? Um, uh, let's do as much as we can right now. Okay. So, I mean, if we can get, get it kind of figured out of which lots and go from there. Um, so my first instinct is just to include all the lots that you show here.

Well, it's like on the— on this lot up by the Baylor facility, the stuff up closer to the Baylor facility is probably the area that would be the best. That's the reason why I kind of split that, you know, the line doesn't go all— cover that whole lot, because otherwise you're getting down closer to the residential. I think Tom and I would agree with you on that one. So, but if the area up by the Baylor facility, there's already power up there and everything else would be a great location. So, and then there's that lot right to the south of the Baylor.

That's a little tiny lot. Uh, and then there's the big kind of odd-shaped lot that goes around that one. But again, we're— how close we can get to the airport is the big question there. Um, but, uh, there's areas there, and then there's space. There's the area up by the, uh, um, uh, You know, up going toward the water treatment facilities and, you know, I only took part of that lot and some of the other ones I just kind of— because that whole area is— I'm not sure what other people's thoughts are on it, but I think if you have a good portion of that area going over toward the rock pit behind the airport, that would give them a lot of different choices of what would be good locations.

But I'm not sure the rock pit where we blast is a great—. That's not a great place to put, put a tower by the rock pit. But over on the other side, on the other side where the treatment plant is, is a great place. The, yeah, the elevation where it is and up by the water tank there. I agree.

So that, that big lot where the water tank sits and up part of the front part of the treatment plant. You start getting blocked when you go further back on the lot with the treatment plant by the mountain from parts of town. So again, you cover one side of town, but then you'd step to a tower on the other side of town as well. So, so I mean, that upper part going toward the reservoir is, is not as, as good of a location, but so You start getting a little— yeah, but we could identify all of those lots. We just, you know, over where the rock pit is, we obviously don't want to put a tower in the rock pit.

But, you know, I don't know if it's a great advantage, but behind the treatment— the water treatment plant is land that is owned by the Borough of Petersburg. There's a sliver of it, not just that corner there, and that was what Tom and I were looking at a month ago. Just, just a thought. I don't know if you, you know, it's, it's, I think, right next to state land. Is it that lot?

Well, according to the viewer, the one I'm looking at, the, the property that is on the Reservoir Road property is State of Alaska, even where the treatment plant is, according to the viewer. And I'm looking at it right here. And then, yeah, and the water tank is also, well, No, this is—. That's—. We're looking at this right here.

Isn't one of those lots, um, what— isn't one of those lots part of— part of the Borough of Petersburg near that area? Petersburg Borough owns the ones up by the, uh, um, uh, by the Baylor facility. But according to this, the, the one with the water tank on it, which pretty much all of that lot would be a good location for, uh for towers, except for maybe a little bit on the north side. But, um, that is state. It says Alaska State of on here.

OK, and then the water treatment, this property is Alaska State of. Begs the question, do we want to do it on city land or we want to do it on state or federal? What's, what's the best? I think state, federal, or city is, is all would be good locations. I mean, they would have to negotiate with the state to purchase or lease or whatever for those areas, but, uh, um, uh, they can choose which place makes the most sense to them.

And I remember Micah saying that she reached out to DNR and they seemed very willing to find— help us find state land properties that might fit our needs. I, I agree. I think it's interesting connecting to the data center conversation. At least I read that the— our marine industrial overlay does not apply to private property, applies to borough-owned only. And if it did apply to private property, we would be having a different conversation with a non-marine use at the Ocean Beauty Cannery.

So I think there's a lot of benefit for many different reasons, for having an overlay applied to not just borough land, but private property, state-owned, etc. Yeah, I would strongly disagree. The overlay does apply on certain private lands. It's just lands that were at one time in borough ownership and leased, but got sold into private hands more recently. Mm-hmm.

But I don't think there's a handful of parcels that are private. And I would assume some private people would be very— have objections to that. Well, yes, you would want us with this. I think that the good thing about the notice process is that, you know, anything we're including in the overlay, we have to notice private persons. And so they would get a chance to say, like, no, I don't want this in the overlay, or I very much do want this in the overlay.

I want to be able to sell it to a wireless company if they're an adjoining property owner. That we don't identify but would fit, you know, and they say we do want to be in the overlay, then I would say, yeah, let's consider it. There are— if the individual owner wants it, right? That's the benefit of the notice process, because I do know there are people in town who very much want to be able to sell, and there's some very much don't. So it's good to get it in writing.

And there are property owners, I think, who want to be able to— they— it would be beneficial to them, say, if the cell tower were put in, because then power would be brought into that location and roads. And yeah, yeah, so it would be a benefit to them. It really depends on the person. Yeah, whatever they negotiate, that's not ours. For some, they would want to be in that overlay for the towers.

Yeah, so that's, that's just kind of the things I see. Right, Liz, I'll just keep in mind that the zoning continues regardless of who the owner is, right? So if it changes hands, so, and there's no obligation on the owner to put a tower just because they're in the district, in the overlay, right? So you could have the property in an overlay, but it's ultimately going to be their choice on whether or not to do it. So it doesn't— it gives them an additional use that their neighbors may not have, but it doesn't require them to do anything, right?

They can always say, I don't want to sell it to the company. Yeah, but a future owner might have a different perspective on it. So I wouldn't necessarily just leave it to the property owner because it really impact them unless they wanted to. Right. So, and what impact would it be?

You know, may not be a good fit for some people. Maybe if they sell their home and a new owner may come in and change it later. So, so just the overlay. Give the borough government more say over how a private landowner can use their property versus how they already can? Say you own industrial land and you, you're not in the overlay, but you become in the overlay.

Are there some uses and some privileges that you will lose? I don't think so. No, it's just additional. It's just additional. It's just that your property has the right to put in a cell tower at that location.

It's kind of a right that everybody has. Yeah, right now, right now, right now, right? But they're going to lose it, right, when we pass the wireless ordinance, right? And then under the overlay, they would get it back, right? So it doesn't obligate landowners.

I realize it doesn't obligate them to a tower. It's like it is now. Yeah, it's like it is now. It would just give them the right to sell property to a cell tower and have a cell tower put in without having to go through the whole conditional use process or anything else. So, which would make it simpler and would also encourage towers to be in locations we want them to be.

So, I think it's a plus situation. It is a plus. Just one minor thing to think about here. Once we do develop the CTO overlay, that means that if you're in it and you're a private property owner, that means that your neighbor can put a tower in, you know, what would be next to your backyard. And that's, that's just one of the, one of the minor implications of this is just moving forward.

This is why it's so important that we're thinking as hard as we are now about the placement of the CTO. Yep.

Okay.

So up by the Reservoir Road area, have we got any other properties we want to identify?

Well, we liked this one too, didn't we? That's over on the Scal Bay side. So I think let's finish up the Reservoir Road area first. So we've got like half of the lot that the Baylor facility's on, the back, the south half. We've got most of the lot, I would say, basically up to the same location on the— where the Baylor facility is on that odd-shaped lot, that other little borough lot that's right next to the Baylor facility, and then possibly the lot, the big square lot that the water treatment facility is on.

Um, and is there any other lots you guys can think of in that area?

Are we talking just what's in the red square? Are we talking—. We're talking kind of everything. Yeah. Okay.

So if we took the Baylor facility lot and split it down the middle and then cut off the one little piece of the— that odd-shaped lot that would line up with the half of the Baylor facility, I'm not saying it's not serious. Um, and then this little lot. So basically, this is kind of what I'm looking at here. And then Are you drawing it on something? I'm just drawing it on my map.

I'm just kind of— okay, so as I said, when I was doing this, it was— I was doing it quickly, so I didn't— I just kind of drew squares and stuff in this area. Um, but yeah, I'll just say I was just asked to mention that putting it near a source of water is not a great choice.

Like, near— I would assume near the treatment plant, which has got an open well. Open. What—. Why is that, Liz?

Uh, Merle, if you have a comment, please feel free to approach that if you would like. Oh, but if you have to, um, get you on the mic. Yeah.

Please state your name for the record. What I wanted to bring up is that cell towers impact lakes and streams primarily through biological effects on aquatic life and the physical risk of chemical contamination from tower infrastructure. While water effectively absorbs and reflects radio frequencies, RF signals, This interaction can have unintended ecological consequences. It's also a health risk. Um, if you could state your name in the microphone, Merle.

Thank you.

I'm Merle Hammer.

So with that in mind, I think a lot of the places that we selected for on the north end of the island are absent of any major anadromous stream. Or lake or anything like that, and they're not in recreation areas. Um, but something to consider down on the southern part of the, the area, we do have Falls Creek and Twin, Twin Creek and all that. There's recreational area, so, um, we'll need to keep that in mind and maybe add some buffers in there for—. Yeah, that's what I, I tried to stay up more on the hill above the stream, which is, you know, away from, you know, it's still on industrial land, but it's away from, or it's not zoned industrial, but it's industrial use right now, and then state-owned land that is up on the hill, which again meets the criteria for what the cell towers are looking for, is for better propagation.

To be able to get their signal out. So the way I interpret, um, Merle Hammer's statement is that maybe the, the Baylor facility would be a larger contender, um, for a cell phone tower. Well, from the corner, from the corner of that little lot by the Baylor facility to the water tank is 900 and 962 feet is what I just quickly measured here. So that's quite a distance. Yeah, that looks, that looks pretty choice, doesn't it?

Um, yeah. So I mean, if you say, well, put, we want to eliminate the area where the water tank is, you know, they're, they're probably not gonna, they're probably gonna want to be somewhere, um, where they've got the best elevations. So that's kind of what you got to look at here.

And, uh, the Baylor facility is pretty, pretty good location there. I mean, think that would be a prime location, but I don't think contamination is an issue at the Baylor facility, is it? Baylor facility is probably more of a concern than the Salt Tower would be. I just read the record for, um, make a little less burden on, on Liz, can we repeat your kind of meets and bounds that you're identifying for the Baylor facility? Well, what I was thinking was the lot, the Baylor, the big square lot the Baylor facility is on, the south half of that lot.

Okay. Uh, would be a good location, and there's a little lot right below that. If you look on this map, you can see there's kind of a little tiny lot. Yeah, it's called Lot Tract A. Is that the one you're talking about?

Parcel ID 0102. Let me pull it up here. The other one, yeah, 01024600. 04600 Is the parcel ID, and it's just right next to the Baylor. Thank you.

So I think that's a good one. 04500, That's the other one. Yeah, the one— the other one I was saying, 01024100, the bottom half of that, the south half of that, which is where the baler is right now. Uh, but there's also a lot of ground around the baler that could potentially be used. So, right, and that's high ground too.

Yeah.

So, was that adequate description for you, Liz? I think if you just drew it on your map, it'd probably be the best. Okay, I can go in, I can go into my map, or just like, even, you know, I can, I can do that and then send them to you on email. Okay, yeah, that's great if that's what we identify. So, so we're saying keeping the water tank lot out of the thing now is what people want to do, or what do you What is everybody's thoughts?

I'm, I'm fine with— I mean, part of the overlay creation is getting public input, and so I think I'm fine with keeping that one out. OK. Yeah, and the next lot where the treatment facility is, you're getting back kind of around the corner behind the mountain, so it's going to block a lot of town, so I don't think that's a good location potentially to put one in. And again, you're You know, so, right, so it limits what's available.

But, but it probably suffices. I mean, how much area do they really take up? And then there's, there's that lot that's right next to the big lot that's right next to the Baylor facility. And that little lot, and it goes further back toward the water treatment, but a chunk of that could be indicated as well. And that's lot 01-023-300.

Uh, and I would want to keep it back off of the north side because we don't want to get too close to these residential lots. But, and we also don't want to get too close to the water treatment in the back. But maybe if you took a 1/3 out of the middle of that lot—. Are we still—. I'm looking at this one right here.

Thank you. That's the one that I was mentioning earlier on in the conversation, the one that— that's part of— that's the lot that's actually behind the water treatment plant, and it goes uphill on the east side. I showed you guys a photograph of that last meeting. You're talking the one— you're—. The 3300, right?

Um, no, it's, it's, uh, 0123-300. Yep, that's the one I'm looking at. That's Petersburg Borough-owned land. That was the Petersburg Borough-owned land. I would say about a 1/3 out of the middle of that lot.

Yeah, just for reference, that was the exact spot that I showed you guys in the photograph in the last meeting. Yeah. Yes, so I mean, that would be a good one to put in.

So, and it has the advantage of the uphill slope, which faces downtown Petersburg.

Okay.

Right, Tom, what do you think? Yep. No, that was great spot. Yeah, I think, I think that'd be— those would be some good locations to put in. And then, uh, is that all we want to talk about over on the kind of north side?

Because then moving, I think we'd move to the next one would be the lots over kind of above Scal Bay would be the ones to consider. And I mean, I've showed some of them, but we can go over to that area.

And there's some I didn't even— I didn't do the whole area. There's quite a few lots there that could be good ones too.

I would just say a strip along the back of— there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 commercial lots. Up there above Scow Bay.

I just want to briefly direct your attention to Lot Parcel 01143800, which is U.S. Forest Service land. It's a very large lot, but it's a hill slope. I just wanted to direct your attention to that. Yeah, that one, that one could be part of it. Oh, yeah, that's this one in its entirety.

Yeah, it's this one right here. Raven's Roost Hillside, you guys. Yeah.

And that's all, but I think those industrial lots that are in front of that, a strip along the back of them, and say you can have the right to put the towers in there because that was private property. It gives them some choices. They can go to the Forest Service or they can go to private. Property owners, and it's— I think that would be fine. So, but I think that big lot, there's a couple areas down by, you know, past, you know, past the rock pits where it gets pretty close to the highway and to private property, you know, to residential property.

So I think there might be concern on parts of that lot.

Changes. I just noticed that there's a conspicuous absence of GCI and Title Network in this conversation, and I'm wondering what they would say. Um, yeah, okay, locations. Well, this one— good grief, is that— or is that all—.

That 143-800 is a huge lot. The Forest Service also, they're going to need electricity to whatever whatever, um, space we—. The number's the same. I'm thinking these lines are for—. No, that's just— those are, those are section lines.

This is all one great big lot going all the way down here. It's all listed as 143-800. It's right here, Tom. Yeah, it's a huge lot.

Yeah, and I think that one, because that was part of the land that they traded Uh, so I would say on some, we'd have to limit that lot to some degree.

Because otherwise it's going to have the— it'd be right up on the back of some residential lots along the highway, uh, down south of Scow Bay. And I think people will be concerned about that. So I think it would be better. Agreed. It even encompasses an area where I think a tower tried to put in an application and then withdrew it.

So I do agree, we would have to designate portions of 01-143-800. Of course, there's a question. What are these? What do these communications companies require to build a tower? They need like 220 electricity, things like that.

Do they need to be close to infrastructure, close to power infrastructure, that sort of thing? They would need to have primary power run to the site so they could put in a transformer and be able to run, uh, run their equipment. And they need access, so they need a road, right? You know, of course they'd have to build that in some cases, but maybe it's best for—. It would be more enticing to them if we don't give them something that's way out in the boonies.

I'm just, just putting that out there. Um, direct your attention, um, to the Olson Avenue address. It has a road, it seems like. Well, if it's got a road close to it, Maybe the owners of parcel ID 01055500, James and Karen Olson, would be interested in being part of this. Well, those 5— those 5 lots there that are along— it's where the rock pits are, and then there's 3 industrial lots north of that.

If we did a strip along the east side of the lot, Uh, and we have to figure out how many feet off the property line, but that would give them a good location to put in a tower and give them multiple different property owners to talk to. Maybe, but Commissioner Frye, I just want to direct your attention to one small detail. You're looking at about 3 miles away from downtown Petersburg at that point. So, is that too far?

Well, it depends. Yeah. And remember, there's already towers in downtown Petersburg that they have by right used to put additional antennas on. You know, that's, that's under the, under the law. So there are choices already in the downtown area if they want to put additional ones there, but this gives them some other locations.

If they want to put additional towers up. And more than likely, it's the reason they put up more towers is to cover blind spots. And the blind spots are not in town, it's when you start heading down out the road. So, right, there's also a sliver of Forest Service land right in the middle of that between the Olson property and the, and the quarry. That's, that's Forest Service land, which is the 5600 piece right there, and it's kind of this strange, like, frying pan-shaped piece of land that almost goes down to the road.

I just noticed that it does go all the way down to the highway. I'm like, that's kind of interesting. And the Forest Service has a really good system for doing land leases. Just thought—. Well, they can go along the back side of that.

That was one of the lots that would be included in that, uh, um, in that strip if we did a strip along the back, the east side of all of those lots. It's up above the highway. It's, um, uh, uh, you know, far enough away from any residential. Most of the properties that are close down there are industrial, and then the residential is right down by the highway. So, uh, you know, if we put— gave them the east side of all of those lots as part of the overlay, I think it'd be a good solution, right?

Plus you've got a road going right near it, so yeah, the infrastructure—. There's many of those properties have access roads on— well, 3 of the 5 have access roads already built on them. So yeah, so that's this one, and then there's—. We're not gonna actually include the rock pits, right? I wasn't— I was thinking you could put them in there because eventually they're going to have those mined out, maybe they would want to.

But that's, to me, it's, you know, I, I wouldn't put anything in there right now because it'd be in their way. But if they wanted to have the right in the future, you know, that's what I was thinking. But I definitely want to say that I like 01055600, the Forest Service lot that actually has access to Midcoff Highway. Yeah, we definitely— I would definitely vote on that one. And then Ron Bushman said he'd be interested on the— on his lot, and, uh, Um, we could, you know, Olsons are in the middle there.

Which one's Ron Bushman's? It's not Chris Bushman. This or not? What does it say here? Bushman, Chris.

Sorry, I'm on the wrong— I'm in the wrong— I saw Bushman, I said Ron. Sorry, yeah, but this one up here, yeah, he's— I think got this one too, but that's getting down closer to a residential area. Area. So, but if we went on the back of that one, right, there's the back of Chris Bushman's lot, and then you've got— Olsons have that lot in the middle. And so that's why I said a strip down the back of those would be— that's the way I would think to do it.

I just took a measurement from down from Hammer and Weekon over to that frying pan-shaped Forest Service lot: 10,827 feet as the crow flies. So what is that, 2 miles? I think it's— I think that's doable. Yeah. What, what was their requirement, Tom?

Were they 2.5 miles? Is that, is that, is that the range of the communications towers? That's what Title Network was saying that they needed. So yeah, do you think they'd be amenable to this?

I don't know why not. They've got pretty good access.

Yeah, plus if you add the land on the other side of that, keep going that way, then kind of opens the door for other, other types of towers, ones that don't need roads. They put their, you know, like they have on mountains where they're just by themselves.

I would, I would say also this, the north end of that, uh 01-143-800, uh, the piece that is right above, uh, Chris Bushman's lot, and then potentially even going back further along the mountain there, um, uh, would be a good location to put in as well. Are you saying right in here, basically? Let's see. Oh, I was saying if we went on your map, we went something like that chunk here and then all the way across here like that. Okay, still on the 800.

And maybe even this piece too, right? Okay, because that would give them all kinds of property up there behind the airport. Yeah, and it's still on the 800, right, for service. It's on that lot and it goes, you know, that would give them a nice big chunk behind the airport on the, the west side. So they have got a lot of places to choose from.

So, so, okay.

Chris has a road on one of his lots. Yeah, it's about a mile long. Yeah, and it's, you know, even if they, they decide they need to improve, it might be a benefit to him if they improve the road to get in there for access to cell tower. It'd be worth—. Yeah, even if they go beyond his property to this one you just identified.

So you could probably add Island Ventures. Yeah, John Murgas, I know he was interested in—.

Where's, where's his lot? He's got all this right here. Yeah. Oh, he's got, he's got—. He's both sides of that road.

Yeah.

It's not that one. Yeah, although we don't want to put stuff— you, you've got a lot. This is, this is residential in here, remember? So we'd have to say like over here along the backside, but I think, let's see, where it gets describing, make it just difficult to describe. Yeah, and that's Forest Service.

We just, we just have to be careful about what property is, is, uh, um, uh, you know, is near residential because I mean, this, this housing development over there has given us, given us grief before with being right next to industrial. So, um, we just want to make sure we don't want to make a situation worse of what's already there. So.

You know, and again, the areas that they want to put, uh, they're going to want to put towers are going to be on the higher elevation ground. So there's no point in indicating ground that's down in a hole. So yeah, so anyway.

Okay, are we kind of got there that area figured out?

Got an idea here what I want to do on that part. I'll put something together for, for Liz on that area. Um, then there's that— those lots down by Twin Creek, up on the Twin Creek Road. Um, there's, there's 3 lots down there that I thought had good potential. And I mean, there's, there's other lots along the highway too that are big industrial, privately owned industrial lots that could potentially be locations if, if you think so.

But I thought the Twin Creek area would be a good place. So there's, you know, there's the one lot owned by the mill, there's one lot owned by Baronoff, uh, LLC. And then there's a State of Alaska or University of Alaska lot. And I think a strip along the east side of those lots would be a good location and is a fair distance, you know, off the highway. I think I indicated that with, uh, on one of these ones.

I measured it out here. Yeah, it's this one here. So if they— this is on the State of Alaska. If they put a tower in that corner of that University of Alaska lot, this one, um, if I can get it to close. Ah, doesn't— all right, if they put it in the upper corner of that University of Alaska lot, it's 923 feet to the highway.

So that keeps it a pretty good distance away from residential because most of that area is, uh, um, uh, industrial lots. So yeah, you know, I like that. I like putting that one out there too, because that gives them another location that is an option. So there's 3 lots there that would be a good indicator. And then, and I don't know, it's this whole Lot 12, we just have to take a strip off of the upper side.

Down by Falls Creek so that it's, it's up by the road where the elevation is, but it's not down by the creek. And then there's— this is— this lot up here is, uh, um, uh, U.S. Forest Service. So we could take a strip along both sides of that road, uh, the bottom side of 12, and I don't know what the other one is. I'd have to go back out there and look at it. Um, where's the state of Alaska?

And then, well, the state of Alaska, and then this lot above it is a huge U.S. Forest Service lot. That's all Forest Service land. It's funny, you got that little block of state land, and then there's—. Well, there's two of them that go, uh, the one next to it going east is also a block of state land. Um, I know at one point in time the borough was trying to get those as part of the formation of the borough.

Come on, close.

And then there's a little privately owned property up there where that— where the mill is. And then the big— there's a chunk around it that goes down all the way down to the highway that is owned by mental health on the north side of the Three Lakes Loop Road It's away from the, uh, uh, um, it's away from the, uh, uh, Falls Creek, but that area would be a good location too, or at least part of that lot. I agree. Yeah, that looks really good. Uh, the upper part of it has got good elevation on it.

The lower part, when you get down toward the highway, is pretty low. But, and that's Forest Service land, right? No, it's mental health. Mental health. Oh, okay.

So you're looking at state land there. So you've got, you got 4 service land up above where the mill is and above where the 2 state-owned lots are, uh, that are along Three Lakes Loop Road. And then you've got the chunk of mental health down there, right? You're looking at the 1100, uh, parcel, right? The mental health parcel is, uh, 02081100.

Yep, that's the one. Yeah. It's kind of this odd— yeah, this sort of, I don't know, this like meat cleaver-shaped lot looking— yeah, weird looking thing. It's sandwiched between Forest Service land. Yeah, that's an interesting, interesting sliver right there.

Yeah, when they did the trade— when they did the trade to the Forest Service, they hung on to that piece. So I think they're planning on subdividing it at some point. But boy, they're not giving those slivers off, eh, Mental Health? I'm just putting that out there. They're spendy.

So those are the kind of the areas I was thinking along there that we could do a strip along the Three Lakes Road on either side there. That would be a good location. And then on when you get down to that, the industrial property that's there, and then a chunk of that mental health property as well. That one would be a little bit harder to do a description on.

But it could be figured out. And then the only other one I had on the possibilities was out where the radio towers are. Oh yeah, he—. Over at Matt's house. Yeah.

And I don't know if— I don't know if he's interested or not, but it's—. He was at one point, and then, uh, he may become interested at another point, so I would include it. Yeah, just for the record, we're looking at Matthew G. Garrett's, right? Uh, the 4500 lot?

Yes. Yeah, and it's that one. I've got some measurements on here as well. Let me see where I thought which page that one's on. It's like a good distance away from, uh, um, from the residential lots at Papke's and also down below it.

From this, from where the tower is on the lot, the back tower is on the lot right now, to the closest residential lot in Papke's is 1,519 feet. And, uh, from where the tower is now to the closest residential lot to the southwest is 1,092 feet. So, right, it's pretty good. The property, I'm getting about 1,500 square feet. 1,500 Linear feet.

Yeah, pretty far. And that's for— that's from the center of his lot. If you, if you do it on the other side, uh, I actually zoomed in on the photo and looked at where the tower was and then measured from the tower to the nearest residential lots going in, going to the northwest and to the southwest, because those are the closest lots. So, uh, just FYI, the— I think the property all around that, that's owned by the trust. Um, they've proposed to subdivide, so into residential, so it could, yeah, all around there become residential.

Yeah. Hmm. Well, just something I figured to throw out there because there's already an existing tower there. So, Chris, I thought I'd mention, you know, if that becomes a problem with the residential subdivision, you've got the shooting range. It's another mile away and it's still reaches, you know, within an acceptable distance of Papke's Landing.

Yeah, we're looking at—. I think there was only a couple of homes that were just outside the 2.5 miles. The biggest thing that I think the property up Falls Creek is probably a better location because it puts it higher above Papke's. You get better because Papke's is that hill that drops down. And, uh, cell signals are pretty much line of sight.

So you start going, trying to shoot through a whole bunch of trees, you start really degrading your signal. So they're going to want to be up somewhere where they can get— or they got to put a taller tower in. So, you know, I think it'd be better to encourage. But the shooting range we could include, I don't have a problem with that. And like I said, we also should include, you know, the areas where the cell towers already exist on Forest Service land outside of— so the top of Lindenberg Peak and the top of Crystal Mountain.

Just a reminder, the Forest Service land leases are really cheap. I mean, it's $3,000 an acre per year. I mean, I mean, what the heck? You might as well go for the— go for as many of them as we think we'll ever use, right? The problem, the problem with being out in those locations is the issue of power and everything else.

So they mean they have to plan differently. For their infrastructure. So, but that's, you know, I think we should include those sites because we would rather encourage them to be in locations like that. So, all right, we kind of got an idea of what we need to put together. I can kind of try to figure this out.

Thank you.

So Yeah, it's all for that, so I get those included. All right, um, as far as the language for the overlay, do we want to work on that, or—. I think we've— am I wrong, Liz, that we've kind of said everything that we need to say? Uh, for what we want in the overlay language. So all I have is that the principal use would be WCFs, and then no development standards or anything.

It's just wide open. Um, wouldn't it be the same as what we had said we wanted to put in the ordinance that, you know, remember how far away from this and that and everything else? We'd have to specify that. Yeah. OK, so let's specify that, that it is consistent with the standards set forth in our WCF ordinance.

OK, so if they can't meet that, those standards, um, and that standard, it's a conditional use permit process. So no conditional use permit process, but you have to meet these standards. If you can't meet these standards, then what do you do? Um, in our ordinance, Going back, it is a conditional use, correct? So do we want to put conditional use language in?

Well, this is supposed to be easier, right? It's supposed to, but I— Liz raises a good point because we don't want— necessarily want there to be no standards. I mean, that's what we have now. We can put down— we can put down Basic, you know, you got a buy right use to do up to, you know, but it meets the, you know, the same requirement as far as setback for the lot size. It's got a, um, um, I would also put in there some language about total tower height.

You know, if you go over a certain, certain height, then maybe we kick that into a conditional use. You got, if you're going to go over so many feet, You gotta go through the process for conditional use permit. Okay, so that way there are just things, anything that we say up to so tall, it's by right, up to such and such a standard, it's by right. But if you want to exceed those, then you do have the option of filing for conditional use permit and say, you know, whatever it is, it's like, oh, we to meet our requirements, we got to go an extra 10 feet tall in the tower, you know, and then it's up to us to say, yeah, we could probably do that. Probably do that, or no, we don't.

So it kind of depends on—. Well, they also had language saying that 110% of the height of the tower was the distance you had to be from another property, from property line. So we would want that also, right? Okay, so we can have our two requirements be for buy right, the setback being 110% of the tower height, and the tower height being I wish I knew the number off the top of my head, but it's the FAA tower height, you know, that whatever they have— maybe 200 feet. Yeah, if it's over 200 feet, then you have to go through the conditional use process.

I would say anything over 200 feet, okay, to go through a conditional use permit. Um, so, so anyway, that kind of would give us at least some, you know, so if we have 200—. Oh, I guess it depends on how— right, never mind. So, okay. Those sound good to me.

Um, and then the reason for the overlay being the Telecommunications Act mandating that— well, setting forth that municipalities cannot ban towers, and the community wants input, and so we're meeting in the middle, I guess, is the reason I see for this overlay.

Also, I, I don't know if it was covered, but, uh, is to provide incentive, uh, to put these kind of, uh, buildings in places that are a better fit for the community. We're encouraging people to put the facilities in, uh, locations that we feel fit the community's desires, away from sensitive areas. So, and to prevent degradation of our land, our land use. So, anyway, I guess that's what I meant by community input. Yeah, kind of a catch-all.

Yeah. All right.

Anything else we want to put in there?

I think so. None from me.

OK. Do you guys want to say anything about colocation at this point?

We could put in there that we encourage colocation.

You know, I would agree with that.

Colocation to a certain degree is already going to be a by-right. Yeah, you so yeah, but it's just like it's. I don't think it hurts for us to say we encourage it. You can put that in the whereases if you wanted to. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Otherwise, I don't know how to write that in. Yeah. Yeah.

It's just like, it's—. Whereas colocation being encouraged. Yeah.

Right?

Or, um, the next, um, uh, Commissioner comment, uh, section about the data center ordinance. Um, I, I have, um, just kind of some principles that I would like to see in our— in an ordinance that we create, um, that are pretty limited. I, I appreciate the detail in Anchorage's ordinance, some of which we should probably implement in ourselves, but the 3 things that I really want to see is that we only allow edge small-scale facility data centers, that we only allow closed-loop cooling systems, and the 3rd one that we— and this is based on Director Hagerman's comments— that we could only probably support one data center at a time for a power load. I would like to see that in writing, that we have only one, no more than one data center in the borough at any given time. So those are the three things that I would like to see.

The last one maybe is more— it's perhaps more controversial, and the reason that I like to— that I like that is Director Hagerman's comments, but also The fact that ordinances are living documents, and if there is a second data center that wants to come in, that they would have to go through the ordinance process and convince us that we can bear a second one. Well, I think one of the things to say is rather than say limit by the number of data centers, it should be by the power consumption of the data center. I agree with Chris. That gives us a number which we can get from the power, from power. That says, yeah, we can handle up to this much power usage.

So even if it's, if it's 2 small data centers but they're below the power usage, I think that would be perfectly fine. But as if we start getting, or 2 or 3 or whatever, that are there, as long as below the power usage, it should be fine. But if it's, if we start going above a certain amount of power usage, then it's going to become a problem for the borough. So it could be one data center, or it could be four data centers that meet that criteria. So I think it'd be better to state it as up to a certain amount of power usage.

If we can get that number, I think I would be fine with that. But the reason I liked putting in writing that we can only— that we have one data center at a time is because the data center that's proposed is a small-scale facility. I don't know that they get much smaller than that, although I confess my ignorance on the subject, but The fact that we have a small-scale edge facility, closed-loop facility that's proposed, and our direct— power and light director said we can support one but not two. I wanted to get that in writing, so that would be my personal proposal. I think it would just be good to get from power and light of saying, okay, up to this, because if they decide they need to grow that data center, right, that's my other concern would be is the power consumption going to start going up, and then it becomes a problem.

That's very true. Good to have a hard number of how much power we can afford. So the, the edge facility doesn't grow into 2 edge facilities disguised as 1, right? For example. Okay.

Yeah, there is a compromise here, you guys. Um, and this is— this was suggested by, you know, proposed by Andrew Mazzella because he wants to do the 2-megawatt data center in downtown Petersburg, and he said, look, if it costs you any guys, I'll just cover it, you know, the diesel surcharge, whatever, and you just bill them. You say, okay, this is what you guys cost us for the excessive use, and, you know, when it was the one day that it was 13°F that winter, and then they pay the difference, and they pay the difference for whatever costs are incurred. You could do it that way as well. Yes, that's a good point, and I think we should get that in writing.

And put that in the ordinance, that if there's excessive costs associated with the data center, that the data center bears the financial burden and not, um, the public. I really like your comment, Commissioner Fine-Walsh, about closed-loop systems. This is really important because a lot of data centers use up a lot of fresh water. This was a subject of large debate and even near revolt in the, in in the country of Chile. I won't get into that.

But yeah, the tower cooling systems can be really resource dependent. The two things that data centers use the most of: fresh water— not water, mind you, but fresh water— and electricity. Electricity we seem to have in some relative abundance, but we can't take that for granted. The thing about water in a closed-loop system is it's far less an issue. And there are types of, like, ethylene glycol that are edible.

So, you know, we think about the toxicity in that. We certainly don't want certain types of coolant fluids that contain PFAS. This is kind of a rather large debate, especially with the larger data centers down south that have immersion cooling systems for their ASIC chips. Those are not something that we want, and we definitely would want to consider putting that in writing. I think the most important thing to note in the debate about data centers is not how big they are, but how they are cooled and what systems are using cooling.

I have one other point to make about cooling, and that has to do with the Finnish model. I think that we should be looking at our brothers in the northern and the Norse countries, Finland especially, because they do something called district heating, which basically means you don't lose the electricity that you're selling them. You get it back in the form of heat. I just want to put a pin in that, but that requires a little bit of infrastructure change and some work on our part. Which I think the data centers could be on the hook for doing.

After all, they need our buildings to cool their ASIC chips in a district heating setup, and we need their data centers to heat our buildings. It's a great symbiotic relationship where we get paid twice.

I think another—. Mr. Chairman. Yeah, Liz. My understanding is that Power and Light is working on an ordinance to address the power issues, so it might be in your interest to wait and see. Wait and see what they come up with.

That's wonderful. That's great. Yes, because they would have the technical know-how to speak to specific power limitations that they would then be enforcing themselves. Yeah, I think it's an idea of trying to bolster their ability to actually enforce those things and say no if they need to say no and when they can say yes. Awesome.

That's my understanding anyway. So I'm very glad to hear that, and I'm more than happy to defer to their expertise on the subject because, yeah, it's certainly not my area of expertise. I think as far as, you know, recycling the heat from the, from the, the servers, you know, there's a large building they're planning on putting the server farm in, and it's not going to take up that much space. And if they would like to put in the infrastructure and heat other parts of the building and lease those out to other businesses, I think that's what we should encourage them to do rather than try to make it something that the borough is involved in. So, I mean, it to me, it would make more sense to, you know, let them try to recoup some of their expenditures that way.

It's something that might work, and it might be a win-win for this, for the whole borough, as far as being able to get more space available for, for business that has a cheaper heating solution. Yeah, so, Chris, allow me to just make a comment here. I think that there, that there's a greater opportunity here than even Andrew Mazzella realizes for district heating. The, the district heating model, if you're using something like distilled water, for example, which is the the greatest amount of specific heat, that's 97% efficient. That means electron for electron, you're getting 97% entropic recall in the form of heat from your, from your electric demand.

That's enough to heat 10 commercial buildings with ease and have some leftover. That's what I mean when I say that the city might want to get involved in this. It's an enormous opportunity. I also think that certain types of coolant systems, like, for example, when using distilled water, that do not produce toxic effluents, they're closed loop.

We should think about greenlighting some of these coolant systems just to encourage people like Andrew Mazella to include them in their plans. Like, oh, this is what the city wants us to do. And then, you know, we think about what can we do with this discharge heat before Andrew Mazzella, for example, decides to install a coolant system when he could be heating our buildings instead. We heat 11 months out of the year in Petersburg. That's kind of what I'm getting at.

That kind of does sound like a power and light department, uh, place to start.

About 10 commercial buildings with one data center. I, I don't know that this data center is going to be of the size to put out that much heat, but, um, I'm just running the numbers and I'm looking at 2 megawatts. I mean, how much do you— how much your electrical heat load in your house, for example? I could be wrong too. It could be more complicated than that.

Food for thought. Yep. And something I bet the Power and Light Department will look at closely. I do have one person on Zoom. Hope he had his hand up, but now he doesn't.

So have comments you wanted to make? Yes, I do. Is this time? Uh, so, you know, The last 6 months or so, we've been dealing with these towers, and a lot of people learned a lot of new things about towers and what they do, and there's some safety concerns that come with the towers. Also, what has come out not too long ago was a study on the proportion of sick people per capita in each town, and Petersburg is very high on the list in Alaska.

And I don't know if this was a peer-reviewed study, but I know a lot of people talked about it, and so the question has been out there is, is some of the sickness related to communication towers, especially ones that have already been in place for a while for the long duration of people that live here that are exposed. We don't know if there's any kind of relationship there, but people want to know if there is a relationship. And so I don't know how to go about doing this, but I think the folks in the hospital have that information. I know they can't release it due to HIPAA, but I know that they have it, and I don't know if we can ask them to see if there's a relationship, if there's any clusters or places where more people generally get sick than other places. So that was just—.

Yeah. Well, something I want to address, I don't know how. I think it's been talked about that towers need to be, um, you know, once in a while monitored. Who does monitor our towers and provide information on them to be sure that they aren't emitting unsafe levels? That was the second part of this, is how do we go about getting regular monitoring?

Um, I have a list of, uh, cities that have done it. There's a couple companies in the United States that do it. Most of the companies that do this kind of work are in Europe, but it's becoming something here. It's becoming a thing. And so anyway, you know, trying to figure out if there's any sort of relationship with towers that we have and sick folk, sick clusters.

And then, uh, RF monitoring. I'm not sure if that— unless we're putting that into some sort of code— is something that is part of, uh, what planning should be involved in. That sounds like you're getting more into borough assembly area. It does occur to me that perhaps our federal lobbyist may have some ideas on working with the FCC to get someone that they would accept to measure RF emissions. Because my understanding is that if you can measure it yourself, but it's really the FCC that needs to verify it.

Verify, exactly. So that's just what occurred to me. We do have a federal lobbyist, and so they may know who inroads, but That's just what occurred to me. And also, there are— my mom was a hospital data analyst for many years, and I know that there is way to anonymize data and get around HIPAA and look at trends. But that's, that is a not— that is a big burden.

It's a big process. So it may— you can get around HIPAA, but it takes— it's It's a big lift to analyze huge amounts of data and find trends, but it is possible to be done.

But that's my advice. I don't know if we have the wheels to get it done here. Maybe not, but it's— I think we— it would be— I would appreciate us getting someone from the FCC to measure RF emissions and at least put people's mind to these, or maybe highlight problem areas. Um, but I think, uh, our chair is correct that I'm going through the borough assembly, um, or through the borough manager. Um, they're the borough manager and the mayor, the ones with, with the relationship to our federal lobbyists pathway for that sort of thing.

Yes, rather than us, we're more in, you know, uh, putting the code together, and then we're the ones making the decision on variances and conditional use permits and everything else to the code. So that's kind of more of our sandbox, should we say. So then we could actually put in ordinance language that requires random or regular RF testing. I think we did contemplate it in our— it came up in our draft. The, which is with the borough attorney currently, but we did talk about that during the drafting process, measuring RF emissions.

But we, yeah, they might even be able to be attached to that ordinance. It seems like it should be a condition. Yeah, I was thinking that they are required to have—. I have one person on Zoom if you'd like to—.

Hey, can you hear me? Okay, sorry.

Yes, we can. Okay.

A quick review. I apologize.

In regards to capturing waste heat, it is in my experience and I'm guided really by comments by a friend who's a civil engineer that is very much advocating for this. There are physical limitations to where that waste heat can— it typically, you have to have a cluster. And the fact that this cluster then would occur around, you know, an old cannery site is probably not realistic to be able to fully utilize or even expect that there would be buildings there. In regards to the ranking of Petersburg Borough in relation to 28 other boroughs, there are— Petersburg does rank, and this is age-related as well, because of course the older you get, the more likely you are to get rates of cancer. It ranks number 6 out of 28, and this really needs to be investigated just in the— under the situation of, you know, anecdotal information demonstrating that there is a cluster around the existing 27-year-old cell towers over the school.

Um, and, and in regards to, um, more than one, uh, data center, um, to quote, uh, Alan Greenspan's testimony to Congress, uh, he basically referred to what was going on with the, uh, the stock market crashes of 2008 as well as, uh, earlier in the '90s that there was an irrational exuberance of the market, and he truly regretted the mistake that he made in regards to thinking that there wouldn't be, especially under the conditions of, you know, allowing banks to invest their monies. So in regards to AI data center in the lower 48, um, it, it, the, the expansion— talk about irrational exuberance— the expansion of AI and, and data centers, um, uh, it is literally being used to justify the expansion of energy production. So in regards to what is happening, we could have a feedback loop coming out of Petersburg Municipal Power and Light going, "Yeah, we can do another turbine now and have another data center." So, I thank you very much for this opportunity. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, David.

Yeah. Liz, do you have any other comments? Ernie, come on this. Uh, not on this. Uh, I think we'll be having a meeting in June and just curious if we're going to have a quorum.

I should be here. Yeah, yes, yeah, great. That would be fabulous. Thank you. I'll be here if I can.

Hi, my name is Susan Martinez and I did have some comments about your closed-loop system. I don't know if Andrew Mazella has identified how much water he's going to need to initially charge his closed-loop system or how big his closed-loop system is going to be, but initially a closed-loop system, a one-time charge can take up to a few thousand to tens of thousands of gallons of water just to initially charge it. And that is going to depend on, number one, his pipe length, his heat exchangers, and the number of chillers he has in his design.

Um, it's also going to be dependent on if when he initially sets it up, if he uses a combination of water glycol mixture, which is going to be important because that's going to prevent freezing and corrosion moving down the line. But he also has to take into consideration this isn't going to be the only time he's going to have to draw on water resources. He's going to need it for, um, maintenance down the line, and there's going to be weekly, quarterly and annual checks, he's going to have to totally flush that system at least every, every 12 to 24 months. My question is, where is that going to go when he flushes it? Because when I was reading through, it doesn't have anything saying that he's going to utilize the Petersburg sewer system for that runoff.

Where is that runoff going to go? That's a very big question. It can't go out in the, in the bay.

So, that's something that needs to be found out.

As far as AI, that was another thing.

But back on the— just on the data center itself, the, the, the edge data center, there's— there are challenges, or there's cons to that data center itself, because number one, there's physical security risks, which when, when I was having a conversation with Andrew Mozilla, he said there were no cons to this design. That's not true. There are. First of all, there's physical security risks. An edge data center facility located like in an office building or a warehouse is likely to lack rigorous protections to discourage physical intrusion.

Any physical access controls that exist are usually easy to defeat by using tools like saws or crowbars. So if somebody wanted in there, they're going to get in there. Risk of interference attacks. If somebody wants to attack an edge data center physically without breaking in, they could use a method like intentionally— intentional electromagnetic interference to damage the IT equipment. They could also simply just shut the power off to all the IT equipment or the cooling system itself.

Itself. And in many cases, the Edge facility lacks backup systems for those resources. Has Andrew Mozilla presented any backup to, to that Edge data system at all to prevent any of those things from happening? Because if he didn't or hasn't, it could totally cripple everything in this town. Lack of staff resources.

Edge data centers are typically not staffed on a regular basis.

As a result, if an attack occurs, there may be no one prepared to respond immediately. So what can happen if nobody's there to respond? You could be bad. And fewer monitoring resources because edge facilities usually have limited infrastructure resources available. They may not be able to support robust network monitoring or firewall equipment, making it more challenging to detect or block network-based threats.

The conclusion to all that is ultimately solutions available for securing edge data centers are limited. Making sure they don't advertise the location of the edge data center to any threat actors. Most importantly, you should always have a backup solution in place place in a traditional data center.

And then the IT— there's a lot of problems with IT. Cigna Healthcare and UnitedHealthcare right now have many, many lawsuits. There doesn't seem to be any accountability for the AI making healthcare decisions for anybody's healthcare. Once AI is implemented in the healthcare system, that AI is in there with you and your doctor, and it can make decisions regarding whether you get healthcare or you don't. And there have been patients that have actually died, and there are active lawsuits out there, and you can get out there and you can see with Cigna and UnitedHealthcare, and there is nobody accepting responsibility.

The people that created the AI platform, the UnitedHealthcare doesn't want to accept responsibility. The doctors, the hospitals, they don't want to accept responsibility. That's pretty scary when you think about it. I don't want AI making decisions whether I can get healthcare or not. People got kicked out of Extended care facilities because AI said they didn't need to be there.

That's scary, and they died.

We're all in a bad spot right now because it could happen to any one of us at any given time. We need to think about it.

You need to think about some of these other things too.

Sometimes we need to take a step back. We need to look at all of the things. When somebody's sitting here putting the buns rush on us to make a decision, it's not always a good decision. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, Judy Omer speaking for myself. I hope as you're going through looking at what kind of restrictions or limits, guidelines, whatever you're putting on a data center here in town, that you consider restricting the noise that they put out because it runs 24/7, 365. It's not like, you know, there's too loud of a song on the radio or something, and it's the kind of stuff that can make people psychotic. And I think that's a real concern here, especially in the one situating like it's right downtown. The other one was some of the concerns that Aaron Hankins from the fire department brought up.

And should something happen, and it does, no matter what they're saying about, oh, these are special batteries, um, what do we need in order to protect our community here, the people and the buildings in it? So I think that's a serious, serious concern, again. So thanks for the diligence you're taking in this and trying to protect the people here in Petersburg and the lifestyle we've been able to enjoy. Thank you. Um, I just want to note for your interest, the, um, uh, ordinance that, uh, our director pulled for us from Anchorage has a huge amount of noise, um, dampening, um, mitigation standards.

A lot of it is about noise and then Some of it is also about discharge through the sewer for— I thought it was really an interesting point that closed-loop systems also discharge into potentially our sewer system or, or need to be disposed of safely. So I thought, but I just want to note for your purposes that both of those points are in the ordinance that we reviewed, so. It's, well, it's, it's a good, it's a good thing to remember that it's not just about power. It's also about noise pollution and water pollution. So there's multiple considerations to make, and that if Power and Light does a power ordinance, we should still consider doing a data center ordinance for other reasons besides power.

So thank you for your input. Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. That, that was, those are I'm really, really good. All right, our next meeting is June 9th at noon. Liz, did you have any staff comments?

Nope, that was it, that we were probably going to have a meeting. So, okay. All right, um, do we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye.