Cordova: June 3, 2026, Public Hearing & Regular Council Meeting

Yeah, See.

Okay, welcome everybody. I'd like to call our public hearing to order on June 3rd. We could get a roll copy. Yes.

Yeah. Peter. Absent. Deborah Adams. Absent.

Lee Collins. Here. Aaron Hansen is absent. Casey Kinsman. Here.

Mike Mikolson. Here.

Here. Dave Zestor. Here. As a form of guess.

Okay, this is a public hearing for resolution 062622, a resolution of the city council of the city of Cordova, Alaska, establishing the property tax mill rate for 2026 tax year.

So I guess we'll open it up to the floor. If there's anybody in the audience who would like to come up to speak to this resolution, please come up to the mic, state your name and address, and you have three minutes.

Hello,.

Chris Brown at 810 Lake Avenue.

The last council meeting, during the discussion, council member Kinsman had mentioned if we're not going to raise the mill rate, then we're going to have to go without something in town, we're not going to fund something, and said he'd like to hear feedback from the community on what that might be, what we might be willing to give up if we don't raise the rate. So I kind of wanted to speak to that. I wanted to set the stage for. It a little bit first. And remembering that in previous council discussions there's been talk of needing to live within the city's means and adjusting budgeting and expenses for the current revenue streams that we have.

And I guess in the question of what do we live without, I like to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs as kind of an example for how to determine what do you live without in kind of a more objective manner. And I won't insult you guys too much by going too in depth about Maslow's hierarchy. I figure most of you are somewhat familiar with it, but basically a five tier pyramid of needs, the base being physiological needs such as food, water, sleep, shelter. The top being self actualization and middle tiers, number two being safety, community, love, belonging. And the idea is you have to fulfill the bottom tiers before you can move up to higher levels towards self actualization.

While that's a psychological theory, I think it can be somewhat applied to how a city determines its budget, being that the lower physiological needs would be city streets, critical utilities, electrical grid, housing, shelter. Moving up from there we have safety, which would be tier 2 items such as the police department, emergency medical services, fire department, and moving up to tier three a little bit higher. Then you get into the public spaces, parks, community centers, social gathering areas, so people can feel a community belonging. Tier 4 being that more historical preservation aspect of things, taking the place of a scheme in the other, you know, psychological pyramid that would be, you know, having really nice parks, having the most, you know, prestigious museums and moving on to number five, which would be self actualization. That's the, you know, pinnacle of public art.

Fancy architecture all over town, you know, green energy initiatives. And I think when I look at that, to kind of finish it off, I think, you know, looking at the budget, I see $320,000 being spent on the library and 318,000 being spent on the museum. I classify those more as tier three needs. And in contrast to that, I see, you know, for facilities maintenance, we're spending 153,000 on salaries and both the library and museum salaries are higher than what we're paying for facilities maintenance, which would be tier one, basically. In conclusion, what I can live without would be for library and museum.

Thanks, Chris.

Anybody else like to speak to the public hearing topic?

Sunshine seat Caddy Kleiner 126 Holla Centers loop. And not going to speak as eloquently. As,.

I guess my feelings. I. I also have been a lot of planning for many, many citizens talking about this, about overhead of the city. And if we were to cut back at the city, I mean, at least sadly, it could be halftime in the library, halftime in the museum. We have tourist season coming up now, so it's probably not so great. But don't have a lot of tourists.

But maybe it could be implemented for the remainder of the year. Not starting in the summer, but that's one thing that would certainly help. I mean, during the oil spill or right after it, there was desperate times. No rates changed. The good news is we can change it next year.

We don't like what we do this year. Right. Yearly we can revisit. I think my, my most important goal is that in order to retain good people in our community, we need good schools. And that's what kept park.

That was huge of what kept us here is to raise our kids. And in Cordova in schools we have great schools. We still have good schools. And we need to retain that because it's important to retain young families. So to me that's very important.

And we have to cut things then we have to cut things. But I think it's really, really important. Thank you. Thanks. Bet.

All right. I'm Brad SAP. I live at 203 Highland Drive. And I absolutely will not talk as well as the two previous people in front of me. Or before me,.

This city is headed in absolutely the wrong direction. By raising the mill rate, if at. All. My property taxes have gone up and if I hear anybody say anything about, oh, we gotta stay up with Anchorage. Anchorage.

If I wanted to live there, I'd live there. I want to live here. We don't have half the stuff up at Anchorage desk. We can't just drive up someplace and go here, there. Everything is barged in here.

I've worked for barge company for 35 years. I've been here for 39 years.

I remember when this whole city was run with five people down here below us. There's too many people working here and not getting anything done. You guys built a new harbor. It's been what, one year? Last season was the first full year.

I went down there this spring and the spigot is broken on my finger. Instead of just replacing the ball valve, they spend the time to cap it off. Why don't they? Why didn't they have a damn ball valve? They spent just as much time tearing it apart just to cap it.

They should have had a damn ball valve there. So we're not even getting the stuff that. This town will always be efficient, you guys. I keep hearing about old terrorism and all that. What are they seeing?

They come up, they get off the boat, they walk 10 minutes through town. They've seen everything. It's not like before when they could have gone out the road, go and enjoy the glaciers and stuff like that. It's never going to be this. And just one side note.

The other day, when our fish and game department down here switched and didn't go to a Monday Thursday schedule, I didn't see anybody down there represented the city to talk to that guy. There's 20 to 30 people down there yelling at this guy, trying to get an answer out of him. I didn't see if this city doesn't understand that fishing is what pays, really pays the bills and the families that work in fishing in this town, that's what, that's where you get most of your money. Raising the mill rate and forcing people out of town to make it where they can't afford to live. Here you wait, see what happens.

Because I hear a lot of people just say, you know, I'm just going to go live someplace else. I'll sell this place and go live someplace else. I'll just come up here, take the cream and hit the road. You might want to think about that when you go to decide to keep raising the mill rate all the time. Thanks, Brad.

Okay,.

Somebody coming in?

We are taking public comment on Resolution 062622 regarding the property tax mill rate. Anybody else come to the mic?

Okay, well, we're at 7, so do we adjourn? Adjourn. Okay, do it. Does that just said with no objection? With no objection.

We will adjourn the public hearing of June 3, 2026 and take a minute, get situated and move on to the meeting.

Thank you. To those who came up to the mic.

Does anybody need lights on? Are you good? You good? Good, Good. Okay.

Okay. Are you ready? Yeah. Okay, we are going to call to order the regular city council meeting of June 3rd at 7pm if everybody could please stand and join me with the Pledge of Allegiance.

United States of America stands for one nation under.

Thank you. If we could get roll call, please. Mayor Smith is absent. Deborah Adams. Here.

Lee Collins. Here. Aaron Hampson is absent. Casey Kinsman.

I see him there. Casey,.

Mike mickelson.

Mike, do you hear us? You're muted. Oh, lost. Mike. Casey, you're here.

Yeah. Yes, I'm here. Thanks.

Maybe he fell off. Anyway, Wendy Rain? Here. Dave's Astro. Here.

1, 2, 3. That is a form of counsel.

Okay,.

We can move on to the approval of the regular agenda. Do we need a motion? There be no objection. Unless anybody wants to. Yep.

Does anybody want to amend the agenda hearing? Nothing. We'll approve the regular agenda. Move on to disclosures of conflicts. Does anybody have any conflicts of interest to disclose?

Looks like we have Mike back. Maybe. Yes, it does. Okay. Hearing none.

We will move on to communications by and particular from visitors. We have Blake with us today.

Like it's the same as what we had in our packets, right? Yes. Okay. I'm just going to be jumping around.

Can online see that presentation?

Yes. Okay,.

Great. Good evening, everyone. My name is Blake Phillips. I'm a director at Alaska Permanent Capital Management. I have been working with the City Cordova since the inception of the account and before actually getting it all set up and running and transition from the previous manager.

I have mostly good news for you today. There is a lot of material in the deck that we have provided you. I'm only going to cover a bit of it, but I'm happy to. I wanted to kind of COVID this material. I know you have other stuff on the agenda, but I'm happy to answer questions about anything.

And I'm also going to plan on kind of keeping market comments to the end because they tend to take their own rather than anywhere else. So with that, The Cordova Permanent Fund was accepted with APCM in February of 2024. Oh, and actually first I want to make it just a disclaimer that this whole presentation does not contemplate the loan that was made from the permanent fund. So any of these numbers or anything should not include those within. But that said, there have been total contributions, so that would largely been the amount.

The balance, when we took it over from the previous manager, the current market value at the end of April was just over 8.2 million. And as we sit here today, it is just under 8.5 million. So we've had some continued strong markets and really since inception, with a gross return of 13.2% and a net total return of up 12.6%, we've seen some really strong returns in this first two years since we've been managing it. But I would like to say that is above what our estimated return was. Both.

Well, you know, we set this portfolio up and what we expect going forward.

And then on the right here, these are the purpose and the goals, you know, these are from when this was established and various credit amendments. Since the purpose for establishment of the fund is to provide a continuing source of funding for the capital and operating expenses of the city, the council may not consider any revenue from the General Reserve Fund as anticipated revenue for operating expenses when approving the budget. The establishment of the fund is intended to assist in minimizing the tax burden of citizens of Cordova and preserving the trust of the assets for the benefit of present future generations of Cordova residents. Stated goals within this are maintaining the purchasing power of the fund's corpus and attaining a market rate of return through cycles while preserving and protecting the capital and overall portfolio. So attaining a prudent return on the capital, but also inflation, protecting that capital or two stated goals of this quickly, on this side you can see just the growth of the fund over time.

So what you can see on the left is where we started over at 6.2 million. We sit here today at 8.2 million, or actually closer to 8.5, putting net earnings since February of 2024 over $2 million as you see here today. So we've had very good returns, as I mentioned previously, looking at what that principle would have been at the starting of 6 million. If we adjust, inflation protected would have been 6.8 million. So handily beating any inflation protection.

And then you see the calendar year return of 2025, that is just there. We over time will show more down below, but it's the full, only full calendar year was, you know, a very strong year. Above 13%.

Going to skip that. Here we're looking at performance. On the bottom, you can see a variety of different performance measures. The actual Cordova permanent fund gross apiece is the blue bar and net of fees is the orange part. And the benchmark, which is what we provide you to measure us against and is a basically custom benchmark that's made against your investment policy.

That is where we are striving over the long term to be, you know, at or slightly above on a gross basis. And so you can see over this time and that also basically the benchmark does not take into account investment vehicle costs of roughly 0.2%. So that is another headwind we face. So we have been meeting and exceeding that goal. On the one year basis, you can see that these returns are over 21%.

Again, I just want to reiterate that those are extremely high returns from what we seen. And we have had even some benefit. We've concentrated a little more in some positions over the last 12 to 18 months, which has further helped out. But again, these are extremely strong returns and very, you know, the markets have been very strong. And so you, you want to, when you see returns like this, you want to not be planning for that.

You want to go like the number that would present about six and a half percent would be our, you know, return expectation on an annual basis over the next 10 years. That's a more, you know, reasonable growth expectation and lots of modeling for that as well.

This is more, and I will come back to that on slide 10 in the packet. This is your asset allocation. The strategic benchmark, which is outlined by resolution as an allocation for the fund, dictates all these various asset classes and that strategic benchmark percentage. So that is what we're measured against. When I was pointing out the benchmark on the performance slide, that is that in a vacuum, we, if you go to the far right of this table, you can see that we have some ranges around each of those targets.

So we have discretion to move around those ranges. Within that, you know, if we did not have a range, we would constantly be out of investment policy because of stock market movement, just in general. But that gives us some discretion to make moves. Like, you know, if we wanted to be defensive of more overweight bonds or vice versa, the overweight stocks, those are the ranges that allow us to do that without coming back to the council to get new resolution and saying, you know, we would like to make these moves. We are granted that discretion within this portfolio.

But also those ranges are intentionally set to not have them provide something, you know, direction to which we would, you know, potentially derail the overall goal of the portfolio. And so it's, you know, very important to have those. And also what anytime we're setting these investment policies and helping communities with them, we're thinking of them. If we were ever not the manager, we would want somebody to come in and take over this portfolio and not be able to just go run roughshod over, you know, what years of like, kind of intentional work that this place. And so we're always.

That's why, you know, every year we're looking to see if there's anything we can strengthen, whether it's asset classes, wording, new language on derivatives, but also make sure we're implementing any new goals of the community, make sure that, you know, we're thinking about things the right way or seeing if anything needs to be updated back to the allocation. We're largely in line with where we are. And we've kind of been at that place largely for the last 18 months, which has been pretty tough if you think about what we've been through in the last 18 months with tariffs and wars and all of those things. There's been a lot of headwinds, a lot of bad headlines that it's like, okay, time to take the chips and get home. But what the important thing to do, what we're doing is trying to look through the noise in that and look at the underlying fundamentals in the market.

And what has really been the case has been growth has been extremely resilient globally. Even now we're seeing signs of slowing growth, but we're positive, positive. And that's been in the face of the tariffs and figuring out how to work around that. In the face of this, you know, kind of oil shock we're facing right now, we're still not seeing that really, like, you know, put a full stop on things. So it's really important to look at that.

There's a lot of new stuff coming on too, with artificial intelligence. You know, how much is that really a productivity boost? What is the longer term effect of those things? What is the inflationary impact going to be potentially if this energy boom goes on longer? There are a lot of those things, but in the underlying numbers, in the earnings that we're getting from corporations, they're continuing to earn through this and show that growth.

And so we're not seeing reasons to why we would want to preemptively get any kind of, you know, defensive or even like really take defensive posturing at this juncture. Okay, I'm going to stop there and take any questions,.

Any questions online because I can't see you guys.

Sounds like we're good. Thank you.

Quickly. So when I point off, this is a slide that you'll see anytime I present to you. But all of our accounts at APCM are separately managed. So when we're managing Porto's permanent fund, we don't have any other biases in how we're looking at that. So while an important part of this portfolio is making sure that we construct it and manage it efficiently, what we're managing it to is crucial to get the feedback on your side.

This is managed uniquely to your risks and specific to that. So the better your feedback and color and goals and risks and constraints that you have that we have to take into account, the better this portfolio is going to perform for you over the long term. Can be optimized for what Cordot is trying to reach.

Big, not real big takeaways. We're lowering our long term inflation target from 2 and a half to 2 and a quarter. That I'm noting that because that is a big part of your investment policy. That's largely due to, you know, we were expecting, we're coming off very high levels of inflation. So this is where our expectation is for the next 10 years on average, is that two and a quarter percent because we're sitting here even now above that slightly.

So that is where we expect that to go over over the next 10 years.

This is the where you know, me putting the, I guess wet towel on this segment of like the strong returns we've seen so far over the next 10 years. That six and a half percent, that is what we expected. Taking into account volatility and a lot of different scenario modeling we do on average, you know, we expect a six and a half percent return. That's for each year the next 10 years. I would also say that I almost guarantee we won't hit have a six and a half percent return here.

You know, it'll be made up of up 10, up 15, down 10. You know, those, you know, we're going to have some volatility and that volatility is spelled out for you kind of 95% of the returns any given year we would expect between down 16% and up 30%. You know, if we go from here and we end up down 15%, that is not ideal. It doesn't feel great when we have those years. But at the same time we have a very high level of confidence that we still hit that six and a half percent return over that time period we expect to have these down years.

It's healthy to have if things just elevate above without the fundamentals following that becomes usually a less safe scenario. So that six and a half percent return that we can get if we then adjust it to where you see that long term real return that's taking out the inflation 4.3% is what if we were in like a distribution type environment or something like that. That would be what we would look at is like the ceiling level that we would want to. That could be taken out and have this be a sustainable long term fund above that level. The probability that over time it erodes is pretty high.

And but also if you take out that for like that exact level, it won't continue to inflation protect it. But what you're essentially doing is locking in your purchasing power at that point. You know it's going to stay at that level. You're going to have a thousand dollar purchasing power, you know, invertecuity for that. So but it's a balance, you know, sometimes, you know, right now for the recent history, you know, not to indicate the loan it's been, you know, largely just re reinvesting to build.

But you know that you know, as you know for planning purposes it's always that is kind of what a sustainable level might look at look like. And so that could be also a helpful number if you look out, you know, into the future and say, you know what is a distribution off of the permanent fund, you know that might actually do something. You know those are. And we can also rent all sorts of different scenarios for you. And this is you know, longer here than I intended.

Finally, this is a 10 year modeling, our current 10 year model for the portfolio. This does not take into account any cash flow. So neither any further contributions nor any further distributions. We expect inflation at 2.25% and the current market value is at 8.2 million. At the 50th percentile we expect this to be $15.3 million in 10 years.

So that means 50% of scenarios are above 15.3 million. That blue areas where 50% of those outcomes would be from. Yeah. And then just inflation, inflation adjusting that principle, you can see that's at 8.4 million. So over 95% of our expected returns are going to.

We are going to be protecting that inflation adjustment principle that I will obviously.

Questions online.

Okay, changing that paper. Yeah.

Okay. So that was my main portfolio commentary. I can give you a quick couple market comments Or I cannot be happy to stop there. Very much up to you. I'd like to hear,.

Let me. We have one slide here that breaks out. I think these are like kind of the main areas that we're watching right now. As I mentioned before, growth, you know, that is really, that's what drives returns over the long term. You know, you'll see stock market run around all over the place, but over the long term it highly correlated to earnings.

And so that's why we talk about the actual growth coming out of the economy. Continue to see very, you know, stable growth and very widespread. You know, not just the US growing. We're seeing, you know, pretty good growth. There's a lot of cracks starting to come up as you.

We're getting some dislocations from energy problems, but we're still seeing growth go. Consumer has been holding in very strong. We are seeing even just recently seeing some, some cracks start to come into the consumer. And keep in mind 70% of our autonomy is consumer driven. So we're not, it's not products and like with that it's going to be how much we're consuming whether services or goods.

And we had, I saw this and it just kind of stuck out. You know, there's statistics on everything that are coming out all the time. But consumer sentiment came out last week. I think it was the all time lowest level for consumer sentiment and that's lower than Covid, lower than the financial crisis. So it, you know, it's obviously very right in line with where we are with like all the gas prices hit and those kind of things.

But you know that, that is a concern that usually, you know, consumer sentiment will tend to usually have a correlation with blockchain. And so if that stays there, that could be a problem. Credit you may have heard a lot about like private credit and all of that. That's and you know, having some problems this year in the broader markets. Overall credit is fine.

We're not seeing widespread problems with credit at the corporate level really by any means, nor at the municipal level. You know, that is, that would be more concerning than any kind of rumbles in the stock market. If you start to see the credit markets, it started being harder to borrow. That's a big problem. Not seeing that policy.

Central banks been in the news a lot. You know, there was worries about independence. Right now everything looks kind of stable from where we are. Inflation kind of across the globe did kind of get under control. Obviously energy is throwing a wrench in that right now.

But when you look through that Even with, you know, it was looking like if, you know, war shot in, there was a lot of impetus that everybody thought he was going to come in and try to cut rates. One, he can't do that by himself. But really with where we're at, it's really hard to make a case for really going either direction. Because if inflation takes off and we cut rates like, and if that could be driven by energy or anything else, you know that is, that's going to just be fuel on the fire. Right.

By cutting those rates and if, you know we're seeing the labor, you know, some cooling signs in the economy and so we raise rates, we don't want to kind of throw fuel to the fire the other way to the downside. So right now it just kind of is much, kind of a wait and see. That's very much connected to inflation and labor. You know, those are the two mandates of the central bank is to keep inflation under wraps. That's about 2% inflation target.

But also try to have really stable employment, full employment. And so both of those are pretty much kind of in line. So we're very much in a wait and see. Geopolitical all over the place.

Everything seems to be at I guess contain bubbles currently. But we have very large conflicts going on that could disrupt things. Straightforward moves, 20% of. Well, another thing I was reading today, major negative effects on fertilizer. A lot of fertilizer goes to the straight.

So in these things I'm not sure about fertilizer game but I know the energy stuff, they have to shut in those wells. It takes time to re up those. They have to drain up their tanks. The longer it goes on the compounding effects. So those are really the things that we're watching.

You know, obviously a lot of them interrelated. But right now none of those things are really derailing economic growth in any kind of big way that I'd be happy to take. Any questions?

I don't have a question. It's just, it's really amazing how well it's. The market is still doing all these indicators being stable and especially with some of the geopolitical things.

Oh, which one?

No, I think I have this one. Oh, sorry.

Yeah, just general thoughts and AI has been one of the more highly profitable areas of investment right now. But yeah, it's just interesting how well we've just been doing. Yeah. And on AI and I keep meaning to update this but like one of the. I was mentioning earlier that the consumer drives, you know, 70% of economy well in the first half of last year growth in GDP usually growth piece not like overall but was the larger component of growth to the GDP for the US than the consumer was.

And that's just because of these insane numbers of. And so and also there's a lot of bubble talk going, you know, like you're coming and going because it is one of the more remarkable things I think we're seeing markets in our lifetimes as far as the amount of like wealth just being out of thin air almost seems like. But these are very real numbers unlike pets.com and things like that where there were no earnings and not even much of a product. I mean there is Google has like $180 billion annual cash flow that they make. They just in the last week announced they're going to raise $80 billion because that wasn't enough.

That 180 billion wasn't enough to fund all of the efforts that they wanted to have wanted to have more cash. You have Amazon 200 billion. I mean this, this year's capital spend. It's so. It's just, it's dominating economic activity in just a massive way.

And it trickles all the way down. You go into these data centers how much that you know construction is removing or going towards finish shifting towards that and what material costs are. So it's, it's thing and you know the. We don't have a major top but we decided, you know we have, you know you have thousands of securities within the portfolio. And so when we make you know tactical delta which are just shifts or like can be overweight stocks or bonds but another way is like how we're getting exposure to stocks or bonds.

And so this is artificial intelligence. You have exposure, you would have had exposure companies that you know all the Microsoft best already. And so what we did was take and take part of that that might have just regularly been of the broader US market and we put it into some different ETFs that have specific exposure data centers, semiconductor chips to just get some more concentrated exposure in a small enough way that if it went really bad it would not derail the strategic goals. But it's been, you can see it been you know helping lift the numbers, you know, pretty well for the last 12 to 18 months because it is very, you know, it's way beyond my understanding for the most part. But you know, yeah, like I've used some AI.

I recommend everybody try it out. It's. It's kind of scary how powerful. Well, I definitely appreciate the risk control assets and how you're Managing it, sitting on top of that aspect of it. But yeah, that's everything in this area.

Absolutely. And that in diversification is one of the contested way to remove unique risk from the portfolio. So that's like any one shock is not, whether it's oil shock or Taiwan is a sector, region security, bond, debt, commodity, just very well diversified. And what that does is provide different areas of portfolio to take some weight on another area's capability. And that is really time is very well time tested or time.

Any questions online? Casey? Mike? Yeah, Madam Chair, can you guys hear me? Yeah, we can hear you.

Okay, thanks, Blake. This is a great presentation, great information, at least for myself, and I know that you alluded to it, but at a future meeting, I maybe I'd really like to talk about a distribution timeline. What does that look like for our city? What do you need from us as council to set those goals? What information do you need?

So you have the parameters so you can start kind of road mapping what that potentially could look for our municipality?

Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to help with that kind of work. You know, I would be happy just to, you know, attend a session just to help help guide the conversation. But that's something that, you know, we do very often and, you know, it just comes. We can show, you know, different types of, you know, types of distribution plans. You know, we can talk about what it cost you if you wanted to meet a certain level of distribution, putting that, you know, what it costs to reach that.

So there's a. There's a lot of different pieces that go. Go in with that. And then also, you know, how would necessarily potentially, you know, interact with code as it exists? No, and I think that's a good conversation because, I mean, a distribution.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Susan, it would require a whole different code set for that. So, I mean, I think that's just all part of roadmaping of where. Where we want to be as a municipality. And I mean, looking at it, we've seen great growth. I know that's.

I understand how the market works, but it's great to see where we've come even in the two years and I was on council when we opted to move to your firm. So really, really grateful, pleasantly pleased, and hopefully the community as at large is able to listen in, rewatch this, and digest some of this information and ultimately just going back to our purpose, it is the whole. The whole idea of this is to get to that level where we can help minimize that tax burden on the citizens and so great, great information. I can work with the city manager and maybe at some point out of summer we can, we can plan a conversation around that. So thanks, Blake.

Yeah, thank you. And yeah, we'll be happy to help.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Move away from.

Okay, moving on to audience comments regarding agenda items. Do we have anybody that like to come to the mic to speak to anything on the agenda?

Chris Moreno, 18 Avenue. I just kind of ran a little bit short during the public hearing. Just kicked to kind of on the table end of my points. I just want to reiterate to me that my closing of I could live without the library and I could live without the museum isn't without consideration of the fact that those salary numbers, those budget items, our people. I understand that numbers in a budget correlate to people, but I also think that as council members in the city, government needs to be understood that we need to approach things like that with how much empathy we're having in mind.

They say some of the best CEOs of some of the highest earning companies actually may be psychopaths because they don't have empathy like the rest of us. And they're able to make those hard decisions and be profit forward. And I'm not asking for any of you guys to be psychopaths. My point is merely to say that I think in excess of empathy can really lead to the no rate, just being hyped over and over and over again. And at some point we need to be able to say we want everyone to have a job if they can.

But if it can't be sustained, then that's the decision that has to be made as management and as leaders. And it's not easy. I think you guys know that. But I think it's, it's the role of the leaders and management to make those hard decisions. I think you all, you know, ran to be able to make those decisions and city management is in their position to do so too.

And I think it's, it's a responsibility to be able to shoulder some of that, some of those tough decisions in order to make life for the majority of cordovans better. That's it. Thank you.

Anybody else seeing nobody rushing the mic? We can move on to chairpersons and representatives of boards and commissions. I don't see Dave here, but he does have a report in the packet and I don't see anybody else here.

On that.

So we can go on to approval of the consent calendar and I think we need a motion. Well, it doesn't have to Be a motion. But I'm just pausing to see if anything gets pulled. Nothing seems to be getting pulled. I will take the role.

On the consent calendar, Wendy Rainey. Yes. Mike Mickelson.

On the consent calendar. Mike. We'll move on. Aaron hanson. Yes.

Yes. Did mike jr. Yes. Yes. Okay.

Casey kinsman. Yes. Lee collins. Yes. Deborah adams.

Deborah Adams on the consent calendar. Yes. Thank you. And Dave Zester. Yes.

Consent calendar is approved.

Okay. The minutes are listed in the consent calendar. We have no bids, proposals or contracts. Go on to reports of officers and the mayor is not online. Correct.

Correct. I mean. Okay. And I do not see anything in the packet. So we will move on to city manager.

Adjust my mic so everybody hold.

Okay, so the first thing I want to say is that we have a police of chief. Police of chief.

Police chief, which we haven't had in many years. And I'm pretty happy that it's. He's here. He knows what he's getting into and he's an amazing guy. So pretty excited about that.

The other thing, I want to give a shout out to Kevin Johnson. He put in the application for the Denali Commission get the match gap grant. So we got $700,000 to fill that gap. And so we have Second street match fully funded unless when it goes out to bid, the price goes up higher and then we will need to raise our match. So we're in a good spot.

We'll see what happens when the big double mat starts this fall.

And then I also wanted to note that the Cassel timekeeping that we've implemented again is doing wonders for timekeeping. But it also now we have been able to automate leaf slips to go through it and so we don't have to do paper copies and those kinds of things. So that was a really great investment. And Kayleen and Brenda just hammered it, made it work really well. It's pretty proud of those guys.

So then I'm going to give expand this so she can talk about pool. That's everyone's other favorite topic. Sorry. Okay, I'm done.

You're done. Sunny up.

Hey, everyone. I'll give a quick update on the pool. I'm not sure where we left off. Last, but the pool is full of. Water right now and has been holding for a couple weeks now.

We got go ahead from engineers to put water in it, even with the liner, to fully fill it, even with the liner being sealed with the aluminum in the bottom to start testing our boiler, our pumps, that sort of thing before we they came and fixed it. So We've been running through all that. The pump is working great. Boilers having some issues on high fire. So we're waiting for some parts to come in for that.

So all our systems are ago after we get boiler parts. We're still waiting on Renosis to come in. They did ship all of those supplies so we did get notice of that. So that means they should be here shortly after that. So.

Yeah, it's straight ahead.

Just curious if the funding was set. Aside for that purpose. Where are we at? I can definitely get an update to you for that Taylor Swift of all the invoices that are be coming in for it. So we haven't gotten like we.

We don't know how much room notes this is going to be until they're. Until they're done with it. So we're looking pretty good though. Okay, good.

Any questions for Samantha? In the pool.

Thank you.

I don't really have any interruptings unless someone would like to ask a question then do we get timed? Yes. Thank you. Any questions for Sam online?

Oh, remind me after the meeting talk to you about. Okay. Also I'm going to be out of town starting Friday. I will be back for the next meeting. As long as the airplane.

Okay. Oh, yes, and happy birthday cake before your birthday, please eat some cake.

It's very good. Okay. On to city clerk's report. I can't remember which meeting. I was doing minutes and the mayor mentioned the Secure Rural Schools Advisory Committee.

RA suite. Right, right. Regional advisory committees. Yes. So I asked the Forest Service about that and forwarded you guys the answer that I got from Tanya.

So I imagine they'll be advertising shortly for quite a few seats of Cordovans that they're trying to fill that committee with. So as the mayor had said, that would be a great thing for some local governments to get on that advisory committee.

That's pretty much all I have to report. I'm going to have an update that I gave you that we'll discuss during the note resolution. A little bit of a change that came through on property value.

Okay.

Questions for Susan.

Hearing? None. Move on the correspondence primer is in there and we will run SMET into Resolution 062622.

And are you looking for a motion? I am looking for a motion,.

Madam Chair. I move to approve resolution 0626 22, a resolution of council of the city of Cordova, Alaska establishing the property tax mill levy for the 2026 tax year at its current rate, 11.44 mills for all properties in the city of Cordova.

Okay. Councilman Kinsman, would you like to speak to that?

Yeah, I think as I look at where, where we're going, keeping the mill rate exactly where it's at accounts for increased value on properties, accounts for just even sentiment in the community of just matching and that for not. Not raising the mill rate. It's staying the same. It's different than the budgeted mill rate adjusted, but the mill rate is staying the same. There's some increase nominal and I would even argue in, in, in comparison to where everything is at in the economy.

Everything. I mean, I don't need to go into that. We've talked that to that. So that's, that's my proposal putting it out there and want to hear what. Everyone else has to say.

So thanks. Thank you, Councilman Zastro. Yeah, I have really nothing to add to Council member. It's exactly the way I feel. Not.

I don't see we should be raising it beyond what Veron had said for this current year. Reason for what he stated.

Okay, Mike, do you have any comments?

Yeah, I'm in support of keeping it where it is. I've had numerous community members come up and say they oppose raising it. And I certainly understand the financial pressures that we're under right now, but I just feel like this, this isn't the time. We've heard from the community. We aren't without other resources, fortunately.

But yeah, we're going to have to address some of our fiscal issues here. But I do would like to reference some of the public comment about how decisions we make now aren't necessarily decisions. We make for forever. But I do feel it is the. Right move to leave the mill right where it is.

So thank you.

Is Deborah. Deborah? Yes. I'm in agreement as well. I think we're going to be holding on this year and next year could possibly have a better fishing season.

Have another processor here and the financial picture might look different. And so if we keep it where, if we can hold steady for the next year, I think we might be in good shape.

I would disagree with everything previous council members said. I think it is the right decision to not raise the mill rate, keep where it's at, given that property values didn't increase. And yeah, it accounts for some of. The increased funding to the school, but. Not all of it.

So we'll have a lot of other discussions come season, come next time here. But I think it is the right thing for the community given that everyone could be facing some potentially hard times. Nature comes around again. Everything we're talking about the higher fuel prices all this fall. Fuel prices.

I think it's the right decision.

Council, I reiterate my previous statement of not wanting to raise the mill rate and stand with that decision myself. I noticed Mayor Smith is with us. Did you have any comments to this, Mayor Smith? I don't. I just.

Yeah, I had some trouble traveling today. So I finally got to a place where we've got service and I'm sorry I couldn't log on earlier, but thank you for giving me the chance to speak. Certainly. Because we have so many people online, I'd really like to have a vote on this, please. Sure.

Are we ready for that? I think. Do we have any other comments? Do we need a second round? I think it sounded all pretty similar in the first round.

I don't think we need to go. Yes. If I might, Madam Chair. And it's not even necessarily around the mill rate, but it's around information. That.

Was provided in regards to the first and second rounds of forest receipts at the 1.1. 1.1,195,000 To the city manager to Sam. What of that is allocated already,.

Do you mean? I don't get. What do you mean by allocated? Like have we already. I guess.

And that's. That's fine if we don't have anything for this meeting and I apologize for that at the next meeting. If we can get some recommendations or allocations for where. Where the needs are. You reference some kind of high level things in there and I understand some of them are like Second street match.

That's a variable we won't know till possibly even next year early winter. But does that. Is that clear? Just sounds, I think right now that we don't have anything literally obligated to you because we've got the $700,000 for Second Street. Other in the Second street in apparent possible.

Sorry increase. But the things that we don't know is what. What is our cost increase for fuel and what is it going to look like without another cannery. So I think, I mean, that's why my suggestion is we hold that and see how things roll. Okay, perfect.

So I guess the one thing that maybe could be broken down more specifically would just be the large amount of deferred maintenance. If there's anything specific in there. If we could get that. And again, I can bring that up at Pending Agenda as well. I was going to say, Councilman Kinsman, let's stick to the mail rate conversation and we can put that on Pending Agenda, please.

Okay. Anything else with the. With the resolution.

Okay. We could go ahead and get a roll call, please. If you see that there's a couple of blanks, I'll fill in the very bottom blank at how many million that's going to get us at around 0.44. Okay, thank you. Okay, so the mill rate at 11.44.

And I'm going to call the role. Aaron Hansen. Yes. Deborah Adams. Yes.

Dave Zastrow. Yes. Mike Mendelsohn? Yes. Stacey Kinsman?

Yes. Wendy Randy. Yes. Lee Collins. Yes.

Motion carries. 7, 0. Okay. Moving past unfinished business. We have none.

To new and miscellaneous business. We're looking at the pending agenda. Okay. Councilman Kinsman, did you want to put anything on the pending agenda? Thank you, Madam Chair.

I guess I'm just open if you need more specific guidance on what we were just talking about. Sam, if not, I think that's probably the one piece I'd. If we could just get more information on what is that deferred maintenance and potentially costs associated with that. Because I agree with that and I'd just like to see some numbers so as council we can start allocating potentially some money to that.

I think he wants to see a budget amendment with the revenue coming in and then what you're going to put that towards, if you have any specific things, you know, that are deferred maintenance related. I guess my idea. Sorry. I guess my idea there was that until we get through 26 without really understanding what the expenses are going to be. And now we have, you know, we have to make up a deficit.

You know, we just. And if we have a crisis like I don't know what's going to break, something could break. So let's see what we do at 26 before we start spinning that one. That was my thought. Okay.

Nope. I appreciate it. Is this going to live in the. Is it our amliffe account? Yeah.

Perfect. I look forward to seeing what kind of interest we can accrue on that and even the next six months. So thank you.

We have anything else on pending agenda?

Yeah. Madam Chair, just back to the conversation we were having with Blake. If just to put it on here so we don't forget about it. Come probably even after the budget cycle. So beginning of 27 sometime, getting Blake back and do some strategic planning for what a future distribution cycle could look like.

I don't think we're there by any means, but that 10 year projection looks, looks pretty good. So I'd like to have just some conversation around that, what that looks like and what we need to decide as council if that's clear or makes sense.

Yeah. I just wanted to bring up that I'll pay attention to what comes forward for a meeting on June 17, but with Sam not being here, we'll see. Obviously, if there's some things that come forward, we'll have the regular meeting. But are you guys okay with us maybe not having the regular meeting if. It doesn't look like there's a lot.

On the agenda and we can fill in with specials if we need to? Yes. Everybody. Yes. Was that from two packages?

Yes. Do you know something right away already? No, but special meetings are easier to throw and you know, as long as it's not something.

We do have land, supposedly. You're gonna have some land stuff. Yeah, we can look at it. Okay. We'll see how it goes.

And we'll just pay attention to your emails, please. Any agenda. I would like to put the annexation on having their agenda readers.

What's on here? What Are we budgeting some money for it this year or are we waiting for. I don't know. I mean, in my opinion, I think. That we are in need of revenue sources and to have that conversation sooner than later.

And if we need to have a discussion on what the projected costs are going to be and what the potential revenue is going to be, I think that we should have that conversation.

The annexation and the potential of a Prince William Soundborough with Valdez to Telchenega. Have some conversations with Valdes folks and ex mayor. They were pretty amenable. That's one person. So I will.

One less than. That's right. We had the conversation as well. As far as, you know,.

Having a. Metric to raise the mill rate but adjusting it for primary households and that was another potential means of raising our revenue. I think these are all topics that we need to discuss because although yes, our budget, our current revenue is supporting our needs, we have more than established that our needs are not met. And although our budget. We're not in a deficit, I feel like we're in a severe deficit with their maintenance.

Oh, I guess we'll get Holly and maybe ask her to come give a work session on. Do you have a prior. Do you have a.

A preference of one or the other or are you asking us to tackle both at one time? Sorry. I think the next section is more. Realistic than the potential.

Well, his. The second comment was raising the mill rate and going with a homeowner's exemption, which. Not this year. Not this year, but exploring that for the future. Correct.

As a means to raise revenue. Yet give the Local year round family, a birth. Yeah. I think a work session with the annexation would be huge. And for annexation did you guys mean Harney based on division only?

I know, I know there's a lot of things to tackle. That's why I mean actually would just be hard to bay or what other areas. That's the only area. A contiguous area with the rest of town. But annexation can go anywhere.

Yeah. I do recall our conversations where. Well, if we set the line here, does that prevent us from going here in the future? We go for it all now.

I don't have that answer right now. I would like to pursue that whether it's just hard debate or not. Do you think that deserves discussion.

Or simplicity? I can just say party based subdivision. Yeah, yeah, start there.

I think the conversation I heard was the potential for Shepherd Point. But that's so down the road. It's already in all the way up. Yeah. Another one we had talked about was Basel.

Basically. Yeah. Or all of Interbro or all of Hawkins or Montague or latouche. I mean.

Yeah. Councilman Kinsman, go ahead. Yeah. So I think with this conversation of annexation, I think we just need to look big so we don't have to keep revisiting this every 10, 15, 20 years. I mean let's just look at the map and start that conversation to that Boswell does include all the way out.

Include why not Shepherd's Point? Why not out the road the other direction? We don't know what things are going to look like and if we're already going to pay the attorney fees on it. I mean it's nominal work to do it now and the attorney fees 10, 20 years from now are only going to go up.

Makes sense.

No annexation at all governments, any at all. Y. Okay. Anything else for pending agenda also listed on there? We are still looking for a city representative for the Prince William Sound Aqua cult.

I have received an application for that. Did you? Okay. Except I have a question to them about whether somebody who tenders is considered or not to have a processing. Forgot the terminology.

Processing affiliation, industry or native organization. Interest. Interest.

So they haven't slide to that yet. But we will bring that to the next meeting for council appointment, mayor's appointment, council conference. As long as who's a viable and then someone's postwaff tells me. Okay,.

Moving on to audience participation. All audience except for staff has left. Does that want to come up and. Walk into the mic? No.

Okay, we'll move on to council comments. Let's go online first Councilman Adams. Yeah. Thank you. It's been challenging listening to this because of the.

A poor Internet connection, but I guess I just have one comment and it's just with regard to what we spend our money on, and I am a member of the community that disagrees with the comments that you can live without a library and you can live without a museum. I think we need to find ways to include those in our budget.

Museum. We are not a gigantic library, but they service our community. And I want to be committed in the same way that I'm committed to. The schools and city workers. So I'm glad we came to a decision tonight.

And I just want to go on the record that as being someone who cannot live without a library. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Nicholson.

Yeah, I'm really happy we didn't raise the mill rate. I appreciate all the people that took took time to speak to each of us individually and during the meeting, and it's really nice to hear that the pool is making some positive progress. But.

Yeah,.

I certainly the comments from the public definitely resonate with me. I do feel that the library and museum provide value for our community, but, you know, we're just gonna have to see. I think we are kind of gotten lucky that the forest receipts came in the way that they did, but I'm very happy that we didn't try to budget those into our budget for this year. And yeah, I think it's going to take continued hard work to get to where we are funding our maintenance programs at levels that are sustainable for our future. So I really appreciate staff's input on all these things.

And I know they've spent a lot of time and that's pretty awesome that we've potentially got that $700,000 grant. So thanks, Kevin, for that and yeah, thanks. Thanks, everybody. I appreciate it.

Councilman Kinsman. Yeah, thank you. Great conversation today. Pointed. And it's good to see everyone in concurrence.

Public comment. Thank you. A lot of. A lot of it resonated and a lot of it was in line with things I've been hearing in the community as well. I think there's one clear distinction and I really appreciate Chris coming around his second time.

This. This isn't, you know, when we bring up library, museum, it's. It's not saying that we are against it, it's. Or any of that. And it's also to note that they have made cuts and previous budget cycles and they looked.

I think it's just reimagining what it looks like and living within our means and Absolutely agree with the kind of the, really the, the difference in budget expenses. As you know, again, we drive on the roads every day, we know where our public safety's at and just coming back into what are our priorities and where do we need to be as a community and where do we, you know, some of those things, where do we want to be also? And I think it's just kind of double down on that. So great public participation. Comments.

Of course, I'm human and I always want more, I guess. So please just come write in all those things. It's just great to hear. It makes it feel like this is a community. I know we're a community, but once we get that participation, it really just brings in that ownership as a community, as a whole.

Next thing, I just want to say congratulations, Cameron, and thank you. Thank you for stepping up and we've had many conversations in the past about it and absolutely can understand reservations and I'm just, I'm really grateful and that you've. You've made the choice to step up and do this. So thank you. Kevin.

Great work on working and securing that match for Second Street. I know that was no small feat, but $700,000 in match that, that's not coming out of our budget. It's not something we're going to try to figure out again. There might be more and that's fine and we can cross that road and that's great. But $700,000 is no small amount by any means.

So thank you for doing that. Thank you for doing that really, for our community as a whole. It's always great to hear updates on the pool. Thank you, Samantha. And I know that's no easy feat either to keep that project going.

Great work. Great, great work on that. Look forward to see where we're at in the weeks and months to come for forest receipts. I just want to say thank you to council and previous council for the. On the previous budget cycle, choosing not to include that in our budget for this year.

I really hope that we can continue with that. I think that's really going to help help us out. I know it's going to help us out to have that over $1.1 million to be able to insulate really our headwinds that we're already in the middle of and are going to continue coming throughout this year. So thank you for that just then. Have a lot of gratitude for all of you and for again, previous council members made that decision.

So I will leave it there. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Casey. Councilman Zastro. Oh me.

Okay. I think we should have council member Kinsman speak before we all speak because I could just add one or two things on everything he said. I. I would concur with everything he has said for sure. But I also would like to thank staff Samantha Kevin as Cheryl for all the things you do in your departments. Fantastic report out from the manager.

A lot of good things happening. Lots of positive things happening. I also want to congratulate Camp Hayden new position official.

Really appreciate getting Blake Phillips here in person to speak on what our program is looking like. I really appreciate the approach that his. That his company is taking on risk management. So I feel very confident that it's being handled super well and managed on a day to day in a way that needs to be and wow. So fantastic.

I. I guess I'd also like to. Touch on what several council members have already said when it comes to what the city funds. I really appreciate Chris Moreno's comments and is follow up comments as well. Again all the comments from the public. But I also believe that when you look at the primary needs the city provides to the community.

Yes there are things we need water, we need sewer, garbage, we need power that go in a different way. But we need streets, we need emergency services. Those are all very primary things. But we. It's not one has to be completed before we go on to the next thing.

In some kind of hierarchy we can do all these things that make it a wonderful community to live in. We just have to be more nuanced about it. It's not. It's not a black and white decision. We have this.

We won't have that. We could be more nuanced sometimes certainly at the level we have some of our other departments waxes and wanes. Budgets are fat then. But I think what. What feeds our souls is as important as what feeds our bellies.

So I'll leave it at that.

Yeah. Just I appreciated all the members of the public coming in to speak. That's always helpful and insightful and yeah glad to hear the update on. I have a lot of fond memories growing up. Built ice for arms and high school swim team and so I hope that is successful.

Getting you back up running and that. Yeah. Also excited to hear matching grant for second Street. I think that's going to be a great project for the community as well. It's all good.

Thank you staff. Love you. Bye.

Thank you.

I reiterate everything that was said before me. Appreciate Cam stepping up. Was hoping that decision was going to come around at Some point would like to have a conversation with Samantha regarding equipment because I know we need some folks to step up and take care of cemeteries for 4th of July. If community members decide to do that, can they use some of the equipment about that. Okay.

Yeah, we need to have that conversation because we're becoming into some facilities that need some help and there are some community members that are willing to take that on.

Kevin, nice job. High five.

Thanks for the pool update. Appreciate that. Greatly enjoyed my dabbles Hunter. But Preston, you can have it back.

Did you have any comments that you wanted to add today? Sure. I do want to just echo the things that other folks have said. Thank you so much, Cameron for stepping into the police chief position. Super excited about the 2nd street match the progress on the pool.

I did attend an AML legislative recap webinar yesterday. I think about and I'm cautiously optimistic. I don't know if optimistic is the right word. I'm very hopeful about a lot of. The things that are in the operating budget right now.

They could really do great things for our communities and really help Cordova. I'm afraid I worry about the veto pen but I'm thinking that unless the council thinks I shouldn't would like to send a letter to the state OMB just to say that these are all of here's how these things would help us if they end up staying in the budget and because I want there to be some kind of positive feedback saying please we really need these things. So yeah, like I said, unless people say no, don't do that. I'd like to like I said compose a letter to to the governor.

Looks I'm getting shaky heads so I would say that's a thumbs up on that. Okay. And I also just wanted to say thanks to you for chairing the meeting tonight. I really appreciate your stepping in at the last minute. Absolutely.

Okay. Do we have an executive session? We do. Okay. So we need a motion for executive session chair.

I move city council with an executive session for discussion with the city manager regarding the lands on negotiation. First on economic development matter the immediate knowledge of which was clearly how to adverse effect upon finances.

Second second. You choose. I would offer that I think I have a conflict of interest and I probably should not attend. Bye. Sounds good.

Okay. Love you. Bye. Aaron's words.

Thank you. Get some Listers. Okay. Why don't you say no objection. Okay.

With no objection we will clear the room and take a recess. Take a recess to come back for session. Thank you. Thanks everyone.

Yeah.

Executive session material online.

I can't do anything.

Oh, that's what I.