April 16, 2025 Assembly Finance Committee Meeting

All right, I call the April 16th Assembly Finance Committee meeting to order. Um, Miss Wendell, will you note the roll? Thank you, Chair Wall. We have all assembly members present in chambers other than Assemblymember Smith, who's on Zoom, and Mayor Wilden, who is absent.

That brings us to approval of minutes. We have the April 5th Assembly Finance Committee meeting minutes in your packet. Any changes to those minutes? Seeing none, those are so approved. That brings us to agenda topics.

Um, our first item is school bonds. Um, I will— who, who is taking this topic?

Thank you, Chair Wall. Manager Kester is going to present this memo. Starts on packet page 15 if you're looking for it, and we have her now on Zoom.

Hello. All right, I will just go ahead and introduce this.

You have a memo in your, your packet that doesn't really have a whole lot of new information, but if you recall, the assembly gave direction to the Juneau School District facility committees and the school board to kind of prepare a tiered list of possible bond projects, $5, $10, and $50 million. So they have done that. That's included in your packet that has been approved by the board. It's important to note that these projects are really all just major maintenance projects, and any bond language would be broad enough that, you know, you don't have to worry that like one roof should be, uh, in the $10 million instead of the $15 million list. Like, the language would basically allow any of these major maintenance projects.

So while this gives you a very good idea of what the district would prioritize, it doesn't have to be a final list. Another item that was debated a lot when you were all considering whether or not to put a bond on the ballot this October is the likelihood of school debt bond reimbursement being reinstated. You recall there is a— the moratorium expires July 1st. Speaking with the city lobbyist, and I know there are members of you that probably have a better ear to the ground than I do in the Capitol building, there is a chance that that program, that moratorium, will get extended, and the governor has, the governor is not supportive, or is supportive of extending that moratorium, which I think just increases the vulnerability that even if the moratorium were not extended, there would be some question for whether or not those reimbursements would actually make it through the budget process. And of course, we all know that the state budget process is really tight right now.

So the third thing on your memo here is just some modeling that Director Flick did of what the $15 million bond would look like. And you can assume anything below that would be, would be lower, but it does put pressure on the debt service mill rate now that we've reduced it to 1.08%. So, you know, you would be back up at that 1 point, you know, around a 1.2 mil rate. So just something to consider also as you debate that. Know that we are going to talk about utility bonds in the context of utility rate increases at the 30th meeting.

So that I know that conversation is pending, but really wanted to separate them. So happy to answer any questions.

Questions from the committee?

Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair. I know we've discussed it in a past meeting, but I just can't remember if there were bonds put on this October 2025 ballot and they were approved by the voters. When— in what state fiscal year budget, would that bond debt— should the moratorium expire, would that bond debt be, you know, part of an appropriate— or, you know, would pay the state paying a share of that bond debt be an appropriation? Sorry if that was a really confusing way to say that.

Thank you, um, Assemblymember Smith. If I understand your question correctly, if we were to put school bonds on the October 25 ballot and they passed and we issued them essentially the same fiscal year, um, given the context that the manager just provided, um, if there is funding in the state budget and the moratorium is sunsetted, so there's an opportunity for reimbursement. It could happen, probably not in FY '27. I would guess it would be FY '28 before we would see any reimbursement, just anticipating that the '26 budget, if the moratorium— that's what they're working on now. So if the moratorium sunsets and it's allowable, there may not be funding for actual reimbursement.

So it may be '27 or '28 before that funding were to be available. And that's a lot of conjecturing about state process.

Thank you. Well, I can save a comment for later. Thank you. Ms. Atkinson. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I think my question is also for Director Flick, likely. I am trying to recall budget process last year when we were talking about the debt service mill rate. And my memory, which may be flawed, was that the 1.08 was what we chose to set the rate at, but not what was actually needed for the current bonds we have. Can you remind me what that difference is, if there is any? Absolutely happy to, uh, walk back through that.

Um, so when voters approve bonds, just a little bit of context, um, we need to time the issuance of those bonds such that we can spend them in 18 to 24 months. According to Bond Legal Counsel, we have really about 10 years after voter approval before we really need to issue them. So we've got a little bit of, of room. So when we built the budget last year, addressed the debt service mill rate, we also put 2 items on the ballot in October. Those both passed.

Those are in the process of being issued right now. So the debt service mill rate included in the budget and manager's proposed budget is the $1.08, which includes the issuance of the public safety infrastructure and the wastewater bonds. Um, so we will use all of that $1.08 with the issuance of the two bonds that were approved last October.

Other questions? I'll ask one. Um, And the, you know, there's been some modeling here of, you know, if we did a $15 million bond, what the debt service mill rate would look like. But am I not correct that we can structure the debt however we want? And this might be best practice, but it's Or is this the minimum that we would have to do?

Great question, Chair Wolf. This assumes that the debt service is split evenly out over the 20 years, and you're absolutely correct. We can structure the debt however we want. We'll pay principal every— or, I'm sorry, we'll pay interest every year, so that portion we would definitely need on the front, but we could structure it so the principal comes later. And not have such an impact in the early years.

Thanks. I'm not suggesting that's what we should do. I just want to make that clear.

Any other questions? All right, I will look to the body for, um, comments or motions, um, on where where we want to go with this issue. We do have, just so you know, um, have— know that we have a few potential things on the ballot, including two potential bonds, and we do not need to decide tonight whether we want to put this on the ballot or not, but we wanted to start— make sure we had time in the process to get our questions answered. We've got a few options for where we go tonight, including holding this. Miss Atkinson, I see your hand.

Yes, for some comments. I appreciated Manager Kester sort of acknowledging that whether bond debt reimbursement moratorium is extended or not is— no one knows what that will look like. I truly do not think there's a person in the state that knows whether that moratorium will be extended or not, and if so, what will happen and then. So one, I think we need to move forward with the intent that if we put these on the ballot, they pass, we will pay for all of them. It would be a happy surprise if we were to get some reimbursement, but if we're not prepared to pay for all of them, I do not think we should move forward with it.

And then on the other side of things, with my personal opinion, I— obviously schools need these bonds and they need a lot of the infrastructure work that the state has not invested. In a long time. But if we're going to have bonds on the ballot, I do think— and I know we'll talk about wastewater and water bonds later, but I just think that really is the more pressing need with the rate increases we're looking at this year. So while this is absolutely a community need, especially because I don't think it's certain that we get any reimbursement I would be more interested in putting this to bed for this year. And I know we don't have to make decisions tonight, but it would, I think, be helpful to everyone if we kind of have a little clear direction where we can instead of dragging this out for longer.

So that's my personal thoughts. Thank you, Miss Eikison, and thanks for starting us off with that. I agree that if we do know what we're doing, we can make decisions tonight, and if we don't, we do not need to. Other Mr. Mr. Kelly and Mr. Bryson, and then Miss Huescandiz. Um, thank you.

I am feeling inclined that I would like for the, um, maybe just the minimum, maybe just, just the $5 million.

Okay. Uh, but I also am cognizant that we don't know what the full bond package that we're going to be putting forward is, and so I, I would like to keep, um, kind of in, in the back pocket.

Hope that's better. Uh, I would like to keep in the back pocket that we might, um, we might move forward with, with a small bond, but I think I would like to hold this for now and kind of see in the context of what other bonds that we really need to put forward. So, um, that's where I'm at. Mr. Burris and then Ms. Hughes-Candies. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, I'm gonna have to agree with my colleagues here. This—. We— the schools are our buildings. We want to have them fixed properly because we own them. We're going to own them for the long time, for long term.

So fixing this, the, uh, is the right thing to do. But all this work to create a bond, to then get it on the ballot, and if the bond fails, we did all that work for nothing. So getting the right size bond onto the right ballot would be the objective that I would want to solve. If you guys want to do somewhere around that middle range, um, I wouldn't object to that it would— but a good conversation of how we can get this past the voters, especially when we know the need of that wastewater, um, bond is going to be so critical. We've had the community say no to bond requests more than they've said yes.

So I see that as our challenge for how we do this school bond so that we can actually get it passed. I'll support whatever direction you guys want to go for it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brason. Miss Hughes-Candies.

Madam Chair, is Missy Scandies talking? I cannot hear anything. We will give her another microphone. She was talking. Thank you for interrupting.

I thought, you know, maybe don't make it be amplified, marvelous me, but sorry, Mr. Smith. Yeah, so I was saying, um, I think for me at this point, I'm comfortable leaving this in committee because I am not sure, and I will share that I am not even sure bonds period on this ballot. I think there's a lot of moving pieces. We're also going to talk about seasonal revenue, um, our visitor revenue, and I think to me those things are interlinked, uh, that we have to be very thoughtful about what the voters might be dealing with, including potential, um, community propositions if they get enough signatures. So that's also in the back of my mind, uh, how many decisions they might have to make.

I will say that I am warmer on the school bonds than I am on utility bonds, even though we'll consider those, and I share everybody's concerns about utility rates. Having just done utility bonds last election, I, I personally, like, my own dice roll is I think the schools makes more sense this year. So that's all I'll say for now, but I would prefer to hold this in committee, and I appreciate you getting us starting thinking about, like, what other questions before we rip off the Band-Aid.

Other comments?

Um, uh, Miss Hall and all the— Miss Hall, then Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Chairman Wall. Um, you know, my comments would be, you know, with both our utilities and our schools, you know, we do need to take care of them, and the longer we kick the can down the road, the bigger the problem comes. So I would be in favor of, you know, maybe something at the $5 million level just so we are chipping away. And, um, you know, be icing on the cake if, um, the, the moratorium expired and, and we might have potential. But, um, I agree with everyone else that we need to be prepared to fully fund it ourselves.

My thoughts. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Then Mr. Steininger. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I, I think, oh, just in general, I'm, I'm good to hold it into committee.

I'm still not necessarily certain which way I would go on these. Um, obviously there's need. Uh, I do have concern about, you know, exposure to— yeah, if the moratorium expires, you know, I think it's correct that we should plan to pay for this all ourselves. And then I guess, you know, I'm still trying to kind of get a sense on just the public's appetite and, you know, how they're— has that relationship with the school district and the school board, you know, have adequate time to kind of be repaired there. So that's just another thought I have, but I'm good to hold in a committee.

I guess my request for when we hear this and then utility bonds is You know, pardon me. We do potentially have some— excuse me. We do have some potentially very expensive projects, which, you know, the flood mitigation and North Douglas Crossing. And I'd be interested to, you know, if there was a calculator or something that we could use that would kind of trigger some of those projects and we could see what would be the impact on the mill rate out into the future. I mean, obviously that's estimates, but that might be useful and informative for the assembly.

So if at the next time there is that tool available, I would, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

Mr. Steininger. Thank you, Mr. Smith. All right.

Oh, I sound bad now. That's good. Okay. Um, I think, uh, Deputy Mayor Smith actually touched on a couple of things I wanted to bring up. Um, but my— I do think that we should hold the education bonds in committee as suggested.

Um, I think my kind of support and gung-ho attitude towards them really would— will change if we see the moratorium extended. And at that point, I don't know if I would— I don't know if I would support them going on a ballot without some chance of reimbursement from the state, um, just knowing that we have issued quite a few bonds. We have things coming up like, you know, the Glacier flood relief, any kind of permanent solution on flooding. That we probably want to keep our debt capacity for. So I would have some concerns if we didn't have some level of reimbursement here.

But I think that this, this list of projects that the school district put together, you know, to the, the point that Deputy Mayor Smith made about, you know, has there been enough time between the transition that school district has had to go through with the public and now in terms of being able to get public support? Support for significant capital investment in the schools. You know, I feel like this list that they put together positions them better in the new reality that they're living in, that they're going to have to live in. And so I think there is a good argument to be made to the voters for issuing these bonds. I just— I will feel hesitant if we're not— if we don't have some form of promise of future reimbursement from the state.

Thank you, Mr. Senniger. Um, I think I'm the last one to speak here. Oh, it's clear from listening to you all that, um, we've got a strong majority to keep this in committee for now, so we do not need a motion. But just so you all know where I'm at, agree with lots of things people, um, have to say here. I think Mr. Bryson's right that, you know, it's All these things are needs that we will have to pay for at some point.

It's really just figuring out the right funding mechanisms. We want something on the ballot that's going to pass. I'm with Ms. Huskandies that with all the other citizen ballot initiatives that might be out there, that has— that weighs on me as we think about what to put here. I also am more comfortable with schools than I am with utilities. So if we come down to a vote on those two, that's where I'll be.

Um, all right, I think we're ready to move on unless anyone else has more comments or questions. Okay, good work.

Um, that brings us to visitor industry revenue options. Miss Flick.

Thank you, Chair Wohl. Um, similar to the item you've just discussed, The purpose of this is to seed ideas, provide some potential scenarios so that you have opportunity to think about them, ask questions, unless the body is ready to do something on this evening. As one of your implementing actions to your assembly goals, looking at visitor industry revenue options was one of those. I've broken this up into a couple pieces. I'm not going to read you the memo.

Permits and fees are an area that we can absolutely explore. You've just addressed dockage fees conceptually. The actual legislation and mechanism will be headed your way. I know there also needs to be a conversation about how those funds will be allocated.

And also, the other big one in this area is the commercial use fees, which also were recently increased. So, if there are other types of permits or fees that you want staff to look at, like those are the big ones that we just have kind of in our sights. You have other ideas, we'd be happy to do some research on that.

I just threw this in here. There's been a request to look at exemptions. Ms. Wall, did you want me to wait between these topics? Okay. Um, so there was a question on exemptions, and we talked about this from a timing perspective, that when we're talking about real or business property and the exemptions that are offered there by the city, um, there is another implementing action that we wanted to do to look at kind of what we're exempting and why, and are we meeting the intention.

And so any changes that we make to business or personal real property Um, could be done anytime this calendar year. Um, those won't impact anything until FY27, um, because they will impact the value of property as of January 1st, 2026. Um, and then you would be setting that mill rate in the spring, and the property taxes would come after that. Miss Flick, let me just amend my, um, answer to your question. Let's go through permits and fees exemptions, sales tax on visitor tourists And then we can pause and talk about those 3 before jumping into seasonal sales tax.

So keep rolling, but then I'll pause you after sales tax. Sounds great. Visitor tours. There had been some questions about how sales tax works on visitor tours, particularly when we think about marine-type tours or air-type tours. And so if a tour operator is conducting business within and outside of city jurisdictions, they are to estimate how much the cost, therefore their ticket price, is related to inside the borough versus outside the borough.

They're required to keep that estimation on file, and they need to collect and remit sales tax on the portion of the ticket that is attributable to the activities in the city and borough of Juneau. We're aware that some operators have found it more simplistic and easier to administer, so don't go outside the borough that much or just a small portion, so they just collect and remit sales tax on all of it. So different operators do this a little bit differently, but the requirement is that they make that estimation and they appropriately collect and remit sales tax for the portion that's attributable to activity in the city and borough of Juneau. When it comes to flight operations, there are restrictions by the federal government on what we can— let me say that differently. We're not to collect sales tax on transportation.

So the flight itself cannot— the operator cannot collect and remit sales tax on that. However, if they are taking a helicopter up to ICE within the city and borough of Juneau limits and they're doing cool things that have a cost and therefore part of their ticket is represented in that event, they should be collecting and again doing that estimation. For that portion that, um, is being performed within the city and borough limits. That's not the transportation. So, um, there were just questions about that, so we got some clarification on that.

And I will pause. All right, we'll start with questions on these top 3 items here. Miss Huskandies. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, thank you for that, Miss Flick.

The sales tax on visitors tours These are sales that are happening within the borough, correct though? I'm selling my tour, I'm in Juneau when I do it, is that right?

That's correct. Are you asking as opposed to if I bought it when I was sitting at home in Ohio for a cruise? I guess, I guess I'm verifying that I'm thinking about this the correct way. It seems like an incredibly hell I put a comment in the question. I think it's an incredibly wacky way to do it and it seems insane to me.

So I'm trying to picture if there's something I'm not thinking about. So this is, I'm on the dock and I sell someone a tour to go whale watching. You should be, yeah. But then I'm applying this interesting formula to the sales tax of that sale, correct? That's correct.

And I would imagine that the organization has already thought about, okay, here's our ticket and we know this portion is taxable. So when we collect money from the person on the dock, we need to collect X dollars. This much is sales tax, this much is the ticket. Okay. All right.

Thank you for that.

And is— let me think on this next question so it's a little more clear. Thank you.

Mr. Steininger. I guess while you're syncing, I'll ask a question. The memo talks about the tour provider having to provide that backup if they get audited. And just thinking, how, how much time do we spend auditing these types of sales or visitor industry sales in general? And I guess to make it a really broad question, all sales.

Excellent question, Mr. Senninger. The answer is not enough. We have— we are generally busy every single day dealing with merchants who are doing their filings, remitting their payments. We do spend a fair amount of time on working with the law department on trying to resolve delinquent sales tax, delinquent merchants who have not remitted and/or filed their sales tax. And we do some estimating along with that, but actually getting out and auditing, we are trying to do more of that.

There's just only so many hours in the day.

[Speaker:JEFFREY_ZIENTS] Not to, like, put you on the spot, but if we invest in additional auditing capacity, do you think that would pay for itself and generate revenue? [Speaker:KATIE_ZIEGELBAUM] That is a great question.

I think that between auditing and working through delinquent and non-filers, it likely could.

I don't know if auditing alone would generate enough, but I think there's enough work between those things that do bring in revenue that we just really have to work to get at.

Mr. Bryson, then Ms. Hall. Okay, this is the one that works. Um, so for, uh, this tax that— are we discussing that the tax would just be 100% applied to a service that maybe went in and out of Juno's property bounds, or are we thinking about extracting or applying a tax differently in this scenario? Why is this up for discussion? Are we trying to just collect a higher level of tax on the probably hundreds of thousands of these tickets that would have been sold?

Is that— could that be one of the possible outcomes that we're discussing for this? Thank you, Mr. Bryson. Um, I included this just because there had been very specific questions about how does sales tax work work when I'm on a whale watching tour, and I might, you know, go outside of the boundaries of the city and borough of Juneau. And so there's not necessarily any action, um, with this particular paragraph. There were just a lot of questions about how does it even work.

And so the purpose of this really was to provide clarity of what's required in that respect.

Okay. So it doesn't sound like that might be an option of correcting that tax or reapplying that tax so that it— they just paid 100% of their sales tax. That you were just explaining that that wasn't one of the options. I think that's my question.

Through the chair, Mr. Bryson, the purpose of this was just to explain it. I would have to consult with the law department to see if we could even collect a sales tax that happens outside of our jurisdiction. My gut response is probably not because it's not our jurisdiction.

Miss Hall, then Miss Euskandiz. Yeah, thank you. Um, actually, I think you just answered the question. I, I was wondering, you know, it said it's, um, not taxable, not reportable under CBJ code. What would it take to change the code?

Uh, Miss Hall, to change the code, it requires, um, an ordinance that is introduced, has public hearing, and has an action by this assembly. If I may, um, yeah, it seems like having something a little simpler, that if, if the tour originates in, in Juneau, you'll be it helicopter or whale watch, that, um, it'd be nice to be able to tax it. Ms. Hall, I believe there are a couple of jurisdictions that are trying that out, so we are definitely watching to see how that goes for them.

Ms. Hughes-Candies.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Maybe my questions and comments are better based on Ms. Flick's answers, maybe as a follow-up with law and as a conversation amongst this body about changing the code and changing it to something as simple as you just said, Ms. Hall, because I find it hard to believe that That couldn't be done.

I'm hearing some interest from the body on finding out if this can be changed. So that will be a good follow-up conversation. Um, Miss Hughes-Candies.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Question on permits and fees at the time of the settlement agreement. We talked, again, I'm always saying, I don't have the settlement agreement in front of me, but, and it's always lying right around here. There was a conversation about not adjusting those, Juneau's portion of those fees. In this memo, there's reference to adjusting our segment of those fees would require careful navigation.

Do you care to speak more about that, or is this, Would it be more appropriate just if this body is interested to say, and we'd like a follow-up memo maybe specifically about those fees? Thank you. As I remember, Hughes Scanney's, um, it is included in this memo, um, as we do have authority. We—. You have authority to make changes, um, because of the complexity with the settlement agreement and relationships.

It would just require some very thoughtful, careful navigation if the body had an interest in trying to change those fees. And so if there is an interest, I think it would be most appropriate to say, we're interested, come back and tell us more, and we can set up the appropriate information and perhaps a path.

Other questions on permits and fees exemptions or sales tax on visitor tours? Ms. Hall. Thank you, Chair. I'm wondering about the looking at exemptions and needs-based, you know, do other communities do this and how do they do it? Lots of questions here rolled into one.

I should— how long have we been doing this with the exemptions, particularly with seniors, as I'm now in that category? And, um, you know, our demographics are changing pretty radically. It's sort of the young starting out that need more support, and so if you could maybe answer a couple of those anyway.

Thank you, Assemblymember Hall. Um, I don't have a lot of the answers to your questions. I will say with the needs-based, um, portion of your question, we do currently have a hardship exemption related to your residential personal property, so your home In order to qualify for it, you must qualify for either the senior exemption or the veterans, disabled veterans exemption. And that is 100% needs-based. That is an elective exemption that the assembly put into place.

And I would have to go back and find out when. Whereas the disabled veteran and the senior exemptions are required by the state. State. And certainly when we get to having a talk, a conversation about exemptions, we can bring in some more information and some of that historical information for you.

Any other questions before we move to seasonal sales tax? All right, Ms. Flake.

Okay, so along with this conversation of visitor industry revenue, there's been questions, conversation, what-ifs about potentially considering a seasonal sales tax.

There are other jurisdictions that are currently enacting seasonal sales tax, so it's not— we wouldn't be on the front edge of that. It's already happening in other communities. I think there's a series of questions that as a body, you kind of have a little bit of a choose your own adventure. And some of those questions, you know, are just super basic. Do you even want to have a seasonal sales tax?

Do you want to consider exempting basic food from sales tax? For a little context, it's roughly $5 to $6 million of the current sales tax that comes in that we can attribute to food sales.

Do you want to pursue exempting sales tax on utilities, which could be water, wastewater, electricity, heating oil, those kinds of things? Our best estimation is that's another $5 to $6 million worth of revenue. Attributable to kind of that category. Currently, the senior sales tax exemption allows those who meet that requirement to get an exemption on basic food and also those utility sales taxes. And then, you know, there's a host of other changes you might consider.

So in the, in the middle of the memo packet, page 19, I just wanted to make sure you were armed with some basic facts as you consider different things going on. So just to put things in scale, in FY24, 1% of a 1% sales tax was about $13 million. In the quote unquote worst of times, COVID, it was $9 million. So you can kind of see what a major event might do to the revenue in that in that area. We currently at CVJ have 5% sales tax.

Only 1% of that is permanent, and so we use that 1% for operations. There is a temporary 3% sales tax the voters have approved, um, when it's come back on the ballot. We use 1% of that for operations. We use another 1% for various projects and grants. Um, it's mostly operational, and then we use 1% to fund capital projects.

Um, Mr. Bohan was here on Saturday. He talked about the street sales tax. That's the 1% that he was referring to. So it goes to, um, streets and also now kind of utilities under the streets, as that's required. Um, this 3% expires on June 30th, 2027.

So, um, assuming that that would want to be continued, which has been the practice, it would need to be on the ballot in October of 2026. We also— the last 1% is temporary, and it is dedicated to, um, capital projects and, um, other projects that are named in that particular ballot measure. Um, it will expire on September 30th, 2028. It would go on the ballot in October of 2027. Um, it's also important to remember that sales tax isn't something that businesses pay.

They collect it from their customers and they remit it on behalf of their customers. And then most of the businesses, not all, but a lot of businesses are on a quarterly filing. So if there were going to be changes to percentages, it would make sense to put it in the quarters. And so I listed the quarters there for you.

I just put a quick paragraph in here about temporary versus permanent. Something for the body to consider. There was talk on the Hill last year about the state implementing a sales tax. Once there is a co-mingling of various taxes on a transaction, it is hard for the person and the voters to tell those apart. And so I think that if the state were to add a sales tax, it, it could pose some risk.

To voters understanding that when we go back for a 3% or 1% temporary, what portion that is, because they will just see sales tax as a big number that's made up of a bunch of stuff.

I have some information for you. I had to put the disclaimer in there. I will say this loud and boldly.

I, based on previous conversations, it's easier to have numbers than to just abstractly try to think about things. So we put together some scenarios. These are not scenarios that we're asking you to run with or that you have approved. They are purely for conversation. So nobody get excited that this is what we need to do.

We did our best to estimate what the seasonal sales tax or the seasonal sales would be. And so we used FY24 or we, sorry, we used calendar year '24. Complete 4 quarters.

And we assumed that if there was a shift in the seasonal sales tax, so higher in the summer, lower in the winter, that we would still want to attain at least the $65 million worth of sales tax, even though it would come in slightly differently.

We also think that it was important for you to understand What the shift of the sales tax burden is from the resident to the visitor, which is why we're even having this conversation under this topic. That's a little tricky. We don't measure sales tax by the person. And so it is really kind of hard to say this is what residents pay in sales tax and this is what summer visitors pay. But you can see by just the histogram chart on page 20, there's obviously growth in sales tax from April until the end of September.

And so in a very imperfect extrapolation, so take it with a grain of salt, assuming that that bump kind of over a line, that red line, would be the sales attributable attributable to visitors. That means everything under the line is the sales attributable to the residents. So we know the sales tax— just did some algebra magic to back in what the sales would be per quarter by residents, assuming they're spending the same amount every month to eat and pay bills and do the things that they do. Um, we've come up with this kind of a shift number in dollars. It's not perfect, but we felt like it was the best we could kind of do as a proxy since we don't measure the sales tax by person.

So the chart in the middle of page 20 just basically shows the winter being October through March and the summer being April through September. And the first set of numbers there is just the status quo. We're at 5% sales tax, it's no change in the rate.

About $18.4 million of our sales tax is attributable to that bump in the summer, so attributable to visitors. If you were to want to do a seasonal sales tax and you wanted it to be a big shift from summer to winter, so in the winter people pay 1%, in the summer they're paying 7.25%, Um, you could see that, um, the visitors would contribute $26.6 million, and that would be a shift from the residents to the visitors of $8 million, $8.2 million. If you wanted just a small difference between winter and summer, um, 5.75% versus 4%. And again, I was making up numbers just to show you some examples. Um, you would shift, um, 21— visitors would pay $21 million, and that would be a shift of nearly $3 million from residents to visitors.

If you wanted to add a seasonal sales tax, exempt the food, still keep the sales tax revenue, and do it big numbers— 8% in the summer, 1% in the winter— winter, you could see that visitors would pay $29 million and, um, that would be a shift of nearly $11 million from residents to visitors. If you did it on a smaller scale, be 6% and 4.5, just under $5 million would be shifted from the residents to the visitors. And then if you wanted to exempt both food and utilities, so we're talking $10 to $12 million, um, that would need to be made up just through the percentage change. A big shift would be 8.75 to 1, that takes about $13.5 million from residents to the, um, visitors in the summer. And a smaller adjustment, 6.75 to 4.5, would be just over $8 million from the residents to the visitors in the summer.

So I understand that's abstract still, even with numbers, um, but I wanted to make sure that you had something to kind of think about as you're mulling this around, have some numbers. There's obviously a million variations that can happen within this. Um, the assumptions can change. Um, so again, this was just, um, so that you had data, you could kind of get it in your mind and ask further questions as you need.

Thank you, Miss Flick, for starting us out with this information. Super helpful. I have Mr. Braxton, Mr. Kelly, and then Ms. Eggleston.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wasn't going to talk about this, but it got put in a sentence in black and white. Item number 4 says sales tax is not paid by businesses. Except for that, in scenarios where the business is not in the position to collect the sales tax, CBJ's rule is still give us 5%. So item number 4 on here is inaccurate.

Turo specifically, Turo is not collecting and remitting sales tax. I don't have a way, or as an operator, I don't have a way to collect sales tax from, from the customer. I just don't have that authority. And CBJ's answer to me is give us 5% of what you get. So sorry, Ms. Flick, this is inaccurate because it's not the answer that CBJ gave to me when I ran into this situation.

Sorry to derail the meeting, Madam Chair. No worries. I'll see if Ms. Flick has any response to that in terms of—. Mr. Bryson and I have had lengthy conversations on this. I don't think I have anything to add.

Mr. Kelly.

Thank you. And I actually bring this question kind of on behalf of the concern that Mr. Bryson raised when we were at the retreat in December. And I think it was Mr. Bryson anyway. I think one of his concerns was that this would be during our construction season. And so like, this might affect people, people trying to do projects around their houses during that time period.

Would you mind sharing some of the correspondence you and I had around that topic earlier? Certainly. Thank you, Assemblymember Kelly.

Permitted work, so an individual doing work on their home following getting a building permit, can utilize that building permit as a sales tax exemption on the materials needed for their project. That already exists, exists as an exemption in code. And so for somebody who is doing a project on their home requiring a permit, which is a lot of things, that permit can be used for sales tax exemption. Thank you.

Miss Atkinson.

Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. My question was, uh, you mentioned in your questions you listed a number of things that can be considered as utilities. When you made this chart, what were you putting under utilities when you were exempting utilities? Thank you, great question, Ms. Atkinson. Um, we looked at water, wastewater, um, electricity, Uh, heating oil, uh, waste disposal, um, were the big ones.

Um, I believe on the, uh, resident initiative, um, that is in process with the clerk's office, they include wood pellets. We didn't have a great way to kind of track that separately, so we weren't able to quickly suss that out, but, but the major ones. All of that is included in the assumptions with the chart? That's correct. Thank you.

Just wanted to hear. Mr. Kelly, then Mr. Steibinger.

Thank you.

I was wondering if in your modeling you were able to account for any change in activity due to the higher sales tax. Like for example, like going, raising the sales tax from 1% to 8.75%, assuming that we went with the seasonal big and we're exempting food and utilities, I imagine that might change some people's buying behavior. Were you able to account for that in your modeling?

Thank you, Mr. Kelly. We did not account for that in the modeling. We don't, um, we don't have enough data to estimate what that behavior change would be. Yeah, Mr. Steininger.

Yeah, on the— you mentioned there are a handful of jurisdictions that currently have seasonal sales tax. I'm just kind of curious to hear more about those cities' experience, if you have any information to add beyond just which cities they are. Like, have they— is it a recent shift that they've seen and kind of what the experience compared to the assumptions that they had going in? I'm sorry, Mr. Steininger, I will have to do a little research. I don't really have a lot of that just at my fingertips or top of brain, other than I think Skagways is relatively new and they passed a fairly high sales tax and then as an assembly implemented a holiday in the winter, was their mechanism for doing that.

And I think that was in the last year or two, but I would have to go back and check, but I can pull that information.

Mr. Kelly and then Ms. Atkinson.

Thank you.

During your presentation to us a little while ago, you were mentioning that we have these different expiration dates and start dates for the seasonal sales tax and that if we were to implement something new and the state were to implement implement something new, it could be very confusing to people. Um, I think you might have— you might have touched on this a little bit at a previous meeting in response to a question from Assemblymember— from Deputy Mayor Smith. Uh, but, um, just to make sure my recollection is correct, we are able to potentially break it apart, correct? Like, if we— we could perhaps cancel sales taxes that haven't sunsetted yet, um, along as kind of a package for, um, creating the new— for example, the new seasonal, um, big exempting food and utilities. Like, we'd be able to repeal the other ones and just implement that one in the same package, right?

Assemblymember Kelly, um, I believe that there are tools available that can accomplish that, whether it's repealing or it's just the way that the ballot language is written. I think those, those things can be cared for if the body wants to go down that route. Absolutely. Thank you.

Um, Miss Atkinson and Mr. Smith.

Um, I'll go to Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, Miss Flick, not something I expect you to have tonight, and I'd probably want to, you know, see it in writing just to make sure to capture it anyway. I guess one thing I'm thinking about, just knowing that there are other municipalities, especially, you know, Skagway and Ketchikan, I could see as being ones that should there be significant differentials in, in tax amount between us and again Ketchikan or Skagway during the summer, like I just would wonder if like if that would shift people to, you know, hold off a purchase on a ring or, oh, you know, a higher value item or something if that was, if that was, if again if there was a difference. So I'd be interested to know what the, what those other municipalities, um, tax rates are, again, for a future conversation. But if, if you could provide that to us in the future, should we decide to go forward, that's— thanks.

Thank you, Assemblymember Smith. We can pull that together for you.

Other questions?

Alright, well, similar to our last item, this is not anything that we need— this is need action on right now, but we all know that many of these things were our goals to look more at. So, and we know that seasonal sales tax, if we want to put something in the ballot this year, is on a would need to be on accelerated timelines. So with that in mind, I'll open it up to comments from committee members who feel strongly about our— what our next steps are. I saw Mr. Bryson, Ms. Atkinson, and Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, as a small business owner, like 90% of my sales that keep the business open happen during the summertime. So having a big swing would not only, uh, I could see be at a disadvantage. Um, I remember when we raised the caps here, the story was that people would just go buy jewelry in Ketchikan because they had a way lower tax cap. And so it does impact people's, uh, buying, uh, decisions. But knowing that this was a possibility, I thought, what would work for like a business like mine?

How could the business community get behind something? I think a big swing is probably not the answer. But if we left sales tax alone at 5% all year round, and then during the summer we added like that 0.75%, so during the summer it's 0.75%, during the winter it's 0.5%, it's simple. It's lightweight enough where it doesn't have a significant impact on my business, where I don't sell any— I sell very little to tourism. It's a palatable way to generate more tax revenue from the summer activity.

That while I really appreciate Miss Flick's, uh, red line, I would see that red line as more of an arc because we all do more in the summer. February, we don't do much. It's a low it's just not a great month to be going out and doing stuff. June is, so I'm going to be spending more money in June regardless of what's happening in the community. So seeing that as maybe more of a bump during the summer, um, can maybe help see the way that business owners are going to kind of look at how they're going to be impacted by having two different sales tax to apply to their business and having it flat with a small increase during the summer seems the simplest way that would be palatable to me as somebody who would directly— that business would be directly affected.

Thank you guys for letting me have the time to spit all that out. That's helpful, Mr. Bryson. Thank you. Miss Adkinson and then Mr. Smith. Thank you, Chair Wall.

Uh-oh. Okay, thank God. Um, thank you, Chair Wall. I, uh, I'm going to have to disagree with Mr. Bryson. I apologize.

Um, I think that the real benefit to this— I mean, it's always good to see a tax shift and to see us getting more value from our tourism. That's a thing I think we've heard loud and clear from the community. That's a community want. But to me, the argument here is if we can exempt food and utilities, that makes life affordable for everyone in Juneau, including business owners. And so I would be very interested in at some point looking at a seasonal sales tax tax that does exempt food especially and utilities hopefully.

I remain skeptical about this year, but I know that there are members of the Assembly that want to look at it this year, and if that's something that we are committed to doing and staff think it's a feasible timeline, then I am certainly open to doing that because we've wanted to exempt sales tax on food and utilities for quite a while, and this is actually a tangible way to do that without impacting— well, theoretically impacting the city budget in an inordinate amount. So I'm definitely interested, and I'm looking more at the end of the chart where we see those utilities exempted.

Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just looking at the questions. I'm, I'm interested in pursuing a seasonal sales tax. I actually think, you know, it does not appear that there will be probably a state— well, we'll see, who knows.

It doesn't appear like they're going to have a sales tax this year.

I would, you know, I guess I'm kind of thinking that maybe there's reason to move forward with this before, you know, before there are like more concrete about it, more concrete plans about estate sales tax. But anyway, I'm still kind of working on that thought, but I am interested in pursuing estate sales tax. I agree with, with Miss Atkisson. I'm—. I would like to, and I think I would like to exempt basic food and sales tax on utilities.

I think that does provide a, you know, significant benefit to cost of living. And I, I think I would actually— I don't know if the numbers presented Anyway, I think I'd maybe be somewhere in some of them. I don't think I'd be on those extremes. I think I'd maybe be something a little more in the middle, but I would definitely want there to be some spread. But again, knowing what other municipalities do and that type of thing would help me determine those numbers.

But I personally want to move forward. I feel like it. I feel like assuming there's desire by the Assembly that it's a good time to consider it. And again, reducing costs on our residents. So, and providing some of that cost relief from the visitor industry, which I think, again, we've talked about in the past, I think what could help reduce some of the tensions that we feel about tourism in our community if we know that there's more revenue coming from that industry to improve our lives and provide us with the services that we want and desire and need in Juneau.

So thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Kelly, Mr. Steininger, and Ms. Huskandies.

Thank you. I as well am leaning towards implementing seasonal sales tax. Tax. I, um, I think like Miss Atkinson, am looking for something that would exempt, uh, both food and utilities to reduce the impact, uh, the cost of living, uh, for, uh, for our citizens here in Juneau. I also take Mr. Bryson's word to heart, and so while I was originally looking at the, uh, the 8.75% versus 1%, I think maybe a more palatable swing I'd like to look at is maybe the 6.75 versus 4.5 swing.

And if there's any way that we can maybe study, um, you know, what, what the impact— I mean, I know that I realize this is asking more for staff, but I think it would be important to, to understand what the impact would be on people's purchasing activity if we were to implement such a tax or such a range or maybe even a similar range. So I am interested in looking at this further and studying it a little more and trying to implement it this year if it's feasible. Mr. Steininger. I'm going to end up echoing a lot of comments made before me. I am interested in looking at a seasonal sales tax.

You know, I'm just thinking about from the perspective of we might have something related to exemptions on the ballot, you know, this year anyway from a, you know, a citizen initiative. And if we craft a plan that, you know, kind of works towards that community intent but prevents that community intent from you know, opening up a large hole in the city budget, requiring much less popular actions that we would, you know, potentially be faced with as a body. I, I think that would go a long way towards, you know, helping craft something that balances both the need for affordability in Juneau and the community desire to, you know, get a little more city revenue out of the visitor industry. Um, but to Mr. Bryson's point, I do think we need to be careful that we're not, you know, setting up a situation that penalizes— always works for the other—. Nope.

Hello? Yeah. That doesn't penalize other non- visitor industry activities. And now I've kind of forgotten where I was going with my whole point, but I guess the point is I don't think I would be very supportive of, you know, 8% to 1% shift. That seems like a huge swing that would be very hard to do.

And just as we talk about this, for Director Flick, I think being able to— as granular of data as we can get about How are sales taxes collected? Um, as much of that information as can be publicly reviewed would be really helpful. I understand there's confidentiality issues with, you know, going diving down business by business, but getting a better understanding where those spending trends are. And I think that would help us a lot in being able to make this decision.

Miss— you stand, you said Miss Hall.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So many things already said, uh, and I will try to keep my thoughts organized. Uh, thanks for this very much. I think I will start by saying yes, I am interested in pursuing this topic more. There are multiple things in this overall memo that I'm interested in pursuing, but I'll start with talking about the seasonal sales tax.

I am interested in pursuing that. I think that means getting more information. I appreciate, like you said, sometimes having numbers gets people thinking, but we're not limited to what's in here. Um, I think a question that wasn't on this list of very good questions to start to try to like hone in what you even trying to do for us is, are you trying to do something with the revenue level you have and you're trying to extract greater value by shifting tax burden between two sets of people, or are you trying to increase your revenue, which is something more similar to what Mr. Bryson is talking about and something that I am actually interested interested in as I think a very valid, equally valid worth looking at. You know, the state just passed, or a house in the state just passed a budget with a huge deficit in it.

We have all the Trump stuff going on, no lack of increasing needs. So I would say that I would be interested in looking at what that looks like if we're talking about keeping our sales tax where it is and potentially bumping it up during the summer. So that's one thing that I want to put in this conversation that I don't think we've had in this conversation. I've been through a round of exemptions conversation with a different iteration of this body. I will say it, I think, I think it's a worthy conversation to have.

I will say it is a very hard conversation to have, or it's like a hard thing to do well.

It sounds like a lot of members of this body want to have that conversation and look at that. So it sounds like we will be looking at that in addition. But to me, that is not visitor industry revenue. That's, that just came flying into the, from the side. And I, That's for better or worse, but those are kind of different spokes on the wheel.

So I think we should be very intentional about what it is we are trying to achieve.

The fallout, the purchasing fallout, I think that's impossible to predict. I won't reiterate, there's a lot of world things happening that also might affect people's purchasing. Um, so yeah, I'm interested in having that conversation, but I think that I am interested in looking at growing our revenue potentially. Um, and then I will just say briefly on the other topics, uh, other stuff I'd like to see more on, or I would like us to look at pursuing. Um, I am interested in talking about at least looking at, not saying that we necessarily have to do it, but I'd be interested in looking at increasing our portion of the passenger fees.

Um, I think I'd be interested in looking at that wacky sales tax on visitor tours, which is checking me off on my one laugh per meeting. Um, and the exemptions, which wouldn't take effect into later, which I understand, but I, I still think that's worth looking at as well. Um, and I think because the overall goal, I think what I hear from the community is to extract more value from this important sector to us. So I would like us to look at all of that. Miss Hall.

Thank you. And to— can you hear me? Okay. And to answer the questions that were put before us, I would say yes, I am interested in pursuing a seasonal sales tax with the purpose of increasing revenue overall, but would like to see relief for the citizens with basic food and potentially utilities as well. Um, and, and as to Mr. Smith's concern about people looking at different municipalities and deciding to hold off on a, a big ticket item such as jewelry, or, um, I don't think that— I, I think people I've read that don't really pay a whole lot of attention to the sales tax, um, you know, that's probably not some research.

You know, I know I certainly don't do it when I travel. I don't go, oh wow, Canada has a really giant sales tax. You know, we go, we enjoy our trip. And so I don't think we need to worry about that. And I also am not super concerned about the state doing a sales tax because so many municipalities already are, and that would be frowned upon by the citizens.

Thank you. Thank you, Miss Hall, for bringing us back to our questions. Uh, Mr. Smith. Sorry, Madam Chair, I, I just wanted to— I didn't bring it up the first time I spoke, so I'm sorry to have to take another second bite at it. I would be, I would be into— I mean, I think, I think it would— I would like to, you know, roll the 1% permanent and 3% temporary to try to make that all, you know, to do away with this and just make this permanent structure, you know, seasonal sales tax that kind of, you know, achieves either similar or possibly increased revenue.

I'm undecided on where you want to go there, but essentially do away with that 3% for now. Again, you know, I had— there's— I have a little concern that, you know, there was a vote And I didn't remember that there was one to, you know, make that permanent, and it failed in, you know, 10 years ago. But, um, anyway, that's where I am right now, is try to do away with that temporary 3% thing. So thanks.

Mr. Kelly.

Thank you, and I appreciate, uh, Miss Hall for keeping us on track with the questions. I think I did answer, uh, most of mine. So yes, I do want to pursue a seasonal sales tax. Yes, I do want to pursue exempting basic food from sales tax. Let's see.

And yes, I am leaning towards exempting tax on utilities, water and wastewater. And I do have some idea potentially for number 4. I do have some ideas on other changes I might want to pursue, but I need to run those research a little bit and run those by finance. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. I feel like we've probably heard enough from most folks to get a general sense of where they're at.

I'll just add on, I think I'm in a similar place as others in my interests. Well, we're—. But I will say I am torn between Um, the fact that this is a massive overhaul, that what we're talking about, it's going to take a lot of work, not just for us, but to communicate and educate voters when it comes down time to vote. When we tried to do this 4 years ago, we set up 6 meetings sequentially to walk through questions, given there's so many dimensions to this issue. So I am down.

It may take us some time. I am excited that people want to take advantage of this moment right now. There's politics here with Citizen Ballot initiatives, and so I'd say we keep moving forward and, um, you know, adapt as we see what the landscape looks like. But just want to get people kind of mentally prepared for, for, um, the amount of work that I think this will be.

I'll— I'm going to ask staff to, um, do you all have questions or things that you feel like you need from us at this moment? I know that, um, it'll take some work to figure out the next steps, but is there anything we can do to be helpful right now?

Thank you, Chair Wall. I think for the moment, um, we have— and we have several questions that have been asked tonight that we haven't been able to answer. So I think, um, we'll start with pulling that information together and having it for you at our next Assembly Finance Committee meeting. I may reach out to a couple of you individually to have you kind of expand on what you're looking for so we can make sure we're answering the question that you're really asking. But I think we have enough to get us to the April 30th meeting.

Great. All right, we are going to take a break here before we get to our Assembly Grants and Community Requests part of the agenda. Mr. Bryson has brought us some food, so go, um, eat some food. Let's come back at 7:05, so that's 15 minutes. I'll speak very slowly, waiting for Miss Huskandies to come back, and Mr. Bryson.

Luckily, Mr. Bryson and Miss Huskandies have done this before. Um, we're gonna get started on assembly grants and community requests. Um, As this notes here, um, this tonight is about assembly information needs. So, um, this packet is the first time you're seeing these community requests. Um, last year we redesigned this process really to be as simple as possible for our applicants and for our assembly members.

So we're not asking community members sponsors to come up here and give us pitches or presentations. We're hoping most of the information we need to make funding decisions are in the grant proposal pages that we have here, but we know folks will likely have more questions. And so we're gonna go down the line and I'm gonna ask each sponsor to introduce their proposal. That they've sponsored. This is not a big pitch or an impassioned speech.

We will have time to debate with each other about what we want to fund. Tonight is— I'd just like to hear from the sponsors really why they decided to put this on their— on our list and any context that they think would be helpful. And then we'll open up to the assembly to to kind of name anything that they'd want to learn more information about. Staff should correct me if I'm wrong, but staff will be keeping track of those information needs, and they'll be working with the proposers and the sponsors to bring us back more information at our next meeting. So no decisions tonight.

Um, any questions on the process?

Before we get started.

Okay, um, our first, um, proposal on the list, which is in alphabetical order, is the Association of Education for Young Children. The request is gap funding for the Juneau Child Care Apprentice Um, Mr. Kelly, if you wouldn't mind briefly introducing this proposal, and we'll see what additional questions the body has. Sure. So this, uh, this proposal is just for, um, it's— there's an existing child care apprenticeship program. We're going to have some people who are going to be graduating later this spring, in I guess next month, and the program is intended to kind of pick up and just kind of keep running with things continuing in August.

This program is an apprenticeship that puts people who are studying at the University of Alaska who are working towards getting licenses, it puts them in childcare centers, so that way they are getting on-the-job experience. This has the effect of not only just reducing the, the needs here, but, you know, kind of increasing the supply, I guess, increasing the supply of providers and workers that we have here who are providing childcare as a service, but it also trains people for the future. So they have these licensed So I see this as, as a short-term win. It's only intended as gap funding. They had other funding sources that have funded them until now.

They're working towards getting funding sources in the future. So the purpose is just to kind of keep this program from lapsing, keep it going, and try and do what we can to improve child care care in Juneau. Did I do a good job, Madam Chair? All right, thank you, Mr. Kelly. All right, um, questions that the assembly would want to know before making a funding decision on this proposal?

I—. Miss Adkinson.

Sorry, I had to get custody of the mic here. Um, this is probably not for Mr. Kelly but for Mr. Barr. Uh, something that this this funding request sort of brought to my mind is, I guess what would be helpful for me in making a funding decision on this is we have lots of different pots of money going to different facets of childcare or early childhood development support, that sort of thing. I know last year we did some funding for parents and teachers for over 3 years, and we have, of course, the stipends for employees of childcare centers and things like that. So I guess in your opinion, Mr. Barr, what if we're looking at increasing money for childcare, where is— what has been really working?

What's been something that's improved Juneau's childcare situation the most in your experience?

Thank you, Assemblymember Atkinson. So right now, the programs that CVJ has in place that support the childcare sector, the apprenticeship program is one of them, although that is currently funded, as Mr. Kelly noted, um, from a different funding source. It's a 2-year grant that is ending from the state. Um, in addition to the apprenticeship program— that I should be clear, the city is the grant recipient of that grant. We pass along that money to, um, AEYC to administer the program on our behalf.

In addition to the apprenticeship program, uh, we have, uh, 2 2 different stipend programs, so a per-child stipend and a per-employee stipend, and qualifying licensed childcare centers, homes, and group homes are eligible for those programs. Those programs are, are essentially designed to inject money into a childcare system that doesn't work without public support, just from a business plan perspective. Those are our two largest programs. We, we are queued up in the FY26 budget to spend just shy of $1 million on the Per Child Stipend Program, just shy of $600,000 on the stipend program and on the employee stipend program. So $1.6— $1.55 on stipends, which I would say, which I would characterize as the most important thing that we do on child care funding.

And then $180,000 on HEARTS, which is our other child care program that provides retention bonuses to directly to full-time and, and part-time at a prorated rate employees in the child care sector who meet continuing education requirements that are provided locally through AUC and threat.

Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess my two questions, and I can split them apart, but one is, I guess, was this— had this always been planned as a two-year program, or did the state grant, like, lapse or end or cancel early? And then I guess, and sorry if I missed it in the, in the application, how many, how many apprentices, you know, should this money be delivered? How many apprentices, you know, will, how many, how many people will this, should this, should this money, will this money train at the end of the day? Thank you.

I'll see if the sponsor, Mr. Bard, knows the answer to those questions. If not, we will record them for the applicant and get answers. Any additional information, Mr. Kelly? I, I think I did see it in the application. Um, I would want to verify with, um, with Miss Scheidler, but I believe we have 5 graduating, um, this year.

Um, I'm not sure if it's going to be the same amount continuing on in the future. So we can ask, of course. Mr. Bar— Thank you, Chair Wall. I believe Mr. Kelly is correct, it's either 4 or 5. I would assume the same.

It wasn't— it was always intended to be a 2-year program. Ms. Scheibler's goal was to find outside money once the 2-year grant program ended. That's proven to be quite difficult to do in the current federal granting environment.

Mr. Steininger.

Kind of down the line of what Mr. Meyer just said, the document references a handful of partners, whether it's UAA or AWIB, the Workforce Investment Board, and Department of Labor. And the total cost, I believe, is referenced at $400,000. Do we know if AEYC is planning to get the other $150,000 from some of those partners? Is there financial participation from anyone else, or is it kind of falling entirely on the city to fund this project?

Um, if you have an answer to the question— okay, looks like we'll make sure to get that information from AUIC.

Anything else on this one? Great. We will move on to American Legion, OCVE Post 25, a Veterans Day post, a Veterans Day proposal. Miss Sankinson. Thank you, Chair Wall.

I don't think this will take me very long. This is covering the rental for Centennial Hall for two events that the American Legion does. There's the Alaska National Guard Day, their veterans dinner, which I think many members up here have volunteered at and been part of. And then there is also their Veterans Day ceremony on November 11th. This is, I think, just a way to free up some of the Legion's funds for their other things, which are, you know, housing and food assistance for veterans, and just sort of a thing that a lot of other cities do for their veteran community.

And so that's why I brought this one forward.

Mr. Bryson.

Ma'am Chair, this, um, request is such a, a small dollar amount and it seems like an appropriate course of action. Is there any way that we can just go ahead and get this passed tonight so that we don't have to bring it up as a discussion again?

Um, let's—. Maybe, maybe—. I mean, I think this is a good question for staff. Maybe I can rephrase this. Do we do this for others, and how do we do it?

I'm guessing we don't grant the money and we probably waive some fees. So, Mr. Mr. Barr, thank you, Chair Wall. You are correct. So Centennial Hall has two rates, one for, one for everyone, one for local nonprofits.

Nonprofits that are putting on events that are open to the public. We provide— I don't know the details, I can get them if there's a request for them— but we provide some funding to Centennial Hall so that they can provide that local nonprofit discount rate, which is below what they need to recover their costs. So my understanding of this request is to fully fund the event, right? Not, not just the local nonprofit discount rate.

Thank you. Um, Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess my question for staff is like, is the— is this amount at— I feel like to do these, don't we have to like sign memorandums, agreement or whatever? And I mean, there is like a process. Part of me is just like Is there not an easier way to do this, should we want to?

Miss Kester.

Thank you. You know, I will confess that I directed the American Legion to the Assembly grants process because it seems like a reasonable request. However, if the Assembly would like to look at increasing overall what you provide for nonprofit rate, I believe it's a $500— you discount it by $500. So another option could be that the Assembly increases the amount that you are willing to discount for all nonprofit events that are open to the public if you want to look at it from a more systemic approach.

Follow-up, Mr. Smith? Separate question, I think, but related to Ms. Manager Kuster's comments right there. So I, I guess my—. I'll go to Ms. Suse Candies, who I think is probably on a similar topic, or maybe not.

Um, I have Yeah, I guess it just, if I'm collecting more information about this, I don't know a lot. I've volunteered and attended that and it's great. And I can also, I know Mr. Mitchell, so I can, I'm sure he'll tell me everything and more that I wanna know. But you mentioned housing and food assistance for veterans. I don't know what the rest of their financial picture looks like.

So I think it would be helpful for me to know, Do they have a budget? What's the size of that budget? What do they do with that budget? And then I would know if that this amount makes sense to me or whether it makes sense to waive. And then channeling my process, it is an exceedingly small amount of money, but I'd like to stick with our schedule since we have this.

I'd like to keep it with everything else personally. Mr. Smith. Then Miss Atkinson. Thanks, Madam Chair. I guess, I guess, you know, I'm kind of now, I'm just kind of thinking about it for like a fairness and thing.

Like, I guess I just kind of would be like, okay, if we're going to grant free access to Sentinel for this organization, how many others do we, you know, I guess I'm just kind of wondering about the, about the fairness and what other requests might we then get to wave it for everybody. So, um, I guess I maybe want some more information. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I'm just— we're straying. If, if everyone said yes, thumbs up to Mr. Bryson's proposal, that would be one thing, but let's not stray into whether we want to fund this or not tonight.

That is not the point of the evening. So we're going to leave it on the list, and I'd say if others have questions, now's the time to ask it. Madam Chair, did you— were you—. Did it—. Was I coming through there?

Yes, I rudely interrupted you. You can go ahead. I don't want us to go into a debate about whether or not—. So, oh yeah, if you have a question, go ahead. I do.

I'm sorry, and I was probably— I was probably waxing too much instead of asking the question. I guess, um, I guess maybe I just have some would like some information on what, what the rate is for, you know, nonprofits, how many of those we apply every year. So like, do— is that, you know, 10 or is it 50? You know what, anyway, like, what, what is the— how much are we doing this? And just to help me understand, if we were to do that for all the nonprofits that would apply, what would be that overall impact?

So I don't know if that's totally making sense, but helping me get the big picture on that. Thanks. Yes, it makes sense, and I'm sorry for cutting you off. Um, I think I had Miss Atkinson next. Uh, thank you, Chair.

Well, I was going to say, happy to, uh, coordinate with Mr. Mitchell on, you know, overall impact on their budget. I just knew that $2,000 on their budget was a bigger impact it on the city budget. Um, but I do want to point out that again, I feel I wasn't— the chair mentioned we're getting into whether we're funding it or not, and also now have spent more time on $2,000 requests than we did on the $250,000 request. So just want to point that out for folks.

Any other questions?

Okay, yeah, thank you, Mr. Bryson, for trying to Avoid that. But we're going to move on. Coastal Alaska Avalanche Center, Juneau's backcountry avalanche forecast. Mr. Smith, would you like to introduce this proposal?

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I agreed to sponsor this proposal just because there is a growing number of people that are, you know, Juneau is a recreation hub. It's one of the reasons people live here, and being safe as people do it is a critical thing. And, you know, one piece for winter activities, winter tourism, is knowing avalanche danger. The Coastal Avalanche— Coastal Alaska Avalanche Center is a relatively young organization, but they have been, you know, working to fundraise and have been self-supporting.

They've partnered with a local brewery to fundraise. They do events. But after kind of hosting a website where they had— where people would kind of just crowdsource or input kind of like avalanche, as they've done like avalanche testing their own, they've decided that they want to take it to the next level and actually have avalanche forecasters. So the total cost for those 2 avalanche forecasters is $25,000 a year. They already secured through donors this year $15,000, over $15,000.

So, you know, should they be able to sustain that level of fundraising, the need is— the delta is $10,000 over 3 years. That's the— that gets us to the $30,000 number. You know, it talks about in the application some of the other city as well as other organizations that may benefit from this information. But, you know, I think for me it's just we know we want to attract more visitors to our community in the winter. You see the reference to the, you know, increasing independent visitor travel to Juneau.

Knowing that, of course, we need more winter visitors, and, you know, having this information supporting an organization that's working to do that by providing this information seems like a decent expense. And, you know, hopefully this can get them up on their feet. And then, you know, this is a one-time request, and the hope is, I think, after this, that the city doesn't need to support the center any longer. So that is, that is my overview and why I choose to respond to this request. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Smith. Questions for the Coastal Alaska Avalanche Center or for its sponsor? Mr. and Ms. Atkinson, then Ms. Hughes-Candies. Thank you, Chair. Well, I guess reading through the memo, it's still wasn't totally clear to me how this fits in with what the city already does with avalanche forecasts.

And like, I guess, what, what niche are they filling that the city doesn't? I just want to know kind of how they work together with the city for forecasting avalanches.

Mr. Smith, do you want to address that, or do you want to take that back to the Oh, sorry, Mr. Barr. Who is— does someone want to address that? Thank you, Chair. Well, I, I can briefly answer to the extent that this would be focused on backcountry avalanches. The city is focused on avalanches in the urban service area that would impact the population center.

Other questions? Miss Huskanyi, then Miss Hall. Thanks, Madam Chair. And I don't really know who this is for, I guess. I see that of that $25,000, they've already fundraised $15,000 in the last year alone.

So I guess I wonder if they would be able to— if they think they would be able to increase that level of fundraising in the out years. And I don't know if that's a Mr. Smith question or— Just maybe something to ask the folks. I think I'd— thank you, Madam Chair. I think I'd ask the organization to respond back to us on that one. Ms. Hall.

Thank you. Maybe Mr. Smith or Mr. Barr would know this, but besides the CVJ, it seems to me that avalanche forecasting should be happening already or has been historically for backcountry in Southeast? I'm thinking of Haynes and, you know, so is this— is there some overlap with another agency that's doing this work?

Mr. Smith, go ahead.

I think that— I don't— from my understanding, there's just— this is the only group that's forecasting in Juneau, and I think things are so, you know, site-specific that, um, yeah, I don't know what is up in Haines. I believe there's like actually another, you know, another organization that does it in the Anchorage area, um, but these are the only ones doing in the Juneau area, and, you know, hence in the backcountry, as Mr. Barr stated. So, but maybe some more information on others, we could request that from the organization as well.

Anything else from the CAC?

Uh-oh. Oh no, you just got to get close. Downtown Business Association, Family Friendly Capital City, Mr. Bryson. Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, we've heard multiple times last year that we We need more babies in Juneau.

So, um, the community promotions that include the, uh, the gallery, um, First Fridays, where my wife and I had our first date, um, the Halloween programs, uh, and then they have the family-friendly, uh, strategy, uh, that they've been working with, uh, Main Street America. Um, so that's why I'm supporting this $75,000 recurring request. Thank you, Mr. Bryson. Uh, Miss Hughes-Scandies. Thank you, uh, Madam Chair.

I think my question is just, um, you know, it's been the same amount for the last several years, and we get the same main bullet points every year, including Light Up Juno. And I think Last year we— I'm just going to pick on that one, for example, because it's for maintenance and expansion. And then there is a little bit more about how many linear feet of string lights that is. Um, I guess I'm confused still. Is that the— they're going to buy $25,000 worth of additional bulbs, or that's the the electricity, or they have to do that maintenance every year.

Um, I see, you know, some things that make sense to be recurring, others it is less understandable to me. So I would ask for greater clarity on that particular item if they can bring that back.

Mr. Smith.

Thanks, Madam Chair. My questions are just kind of— I guess one is just like, this, this is $75,000 in addition to the $40,000 that I thought was already in the budget. And then my other is just, I'm just curious to know how— just what has DBA's, you know, revenue generation picture— what has that been doing? Like, if it's been increasing, I'd maybe be more supportive. I guess I'm kind of like I feel like a principle that I'll have throughout this process is like, the city can't be the everything to everyone.

So it's like, but we can help, but I need people to be upping their game as well. So I would like to know some, you know, what the, what the revenue history or something in for the DBA has been for the last few years. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Smith. On the question of the Um, what's already in the CBJ budget?

Miss Flick, did you hear that question about, um, this request relative to $40,000 in the budget? I did not. If you could repeat that, please.

Sure. Um, I guess I was— I, I wasn't— I guess, is there already money in the manager's budget for the DBA?

I don't think there is, but I will follow up on that. It could be in marine passenger fees. Oh, sorry. Okay. And yeah, I'm sorry, I should probably specify for the, you know, the, the non, the non-ambassadors part of the DBA, you know, budget, I guess.

Um, some more. I think Ms. Wendell has more information for us. Miss Wendell, thank you, Chair. Well, there is no funding for DBA in the FY26 manager's proposed budget. The $40,000 that Mr.

Smith is referring to is the level of funding in FY25. There is also no proposal included in, um, Director Pierce's passenger fee proposal for DBA as well.

Mr. Barr. Thank you, Chair. Well, I'll just note for jogging memory's sake that the reason why there's not, um, money in the manager's budget again this year is because the Assembly marked that as one-time last year. Thank you, Mr. Barr. We've been in a similar place with DBA for a while here where we, um, have not committed to long-term funding each time that we've considered their request.

Um, any other questions on the Downtown Business Association proposal?

All right, thank you all for raising those information needs. We will move on to the Friends of the Marie Drake Planetarium, planetarium upgrade with auxiliary Library Portable, Mr. Kelly. Thank you. I think this— so this is basically about upgrading the aging equipment. That's kind of the first part of this.

It's a two-part request. So the first part is they want to update some of the equipment that has been around for decades and some of which can't be replaced, and so they want to upgrade like some of the old bulbs that aren't manufactured anymore into LED, um, just kind of for the main display inside the, um, the planetarium. But there is also, um, kind of a supplemental request, and this part I kind of feel is a little bit interesting. And this isn't about bringing kids to the planetarium, especially since like we've, uh, you know, we've taken out the Montessori program, so there's already one less school in the area. And so a part of this is actually bringing the planetarium to the students.

And so they are kind of giving it this proposal. They'd like to buy this additional equipment. I think they're, they're flexible on that depending on where the assembly sees their priorities, but they'd like to be able to maintain the equipment that they have now and then see if they can maybe save the school district some transfer transportation costs, but actually being able to bring the planetarium to the students to be able to kind of get more perspective as to where we all are in the cosmos.

Questions or information needs about the Friends of the Marine Drake Planetarium proposal? Mr. Smith and then Ms. Youskandies. Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess just to confirm, you know, looking at the proposal It seemed just— it looks like the request is just the cost is $78,000, and that's what they're asking the city for. So I guess I just would like to get a response on, is there— are there— why they haven't pursued other funding sources like grants or fundraising or money from the school district or just anywhere else?

But I may be— I apologize if I'm misunderstanding the the, you know, the share of funding for the project. But, um, if I'm understanding it correctly, those are my questions. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Do you have more information on that, or would you like to kick that back to the applicant at our next meeting?

I'll kick that back.

Miss Hughes-Candies. Thanks, Madam Chair. I have the same one on one, wondering if JSD contributes to this at all. And then, um, it would be nice to just know the, the backstory on, um, Friends of Marie Drake. I keep saying that when I mean is the planetarium, um, because it's referenced in the 2019— they secured the funds to get over the hump to get where they needed to.

So I'm just curious is that still provide ongoing funding, or like what their funding sources are, the rest of the picture.

Other information needs for this proposal.

All right, um, we'll keep rolling. Juneau Arts and Humanities Council, additional JAK funding, major grants, and inflationary increase We have two sponsors for this, Miss Agassi, Mr. Bryson. You both are able to speak, or it sounds like Mr. Bryson's taking it. Go ahead, Mr. Bryson. Uh, thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, so we saw a similar request last year, and if, uh, Juneau has wanted to become the Pacific— the art capital of the Pacific Northwest, we have to invest in it, and we've done a really good job with it. The investment we made last year, their report says it generated nearly $30 million in grant revenue. They use these, this money to do grants, and they work with the school district, they work with SHI.

This is an excellent way to help the arts industry in our community, especially in a time when we're looking for other industries to be strong so that we don't have just tourism. This is how we can support that. Thank you.

Questions, or I should say information needs on the proposal from the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council?

Mr. Smith. Thanks, Madam Chair. I guess, you know, on the— I guess maybe it would be better answered just, you know, where the last year's grants went, who are the recipients, um, that would be useful to me to, um, to see. Um, and then I guess, you know, I did— I just to remember, and it wasn't the— it wasn't the proposal, you know, I know a big thing last year was that I believe that intent of this money was to, to help support the school district, which was obviously in a terrible financial place. I mean, I know that that fate is yet to be written this year, but anyway, just that was just a recollection, but maybe it's all answered in the, you know, who received the grants last year.

Thanks.

I believe Ms. Atkinson has a partial answer to your question. Thank you, Chair Wall. Yes, I have a partial answer. You're remembering correctly. We increased the regranting amount that we gave them by $151,000 for a total of $266,000.

And I don't have all of the recipients, but one that was in partnership with the school district, I believe, was expanding Geno Music Matters with quite a bit more than it had in previous years. And I know that has been a thing I have that legitimately people have come up to me in, on the street and said they are happy that that has expanded. So I don't know what other— I know there's many other places that got grants, but I know that was a big one in partnership with the school district.

Other questions?

We know our partner organizations well.

And with that, I'll move on to our next partner organization on the list. Juno Community Foundation. Miss Hall.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, yeah, you see in your packet the request, and I would like to briefly touch on a few points. Um, the foundation, as you see, is requesting $500,000 on behalf of over 20 direct service nonprofit providers. The CBJ assembly has entrusted the Juneau Community Foundation's HOPE Endowment and the CVJ Social Service Grant Program with determining $1.658 million in grants and $47,500 in utility waivers through a memorandum of agreement renewed regularly since 2016. This is in addition to the $1.1 million in foundation grant funds.

CBJ continues to trust the Foundation as they have found the grant program to be an efficient and effective, and it eliminates the need for CBJ to have a social service department. Using a collaborative and rigorous process, the Foundation identifies priorities and funds them. The Foundation meets with all nonprofits every year to set priorities. Every year there are projects and programs that cannot be funded. A good grant process like this one makes sure that the highest needs are addressed.

Due to increased costs, difficulty attracting and keeping personnel, and greater community member needs, the funding available, even with the $1.1 million provided by the foundation, needs to be increased to meet the most important priorities identified through their listen Learns. And these priorities would be homelessness, mental health, and substance misuse. Having the foundation's grant process determine these grants is a win for CBJ, as we don't have to have personnel running a grant program and doesn't have to make individual grant decisions. If additional funding is not provided, um, potentially, uh, emergency shelter hours would be cut during the daytime. Um, safety concerns and challenges for direct service providers would increase due to people with untreated mental illness, addiction, and trauma present in facilities providing direct services without adequate staff to monitor.

Thinking of our public libraries for that one. Um, staffing shortages and turnovers will continue to increase due to better salaries and benefits elsewhere combined with less risk on the job, resulting in fewer services available for community members. Um, you know, we know from some of the studies that have been presented to us that, uh, the wage studies, that social service providers are down at the bottom of the list. And, um, so when you're working in a, a position that is, uh, you know, you're Interacting with a lot of people that are really struggling, it's— and then getting paid very little for that, it's pretty challenging. So recognizing that the cost to provide those services has gone up substantially.

Let's see. Yeah, I think I've covered it. I'd also like to— touch on the fact that our homeless population has increased substantially as our rents have risen in the community. This squeezes the most vulnerable out of their housing. And so, you know, it makes sense to think that we, we should probably address increasing funding to the agencies providing these services.

Did I miss anything, Mr. Barr?

Questions or information needs on the proposal from the Juneau Community Foundation? Miss Hughes-Scandies. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think I have a good sense of the foundation's, uh, budget picture. If there was— so there's nothing necessarily missing, but if there was any additional information that's spoke to the recipients who were experiencing cuts to other funding that some of the, like, most basic social services providers that you just referenced— homelessness, some of those— if you could check back with the applicant.

And I don't expect you to know that, but if there's, like, any, like, big ticket, like, we get half our funding from XYZ grant and that's been cut now. That would be beneficial to know when we make the decision.

We can get back to you on that. I don't believe I've heard of any federal grants being cut, although that is certainly looming and concerning. This is more to address the increase in the population, number of population being served, and, uh, the high staff turnover with in that. And that's not all, you know, there's— this is an umbrella that the foundation makes the determination who, you know, they— at our level, we're not kind of parsing out what goes to what agency. But, um, yeah, like I say, as far as I know, but we can look into that if there's been any direct cuts to federal funding.

Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess for me, I just want to take one second, and I don't want to speak for everyone either, but like, you know, we're just asking for information. I hope my comments don't sound like biting or, you know, that I'm not appreciative of the work that all these organizations do and the thought and effort the assembly members put into putting them forward. So I just want to say that. For me, I guess a few questions would just be, I would really want and need more detail on either what services would fall away without this money or what additional services would be able to be provided with this money.

I guess I would also want to know, is the foundation, you know, is the endowment, are they increasing their contributions as well? I get things are, you know, Anyway, I'm curious about that. And then I did also notice in there something that said, you know, $200,000 for Feed Juno Kids or something. I would like to know what that program is and, you know, anyway, if that's a new thing.

So noted.

I think those are questions we can take back to to the Community Foundation and get your answers, unless you have something, Mr. Barr.

Other questions on our JCF proposal? All right, moving on to the League of Women Voters, Juno, Capital Students, Capital Visits. Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I, I think people have made— well, I'm not going to assume people are familiar with this. Um, this is a program—. I think we have a point of order. It's not really a point of order, um, and I'm sorry, I should have checked with the chair, uh, before this.

Um, but I did want to, um, disclose that, um, I did check with the attorney to see if I have a potential conflict since my fiancée is on the board of the League of Women Voters. I think we're actually okay because there's no financial interest in here. So I just wanted to disclose that, make sure everybody was comfortable with me being a part of the discussion. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Sorry, Mr. Smith, you can go ahead.

No problem. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, so The, the Capitol Visits program has been going on for some time. It actually may say that in the thing, but I'm struggling to find that number. Let's see, 10 years have the Capitol Visits been going on, being supported by the League of Women Voters.

And it aims to get every 8th grader to the Capitol, to the Diamond Courthouse, to see the different branches of government. You know, it's their full-day excursions to those areas. It talks in detail about what they do, what they see. There's other, you know, coursework and projects that the classes do as they go as part of this program. What eventually has been noticed, my understanding is, for some time there has been a League of Women Volun— a volunteer at the League of Women Voters who has just done Yeoman's work to make this program happen.

There are many volunteers at the League of Women Voters who do a lot of work to make this happen, but there is a need for a key person to really facilitate and set this all up. And anyway, I think that person has, you know, maybe needs to do some other things in their life. As a result, the League is asking for $10,000 recurring to fund this program, or to, you know, essentially to fund the facilitator part of this program. As you can see, a lot of volunteers of ours also go into the project. Gold Belt makes in-kind donations.

They receive a few others from a few, you know, they, the league provides some cash donations. The Alaska Committee provides a cash donation. But the request from the league for this project is really to provide that coordinator to facilitate the visits by every 8th grade student to, you know, to learn more about their state government. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Smith. Any information needs on this request? Miss Hughes-Scandies. Thanks, Madam Chair. This is a great program.

Um, Mr. Smith, again, this might be for the applicant, um, but I would just want to know, have they asked any Rotary groups? Have they asked the school district? Or have they— they do some fundraising. I'm used to be on the board, so I'm pretty familiar with the league's finances. But for this transition of the model of this project, of this particular program, have they made any requests or even to capital— what's the name of it— capital committee, Alaska Committee?

Have they asked around to any of those? Thank you.

Very good. I know they have asked. I think we should, let's ask the, we'll ask the league, you know, where they've asked and what those responses have been so far. But, yep, thank you.

Other information needs.

All right, that brings us to Reach Inc. Group Home heat pump installations and 7-passenger van purchase. Mr. Bryson, uh, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, REACH takes care of the vulnerable population in our community, and, uh, these group homes would not get heat pumps, which goes to Juno sustainability goals, without some level of grant funding. And the vehicle purchase would actually be used to take employ— to take those residents to work, helping them contribute back to society, helping them to have jobs. And so, uh, both of these projects, uh, go to the city's goals and, uh, a positive economy for, uh, some of Juneau's most vulnerable population.

That's why I sponsored it. Thank you, ma'am.

Information needs on the reach request. Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I guess just one question is, are these group homes— are there, you know, are there other programs like Juno Heat Smart or something that would— I'm sorry if that's in there, um, that, you know, they could help with some of the costs? Or—.

Oh, excuse me, I guess it is. There's the North Selection Committee. Um, that was— well, that helps. And then, um, I guess, yeah, where else have they looked funding. And then, um, is this not something that, that, you know, this type of— that a nonprofit, you know, social service nonprofit would ever ask anything from the Juneau Community— Juneau Community Foundation?

And if— did, did they do that?

Thank you, Mr. Smith. I'll, um— I usually spent a little time Um, asking that question as well, just to make sure we had the right proposals in front of us tonight. And just so you know, this proposal by REACH would not be eligible under the JCF funding program because it is for capital expenses. Very good. Thanks.

Any other questions on REACH? Mr. Smith, is your hand still raised, or do you have another question?

Accidentally raised. Thank you. All right, Southeast Alaska Food Bank, strengthening food security through program expansion and collaboration, which— Miss Atkinson. Thank you, Chair Wall. Uh, this is $150,000 of recurring funding for our local food bank.

Half of this funding is going to increase food reserves, and then the other half is going to an assistant manager position. I'll speak to the manager position. The food bank works with lots of organizations in our region and in our community and supports them, and this is sort of a request to recognize that there's a lot more need for that support and potentially looking forward at some uncertain times for a lot of our social service organizations. Increasing that support from the food bank can really help everyone be more efficient, which is always a good thing. And then the other is Food Reserves, which I mentioned.

Right now they are buying a lot more food than they ever have before because donations are just not cutting it anymore. The need has increased so so much. And also, we want to be sure that the food bank has backstock so that they're not depleting their reserves, you know, all the time. And they have, you know, we have disasters from floods to, you know, cuts to grants to, you know, just name your reason why we could need this backstock. We want to be sure that our food bank has the ability to respond and be resilient in these times of uncertainty.

That is why I brought it forward and happy to take questions.

Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I think, you know, your previous answer regarding the capital need maybe makes sense to me on the food bank piece here, at least with the food backstop piece. But I guess in terms of the operational component, Did the food bank ask, did they try to, you know, seek out funds from the Juneau Community Foundation for that piece? And if so, what was the result would be one question I have, and I do have another.

Happy to answer that question. Yes, so I know that initially there was an application to the Community Foundation. I want to make it clear there is now no longer an active application with the Community Foundation. So this is this is the only active, there's no two bites of the apple concern here. I think with the, we've just heard a lot about increased need from the Community Foundation and we're looking at a half a million dollar increase into what we're giving the Community Foundation.

And I think there was just a concern that this wouldn't be funded. And so looking at this separately because of, I think partly the economic uncertainty we're seeing and the community need. And combined with kind of unsure whether that was going to— whether the Community Foundation would be able to support this additionally.

Um, Mr. Smith, another question. Yeah, uh, you know, it's not really for them, but I guess, did— so they applied to the Community Foundation and the Community Foundation said no, or I get— so I guess some more info on just that piece would be useful for me. And then I guess another piece for me, as I'm asking of others, is what have been, you know, what have been the— what's been the revenue picture for the Juneau, you know, food bank for the past few years? I just want to— again, I know these are challenging times and very donation-dependent and not a bunch of different sources, but it would be helpful for me to know what, what that, you know, what their, their donations and costs and things have been changing to, you know. Are we the only, are we the only ones that can help here?

Are there, are there other, um, are there other opportunities, other options? And are they, you know, looking into them? And, um, and what has been the result of that? So thanks.

Miss Atkinson, if you have an answer. Yeah, as to more information, I think we will confer with the food bank in the interim. If it helps, and I'd be obviously— I don't know their budget perfectly, but I don't believe they've ever received funds from the Assembly community grants or from the Community Foundation before. Is that— Never mind. Okay, I'll get the answers later.

Miss Hall. Um, yes, I'm just looking at the list of funding or agencies or organizations that funding is provided to from the Juneau Community Foundation. This is for their ongoing or operating expenses, and Southeast Alaska Food Bank is listed, so I'm not sure quite how this, um, you know, why that wasn't included in this, um, uh, $500,000 request that is coming forward.

Do we know that, Mr. Barr? If I—. Miss— yeah, Mr. Barr, I know you've been, uh, serving on the board of the Juneau Community Foundation. Maybe you can help us understand, would this proposal be eligible eligible, you know, and what was the decision when it was in the pool? Yeah, thank you, Chair Wall.

Just for clarity's sake, I don't serve on the board of the foundation, but I am on their professional advisory committee, which advises the director and the board. So this program is eligible for JCF funding, all of it. The professional advisory committee discussed the this program and provided, I guess, what I would characterize as generally consensus-driven advice to the Community Foundation, that the Community Foundation consider funding the food reserves portion of the funding and consider asking the food bank for more detail, more asking questions, planning, seeking some clarification clarification on the operational side of the request. And of course, the advisory committee and the food bank struggles yearly with making funding decisions in the scope of funding that's available to them.

Thank you, Mr. Barr. That's helpful. One information need I have from the applicants, given all that, You know, I think I would say I won't speak for the whole assembly, but I don't think anyone wants to deny a request to help the food bank purchase food. But we also— I need a really good reason why I would consider this proposal that is eligible for our grant program to be coming this way instead. And so, Either I need a really good reason for that, or I'd like to make sure this makes its way back into the GCF process.

So I'm sorry if I'm editorializing, but I want to— I would hate us to get too down the road and have to make an uncomfortable decision without a, without a good reason from, from the food bank as to why you're coming to the assembly versus through GCF. CF.

Any other information needs?

Okay, uh, Trail Mix. Mr. Bryson, uh, I have to declare a conflict. My daughter worked for Trail Mix last year and she's working for them this coming year, so I'm going to— not actually going to get up and I'm not going to participate in this Trail Mix conversation.

OK, does anyone have a— do we usually? I'm fine with you sitting there, but is that against our— all right, you can sit back from the mic. OK, Mr. Mr. Bryson has refused himself for this part of this conversation. Trail Mix Inc. Eagle Crest Biking and Hiking Trail Construction and Improvements. Mr. Steining.

Thank you. So this is for Trail Mix Incorporated. It is a 54 $34,000 request to build and improve hiking and biking trails at Eagle Crest. So just to give a bit of background, you know, this, this request to ask that you see in front of you, you know, came out of a lot of conversations with Trailmix about the situation that they find themselves in right now. So a little background on the organization.

Normally, 2 of their 4 trail crews they have out working any given summer are funded effectively entirely through contracts with the federal government and grants with the federal government. So, for example, last year it was about $600,000 of the revenue came from federal contracts to work on federal trails. They, in conversations with their, you know, remaining individuals that are federal partners, They have had to adjust that down from an estimate of about $400,000 for next year to about $70,000. So pretty significant contraction in the amount of work available for them to do. And they came asking for, you know, kind of to brainstorm some solutions for how to fill some of those gaps, you know, keep those trail crews working and keep the organization afloat.

Because as you might expect, volunteer hours and volunteer donated dollars don't really cover that big of a shift. And obviously, $54,000 doesn't do it as well, but it does make a drop in the bucket. And so in those conversations, we were— I was not comfortable and Trail Mix wasn't comfortable asking for just a blanket amount of money to make up a portion of that difference. It was is what can they do that would be value add to the city? And so, as I've said in these conversations about Eagle Crest and positioning them for future success, you know, one of the pieces there is making sure that Eagle Crest is able to build up the infrastructure that allows for summer operations.

And a big piece of that, uh, you know, costly from the perspective of when you think about Eagle Crest's other capital needs, perspective is building some of those trails that tourists will hike on when they pay to, you know, rent bicycles to go up to Eagle Crest. Nobody's going to pay a bicycle vendor to rent a bicycle if there's no bike trail. And so, you know, kind of came together as a way to solve a problem for a community organization and, you know, solve a problem for a city asset. And I have a lot of other statistics on, you know, how we how TRAIL MIX funds itself and gets its reimbursements. So if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer.

Thank you, Mr. Steininger. Information needs for the request from TRAIL MIX?

All right, seeing none, we'll move on to United— oh, did I miss one? No. Okay, we'll move on to our last proposal here, United Way of Southeast Alaska, Working Together to Prepare for and Recover from Disasters, Ms. Hughes-Scandies. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I think you—. I'll call it BOAD, but the title kind of says it all there. When I was approached by the applicant, the real, I guess, backstory on this one and the framing of it was After the flooding last year, this United Way and the primary contact individual for this group is Lauren Jones, is who I spoke with, who had also had a lot of Red Cross experience. So we talked about what the reality was of a lot of Juneau nonprofits jumping in We all remember the sort of impromptu area where things were being dispatched out of so that Juneau citizens could also lend a hand and volunteer. So the primary idea for this one is, you see, it's a $40,000 request, and that's broken out what that would pay for.

The idea would be to have a better organization in the in-between so that rather than it being a kind of scrabble of figuring out who could do what, having staff time and having a process in place between now and then where you could list and categorize what churches are able to do, what different nonprofits are able to do. And this is something that people were starting to kind of do without funding or try to pull together. And one of the individuals who had been working just from a volunteer perspective on that project as well, then in the interim got hired by CBJ, kind of taking away another individual who was donating time. And then necessitating someone who was actually paid to do this. Um, so the budget is fairly simple and is laid out there, but the idea is to, in advance next time, have a really clear nonprofit version of what we have already for the city of, in the case of an emergency, do X, call so-and-so, they can do this.

So That's behind that information needs.

Um, Miss Hall, how does this overlap with what Red Cross would be doing in this area, or, or, um, how does it differ? I guess that's what I would need to know before being able to grant this request. It's a good question. Rather than me answer it, I'll get a detailed answer for you. And I think a similar question I had was, is this something that United Way, you know, is commonly organizing in other places that United Way Works.

Good question. Don't know.

Other information needs?

I'm out. Maybe? No?

Keep one working, one over there.

Okay, we're gonna move on. The agenda to, um, two things that are just information, information only, but certainly if you have, um, uh, questions or thoughts to share, now's the time. Um, item number 5 is the FY26 pending list. Um, we've— for those of you who are new, we usually keep this at the end of our packet as item come up. Um, any, uh, questions on that or comments?

Miss Hughes-Candies. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don't worry, I'm not going to comment on any specific item. Um, I just wanted to— having been through this process a couple of times, when I was going through my packet and I flipped the page and saw all of these items on the pending list, I did a visible reaction in my home. I feel like the purpose of the pending list is—.

It's—. There's a thought process when the assembly puts things there. It is a little bit of a parking lot, and I feel like it is the assembly— really, it's the assembly's list to put things on. So to see this many items added, to see all the external funding requests, to see some of these CBJ internal funding requests, just as giving process feedback, I feel like those are things that the decision needs to be made to include them within the manager's budget or not. And maybe things can be brought outside.

For instance, I think we discussed why the law— why the manager didn't feel like that was her place to make that decision. But some of these other items, I don't— I'd prefer to see them in a packet rather than being put on the pending list. I think that is— even when it is not the ultimate decision, because we haven't voted on that list yet, we still need to make the decisions to put it on the list. So those are my two cents.

Thank you, Miss Hughes. I had a similar reaction to this, um, and I, we, I talked a little bit with it about it with staff originally. Um, we do have time on kind of managers' increases, and you know, it's on a similar day as when we're getting to community grant the starting on the pending list. And so maybe we'll come up with a bit more of a clear process for that day that helps us consider what is staff bringing to us. Um, and what versus, um, what the assembly has kind of parking lot.

I will say on the community grant request, we did make a decision last year to put all those on the pending list just so we weren't voting on proposals earlier than we wanted to, so that's why those are there. Um, Mr. Smith, thank you, Madam Chair. And I hope I can ask a question about, you know, process or style or whatever here on, on this. You can ask a question about process or style here. Yes, very good.

Not diving into individual items on the pending list, but if you have thoughts that can help us get to a better place by the end of this Budget. Okay, how's the time? I guess I was just gonna ask, I thought at some point, or I've seen previous pending lists, you know, where if an item is recurring, you know, there is like an equivalent mill rate or something, and maybe, maybe we just haven't gotten there yet. I guess I was just kind of wondering, you know, why, why recurring items, there wasn't a, you know, a mill rate increase or equivalent mill rate increase.

Miss Flick or Miss Wendell, any insights on that? I'd be happy to answer that. Um, so you're correct, um, Assemblymember Smith. When we got to making, um, the decisions on funding or not funding and it was recurring, we added that, that mill rate component. So you had that.

I don't think it was included in the, the earlier iterations. And I guess I will just pause and say I apologize for creating a reaction on the pending list when we went through the proposed budget. We had like a page plus of things that weren't included, and I thought we had communicated that we would stick them here for assembly decisions later. So if we acted prematurely, we're happy to adjust the pending list.

Thank you, Miss Flick. It was, it was kind of easier to have the reaction when it was all laid out in a big list that we were gonna have to tackle one by one. So, um, I think we'll, we'll figure out a way through it. Mr. Bryson. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just a little bit of history. We have gone through like at least 6 forms of the pending list. I don't think a single year has been like the previous year, so they're always improving a little bit. Having the finance season like we do, like Chair Wohl implemented last year, we're more organized. This is easier to read, easier to get through information.

And so while I, I share some of the surprise of having the city operations as part of the panelists, it still gives us that control over it. We're still going to be able to go down this list, um, and we decide how we want to do the budget. So this all kind of fits, but we're— if you have improvements or know how we can make this process more efficient then bring it to Chair Wolf so she can do it next year. That's totally fine. All right, thank you, Madam.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That's—. I just want to add, that's all meant just to be constructive feedback for staff. That's—. Did not— when I say I had a reaction, I was just at a loss for words at this point.

Miss Kester.

I'm normally in the room and not on Zoom. I would just volunteer to work with Director Flick and of course Deputy Manager Barr on organizing the internal funding requests under manager's amendments. I will say that my perspective when working with the finance department and Deputy Manager on bringing this up is that anytime there was like a new what I felt like was a new service that it was, it would have been outside the directive that you were given, that we were given to have status quo level of services. So I'm happy to provide manager recommendations on, on these items to like help with your decision-making process. But just you understand that filter of why those items weren't included in the manager's budget.

Thank you, Miss Kessler.

All right, anything else on this topic? And I'll just transition us right into— also, there's a budget calendar there. Any questions on that? Uh, Mr. Kelly, um, thank you. I'm just seeing two April 30th at 5:30 here, so I just wanted to Maybe a clarification.

So are we basically going down a list of 5 things at 5:30 and then we're having a Finance Committee meeting immediately after?

Can you repeat that question? Just a little slower. You're hard to hear. Oh, sorry.

So for April 30th, We're both at the bottom left of the page, uh, special assembly meeting hearing, and at the top of the page on the right, um, uh, 530 AFC meeting number 5. On each of those there's about 5 items, so are we going through— um, actually I think I might have answered my own question. Sorry, you, you, um We're hard to understand the last sentence. You—. I think I might have answered my own question.

Okay, great. Um, Miss Slick, I see your hand. Thank you. Um, so yes, on April 30th you'll have a special meeting that's the public hearing for the budget since the April 28th assembly meeting was canceled. And as soon as that portion's done, we'll roll into the assembly finance committee.

I also just wanted to point out because it's not on your budget calendar, but the July AFC meeting would typically fall on the first Wednesday, which is July 2nd, and that has been moved to the following week. So we're not in the week of the holiday. So that was on, um, Clerk, um, McKeown's latest calendar that came out. But I just wanted you all to, um, know that with plenty of advanced warning.

Ah, all right. Um, so next meeting date will be April 30th, and that brings us to adjournment.