Assembly Work Session of September 25, 2025

We'll go ahead and call to order the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly work session of Thursday, September 25th, 2025 at 6:30 PM. We are in the assembly chambers. First item is citizens' comments. The local number is 907-486-3231.

Toll-free number 855-492-9202, and limited to 3 minutes per speaker. Anybody wishing to speak, please come forward at this time or call in.

We'll wait a few seconds.

Hearing and seeing none, we will continue with items for discussion. The first is presentation of the hydrology and hydraulic study for Russian River and Sargent Creek by River Focus Incorporated. This time I'll turn it over to our manager, Amy Williams.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The Kodiak Island Borough submitted an application for an Advanced Assistant Hazard Mitigation Grant through the state of Alaska from FEMA on July 13th, 2023. And on February 5th, 2024, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management signed the grant award to Kodiak Island Borough to conduct a hydrology and hydraulic study of the Russian River and Sergeant Creek. The grant award amount was for $99,540. The grant award must be used prior to November 15th, 2025.

As you can see, it was on May 30th, 2024, the Kodiak Island Borough published a request for proposals for this study, and on August 30th, 2024, River Focus was selected to conduct the study. The assembly approved contract fiscal year 25-25 at its regular meeting on October 3rd, 2024, and the contract was executed by me on October 4th, 2024. River Focus began work on the study shortly after the contract execution. The final report of the study was submitted in August of 2025. River River Focus, in order to complete the contract, is required to present the findings of the final report at a public meeting, and that is what they are here to do tonight.

Thank you. Um, the floor is yours for the presentation, Jesse.

Okay, great. Yeah, thanks, Amy, and thank you, uh, assembly. So I maybe have a few too many slides for a 30-minute talk, so I'm gonna talk fast, but if I go over anything too quickly, please feel free to interrupt me. We'll have time for questions at the end, but feel free to keep this conversational throughout the presentation. So, yeah, I'm just gonna go through a quick agenda.

So I'll do a little bit of an introduction, do a bit of a project explanation, the why we're here, and talk about where we are in the progression of the overall projects and the needs of the area for H&H work. And I'll go through the project details and some of the numbers and try not to bore you guys too much or to condense it too much that it's not palpable. So please do ask questions there. And then we'll go back and review the progression of the work and kind of what's happening after this. Before I open up the floor for questions and hand it back to the borough.

So quick introductions here. My name is Jess Straub. I am a river restoration engineer out of Anchorage. I have been playing and working on rivers in Alaska since 2019. My former employment with Fish and Wildlife Service brought me to Alaska prior to this work and Been able to actually work in the watershed up on Lake Orbin prior to this study, and so I'm really happy to be able to get the opportunity to continue working in this area.

Kodiak is a very special place. And so the team was led by Kodiak Island Borough with river focus and with some great input and help from the Bells Flat residents. And so us as a team kind of got the data and the work together to be able to complete this assessment. And so kind of the why we're all here, and so, you know, why be in Woman's Bay, why be in Kodiak? It's beautiful land, beautiful communities.

I think we can all understand the appeal of living in such an area. But kind of the larger conversation of why we're here to discuss this project is Like most places in Alaska, a lot of our highways and our major infrastructure is through a river delta. These are very hydrodynamic and difficult places for roads to be in due to the nature of being in a river delta. You not only have riverine flooding, you also have coastal flooding and tidal influences. So it is a a very hydraulically compromised but also complicated location for roads and for a community that only has, you know, Sergeant Creek Road as its one way in and one way out.

And so just taking kind of a wider look at the aerial before we get into this, you know, so it's quite a large, beautiful, like, dendritic watershed. And it really follows the slope of the valleys. And so we have, you know, our headwaters a little bit off screen, but headwaters coming down into these transportation zones. And so, you know, one, leftover material from glaciers long ago, but also like colluvium, eroding material from the hill slopes of these valleys, as well as alluvium, so like the the material that is naturally getting eroded by the river is coming through these areas and then it's coming down into Women's Bay, which is really a depositional area before it hits into the coast. And so there's a lot of, I would say, maybe monkeying around that's happened, dredging and other, you know, human activities and just the buildup of the area for the last 100 years in these systems that kind of lend a little bit towards some difficulties with sediment transport and some kind of over-straightening of areas that maybe want to have a little bit more sinuosity to kind of dissipate some of the velocities that's coming in and working on this dark side of Russian River.

And so I'm kind of just taking a bigger view of all the hydrology and hydraulics that are going into looking at this watershed and recognizing that this project, due to data constraints, really only has terrain and was able to properly provide analysis on this area. While I advocate for all of Alaska, hoping that we just get more LiDAR, the borough can get more LiDAR and all the boroughs throughout the state maybe to have just ability to use your terrain data for, you know, a multitude of projects, but to be able to really do a comprehensive large-scale assessment of the work for, you know, a multitude of projects. LiDAR goes very far, but it was great that we were able to fly a little bit outside of the bridges and get a good terrain. But I'm gonna kind of speak about project risks. And so we went ahead and just kind of did a risk assessment or registry of the likelihood of an occurrence happening and then the severity and then assigning a risk value to that.

And so looking at Sergeant Creek Road, Sergeant Creek Bridge, Russian River Bridge, private property floods, private property loss, and as well as debris debris entry into the rivers from private lands. And so kind of writing down the potential risk and those consequences for each item and then going and assigning a likelihood event number as well as a severity event. Jess, this is Mayor Scott. Your slides aren't progressing. My slides aren't progressing?

OK. What slide are you guys on? The first one. The first one? Okay. So we're still on the— all right.

Is my screen still sharing right now? Can you see a—. I see alongside there, and there's something else on the main screen now. Okay. Let's try— are we seeing project explanation screen?

Yes. Okay. Part of it. And now are we on the next slide for why are we all here? No.

No, not yet. Oh, okay. Hmm. But when you click on— when you physically click on it, it changes. There, now you moved.

Why are we all here? Our—. The screen that we're seeing has a box over the right hand of the screen that says manage the subtitles. And it says turn on or don't show again. Do you see that on your screen?

I do not at all. So let me stop sharing and resharing. See if that's—.

You're doing better than I would, so thank you. I don't know about that. I do. Thank you for stopping me before I get to the end of the presentation. You haven't seen one slide.

My goodness. Okay, so let's share screen. Let's just share the entire screen.

Okay, there, now it's enlarged. Oh, this is perfect. And now, are you guys seeing the agenda? Okay. Introductions.

Okay, great. We're catching up here. Sorry, guys. We're moving. Yep, we already did introductions, talked about the project team there.

And now I was getting into the kind of project explanation. So I think we all got caught up with why we're here. So here at least there's some nice photos to see what—. Very nice photos. I was talking about with this, you know, this braided nature of being in a river delta and you unfortunately come up on a road which really is like a dam that has a few outlet areas, right, to kind of connect those two water desires from upstream and downstream.

And so it is a complex area. And so I'll just point this out again since we're backing up a little bit, but right, this is the transitional zone that's moving all that material from your headwater, but also from your hill slopes of your valleys and from the eroding material happening in your streams. And so it's coming down, and as the valley comes down into this depositional and more transitional— depositional zone that's transitioning into the coast, you see these lower slopes and material starts to really kind of settle out and build. And so there's been just some monkeying around back here from the Navy and from, you know, just the last 100 years and some dredging. And so I think there is— sorry, going back to getting lighter.

So, you know, our terrain did not extend all the way up here. It was really focused down where my cursor is right now. And so getting an ability to have terrain for this whole entire watershed is really kind of what, yeah, I would love to see for for most of the watersheds where we've got people living in the river deltas because I think it can be used for a lot of different applications but it can be used for quite a few years. It holds value and it'd be great for really being able to understand some more of what's happening higher up in the watershed. And so, sorry to repeat all of this, but this is that risk table I was talking about.

So we've got those assets I had mentioned, potential risk and the consequence of those risks. And so in order to assign a risk value, we look at the likelihood of something occurring and the severity of that occurrence, and that allows us to put a risk value. And so we have this likelihood, this frequency table of the event occurring, and then the severity of what that impact would really mean to the community. And so we're able to grab a number from this table and this table for each occurrence that we're looking at. And so that allows us to kind of plot them together on this nice colored risk table and start to associate where our priorities should be when looking at risks and what we should tackle first.

And so, you know, assigning the likelihood and severity numbers in order to get these risk values Pretty clear that Sergeant Creek Road being the one road in and out is of high risk with really high consequences if it fails. And so really putting that as a priority risk item to look at. You know, and the bridges kind of being next as I know they're outside of borough domain but have an influence on their reconstruction and being in the room to really advocate for making sure that they're increasing flood conveyance and capacity because also could have very catastrophic impacts for, for Women's Bay Area. And when it comes down to private landowner, the loss of it or flooding of the land or debris entry, that's where it becomes a little bit of a lower major catastrophic risk to all the people in the area, though it does still have some significant impact. And so you can start to kind of prioritize these risks that you can start to chip away at when thinking of it from a hydrologic and hydraulic, you know, risk of the area.

And so kind of taking us into project progression of like where we are in this process. So there's been like the advocacy for change, seeing the flooding back there, documenting it and recognizing that This problem is getting worse and we really need to be able to address it. And so the borough and Bellows Flat has been working to secure funding for analysis so that we can hold this study. And so this study is really addressing just the H&H of what's going on primarily at the bridges and at the road. But also trying to kind of assess an overall story of what's happening in, in the region.

And so taking this analysis and using that to secure funding for, for change from For Real Design, to start tackling these risks and designing solutions so that, there can be a construction or implementation of solutions for, for the area. Um, but being it is the, a location that's in the river delta, this will likely have to be repeated Hopefully, you know, long, long down the timeline, but it's something to just remember when we're thinking about highways and road systems that are in river deltas, especially in Alaska. So now I'll just kind of get into the project details with hopefully not dwelling too much on one item too much, but please, yeah, ask questions in this section. We were on site to do data collection and get longitudinal profiles and cross-sections and to be able to start to build a topographic survey terrain data that we'd be able to then use in our hydraulic models as well as hydrologic models.

At this time when we were going out collecting data, we also had residents providing data providing some media, and we held a meeting to have an in-person conversation and be able to absorb as much history and localized knowledge as we could. But some of these photos are really telling of, you know, circumstances where Sergeant Creek Road is experiencing a few feet of flooding and that this is quite potentially happening more frequently than what the hydrology would be telling us is true. So it's great to have resident input. And then we took some of the IFSAR data, which is the 5-meter resolution data for the area for Women's Bay. So not detailed enough to really do full hydrology or full, like, high-confidence modeling off of, but was detail enough for us to start delineating the watershed and then to use it as just a guidance as we were building our preliminary models.

But our project site and our terrain data really was kind of restricted to this area due to, you know, budget restrictions but also timing restrictions. Yeah, it's— getting the actual physical data is sometimes the most expensive part. And we were happy that we were able to gather as much as we could. So we started to use this data and some of the cross-sectional data that we were pulling to just be able to really start to understand what's going on in the systems. And so this is an upstream cross-section, a profile going across the stream.

And I just wanted to kind of highlight that we see this kind of floodplain activity of these secondary channels upstream, which we'll also see in the Sargent Creek cross-section. But as we get downstream, we start to see more of this channelized expression coming through the bridge. And I think this just kind of further tells the story of the nature of the systems wanting to be dynamic and to be more braided because of where they are located in the watershed. But unfortunately, most of the water is being forced to go through both of the bridges. So it just lays further groundwork for advocating for more flood conveyance.

We'll talk about a couple of ways to do that, but this is the downstream side of Sergeant Creek, again channelized. But lots of information to be gathered from these cross sections for us to kind of be able to classify and understand stream type and what's going on. With the area and discharge upstream and downstream of the bridge. So I'll pull some of that information back up in a little bit, but I just wanted to mention we did look at sea level rise, and Kodiak, from uplift, you know, glaciers receding and land uplift, is actually experiencing a reduction in sea level rise. And so we were able to grab data from NOAA to get a mean higher high water event.

And so for our models, that's what we ended up using as a tailwater control so that we were accounting for max sea level rise or sea level conditions because sea level rise was, was not an issue at this site. And so now that we have this data and we're starting to understand the local hydrology, we can start to create existing conditions. And so Using USGS regression calculations and using cross-sectional areas that we call bankfull discharge and, you know, 100-year floodplain width discharge, we were able to kind of calibrate some of these flow calculations to get these regressions that we would use in our model and these reoccurrence that we would use in our model. These on streams where we don't have gauge data, and there's a couple gauge locations on the island, but it really was not from watersheds that would be transferable or that we could scale from or do basin transfer from. So these numbers, we have confidence in them, but not high confidence, unfortunately, because of the nature of the data that we were able to collect, but also the lack of data that is most places in Alaska when it comes to stream flow and hydrographs and regional curves.

So we felt good using this data to go ahead and run our hydraulic models with these flows. And so back to—. This is our kind of joint 2D area that we'd start running our flows through. And so in our hydraulic models, we put in both bridges. And so this is the Russian River Bridge and this is the Sergeant Creek Bridge.

And so we're able to then start modeling some results. And so right here I'm showing a 5-year, so 5-year event, the max velocities. And so I wanted to highlight this one because we can already see it's overtopping Sergeant Creek Road and we can see getting some, you know, these higher velocities as it's making tight turns around bends. And then as we switch to the 100-year flow, we can see over Surging Creek Road we're starting to get high velocities at that low point in the road. Velocity is way, way past the safe driving or the suggested safe driving limits as well as depths past that limit as well.

And so we can start to see, you know, flow coming on Russian River on this relic secondary channel and just kind of the dynamic nature of potentially, you know, switching alignment or switching the active channel that these systems, especially Russian River, has in this area. And so I want to kind of just look a little bit closer into that major risk that we were looking at at Sargent Creek. And so some of these aerials show it pretty well, but the day that we were out there flying, there had been some flow that had gotten kind of over— had overtopped and then got trapped here and has no type of passage or anywhere to really dissipate into. And so as flows and floods increase coming up this bank, there's a connection that happens going over this low point in Sergeant Creek Road. And so we wanted to make sure that we were really modeling that well and capturing that.

And so Right, we just see this water all wanting to have somewhere to go, but really being kind of stuck back there, probably in an old relic of a channel scar from, you know, time past that maybe had flowed that way at one point. And so looking at that, and so this is a 5-year event and just hold it here at the max. Oops.

So, um, oh, you know what, that's not gonna work like that. Okay, well, put you right there. There we go. Better that way. Okay, and so we can start to see that we start to get overtopping of, you know, a third to nearing to half of a foot already at a 5-year event.

And then when we switch to a 100-year event, We're already seeing overtopping of, you know, a few feet in there. And so it's something that we know is happening. The overtopping is happening quite frequently, a few times a year. And so at this point we have, or you can have confidence in saying that the hydrology back there is lending itself to say that maybe the we're undershooting the hydrology and the calculations aren't really being accurate if they're saying that you're seeing this overbank flow event, overtopping event, you know, every— at the 5-year. And so that's just something to kind of look into to see and for advocacy of the fact that you're seeing your road overtop with high velocities and depths at these lower frequency— these lower recurrence years.

And that's not how the design should be. That road should be stable up until a 100-year event. And so that's kind of the goal and how you can use some of this modeling to really advocate for the need for change there. And so kind of taking all this into potential alternatives and looking at Surgeon Creek Road again. And so this is the profile.

And so on this side of the screen would be where it's joining the highway. This would be going back into the community. And you can just see this complete dip as it approaches the highway. One, that's, you know, it's always nice to not be coming off the highway at such a steep approach, but also it's potentially an easier problem to solve, right? We modeled filling in and raising this alignment of this road And up to 100-year flood, it was maintaining passage without any inundation.

And so filling in Sergeant Creek Road was an alternative that really tackled that first risk at a lower cost. And we also took a look at then throwing a floodplain, a horizontal floodplain culvert on in the middle of this road to further increase flood conveyance and see if that reduced flows. It did reduce flows in the area, but just filling the road as well reduced any flow and inundation on top of the road up to the 100-year event. So also just high value to, to be thinking about changing the alignment of the road.

We also looked at increasing flood conveyance on the highway, and I know that that would be a conversation between the borough and DOT, but really increasing the capacity of The ability to move flood flows through the dam when we're in these higher events really will improve the ability for the whole system going up farther into the waters where private landowners are to be able to also function physically and be moving their sediment and moving their flow through. And so having conversations and advocating with the highway reconstruction to be able to increased flood conveyance would be having those conversations about floodplain flows. And we modeled that and we saw a reduction in flood flows in the 5, 10, and 50-year for the highway or for the Sergeant Creek Road. But as we kind of looked at the 100 and 500-year, there would be— need to be maybe a little bit more conveyance to reduce those flows so that the Sergeant Creek Road wasn't overtopping. So this is just another look of the floodplain culverts that we modeled with the existing infrastructure.

And then kind of the outside. So I had shown you the, the area we were able to collect terrain data that we could have high confidence in this, but a known concern and a big importance was also the loss of property and flooding, and especially on the dark side of Russian River. And so We did look at further benefit-cost analysis and just as a mitigation effort looking at guide banks, like armored guide banks that are on the outside of bankfull at these locations, really forcing the channel to— forcing the channel and the flows away from private landowners. And this, I would say, is more of a temporary fix as the systems would over time and, you know, it might take 30, 40 years, but the dynamic nature is they would start to somehow change their alignment where they could start to hit lower than the guide bank. And so, you know, if you could put an armored guide bank along this whole section, maybe that would be something that would give you a longer lifespan, but definitely a pricey option as The size of the material would be a big financial factor, but if you were able to subsidize that material or if the borough had material that would work for that, you know, it could, could change that conversation completely.

But we did want to look a little farther at that and looking at those spots back to this photo where, you know, there has been some over-straightening. And so maybe guide banks are a solution or maybe with additional funding, you know, you'd be able to come in here and maybe increase sinuosity to reduce the velocity that's hitting at some of these banks, but I think further investigation would really need to be had to understand exactly how flows are moving up here. But we did size out some Armour Bank locations, and I think that that is something that, yeah, will have to be looked at a little bit further to understand the the full influence of that decision. But we talked those alternatives and we looked at a benefit-cost analysis to really understand if, you know, these high consequential risks we're looking at would be able to be fixed in a way that allowed us to have confidence in our return. And so raising Sergeant Creek Road without a floodplain culvert was a 4.

That's a pretty low cost for a very high reward of maintaining access to the community. Looking at it with a floodplain culvert, just because of the complexity and additional construction costs and some maintenance costs, that lowered the number to 2.96, but still above 1, so still returning as an official project to complete. And then looking at the floodplain culverts in the highway, that returned also higher than 1 at a 2.03, and advocating that these, you know, first few options really are beneficial to the whole community and would have a return that would make the investment worth it. And so all these numbers are pretty broad numbers as this was an H&H analysis and not a design and we don't have a lot of the fine-tuned numbers for quantities or for cost dialed in or even for the design. So this next number I don't want it to scare anyone off but looking at the cost of what it would be to just build these armored banks if the material needed to be fully purchased gave us a number of 0.22.

So below the 1. Ratio that we're hitting off on for these BCRs. So that really was looking at the percent loss of property based off of the 2024 taxes for those properties that we're seeing reduction, and, and then the costs associated with the construction and maintenance of a building guide bank such as this. And so Something that needs a lot more fine-tuning as quantities or prices or locations or a design comes into play. So this number could definitely change in the future.

But that was kind of what we had— what we looked at. And so bringing us all back to the process of where we are, right? This hydrologic and hydrologic analysis. It's really shown that— it's shown that Sergeant Creek Road is of high importance to address for, you know, health and public safety and environmental safety of the area and that the bridges are functioning, you know, quite well and can handle up to the 500-year flood, but they are definitely seeing some shear stress and some higher velocities where there could be some compromise to the embankments or the infrastructure, but also that some of those flows in those higher events would really not be passable for any kind of aquatic organism. And so advocating to the state DOT as well as ADF&G that increasing flood conveyance is not just for properties and for the community, it's also for the fish species.

And aquatic organisms that are in that system. And so advocating for increased flood conveyance, whether that be at the bridge or along the road, is really what this analysis pushes. And it also pushes for looking at a larger watershed, having some more data, whether that's LiDAR or additional terrain, to really look at the larger watershed processes occurring. So that we can understand what's happening higher up in the waters where some of those landowner houses are being affected. But ultimately, that's the nature of living in a river delta and a depositional zone that's highly dynamic is that a high influence or a high capital cost would have to be put into kind of building something that would reduce the erosion and the flooding that maybe is occurring in those areas.

And so taking all that information taking it to FEMA or to, you know, any of other places where you can start to secure funding to address some of these flood concerns that are going to increase the safety for the neighborhood and hopefully the— in the long run protect land or improve the processes of the rivers so that they have a little bit more stability and there can be a little bit more higher confidence in how they're going to behave under different flood events. And so that is kind of— I had a much longer presentation that I tried to shorten, so I hope I didn't speak too fast or zip over anything too quickly. But yeah, I'd love to just thank you all for being here and open the floor for questions. Thank you for the presentation. Any discussion or questions?

Jess?

On there?

Bo? I guess just more discussion-based for looking at those potential solutions. You know, it seems looking at the cost-benefit analysis, you know, one thing we have a lot of here is access to rock fill material. That seems to be the most cost-effective approach, not just for the project itself, but long-term maintenance, that would be— without having a lot of information on what that would actually look like. That seems to be the more promising option of those presented, but not for me to decide.

I just think that's something that we could easily manage here long-term. And I think the rock that she's talking about is armor rock, larger rock, not gravel. Correct. Where does that—. So that gets expensive.

If you could educate me on maybe where does that come from? It's drilled and shot typically. And, uh, when you're wanting to produce armor rock, your, your blast pattern is different in order to get bigger rocks. So it's an intentional thing. So something we couldn't source here locally?

You can source it, but, oh, so just the cost of Producing it, gotcha. Okay. Producing it, sorting it, and placing it. That's why it gets very expensive. Okay.

Thank you for that. Yeah, I thought I maybe had a—. What's that, Jess? I was going to zoom into just some armor rock just so we know what we're kind of talking about size-wise, right? Sergeant Creek, that—.

Sergeant Creek entrance. Very funny—. Bigger rock there. Armor bank that the DOT had installed. But yeah, that's the type of size sizing of the material that we'd really be looking at.

So unless it was getting removed from somewhere else where it wasn't needed, it could—. It's likely to be a pricey cost. Larry. Just two quick questions. Is this report being transmitted to the state of Alaska so that they could use the information in their bridge designs?

Yes, I will maybe field that to Amy, but I know that Amy and the DOT have been conversing and have been data sharing. So, yeah, I believe this is being supplied to the DOT. Is that correct, Amy?

Yes, ma'am, they have it.

Go ahead, Larry. The second question I had is— maybe the mayor can answer it. The cost of this kind of mitigation, if you will, would that fall on the service district or the borough?

Well, probably neither. It's more of the private property owners along the edge that are being impacted. The service district could, with the approval of all the property owners, could choose to tax themselves to help, uh, help with that. But the borough, borough owns the part of the river. I think the Coast Guard owns part of the river, and I don't remember if there's a third entity in there.

I guess I'll give Jess a little bit of the history that I've experienced over the years living here. Basically, in the '60s, '70s, Wasn't until it started a little bit in the '80s and '90s for sure it started moving. We didn't have near as much erosion taking place on the sides because basically in the mid to late '30s and up until the mid-'40s, basically Russian River and Sergeant Creek were the source of gravel for the an entire Navy base that was built. And when that stopped, it seemed to start meandering more because you had gravel coming down, building up, and then like any delta, it moves off to the sides on the low points. And I realize, you know, part of my statement here is I see part of the solution be to create rock traps, what I call rock traps, where you're digging out part of the rock so when it starts flooding, the water has a place to go.

And it actually— you get that rock buildup and you clean those traps out every so many years and get it flowing where it was. I remember on the Russian Creek, it did not flow on either side. It flowed straight down the center where you can see that open area of gravel. From the bridge. So, and as that built up, it flowed off to the side.

So, you know, that whole area is a large gravel base from the fairgrounds to the rendezvous there. So, yeah, I think, yeah, you nailed it. I think that sediment transport in this area that has gotten a little wonky, you know, as stream power has been taken from the active channel, which would be able to then transport some more of those larger sediment to kind of its proper final resting location. As the channel has braided and split, you're losing some of that stream power. You're having a buildup of larger material in an area where typically more of it would be getting transported downriver.

Yeah, I think a lot of The stream power functionality has been altered in that area. And so I think this study was due to limitations in data collection, was really more centralized around the bridges and the roads. But looking at the overall picture, it does explain the fact that there has been a a lot of influence that has altered the way that material is able to move through this system, especially looking at Russian River more than Sargent Creek. And so, you know, there are, you know, outside of the risks that we look at or outside of the alternatives that we looked at, just not being able to model what we don't have data for. But yes, certainly, you know, having sinks, having sinks for sediment or going in and looking at the longitudinal profile as we get higher into the system and seeing if we have some slopes that really aren't doing service to the overall health of the creek, right, of the river.

And so, you know, is it dredging to get material to move around, or is it dredging to get a more stabilized channel in there that's able to then actually transport that material properly so that it's ending in a location that's not going to be problematic for the landowners? Exactly. Yeah. And I realize that's beyond the scope of your project, but I can tell that you've noticed the same thing. Yes, yes, certainly.

And I think that conversation, which is one that's happening in a lot of parts of the state, I'm working on Moose Creek, which is a system up in Sutton near Chickaloon Village Traditional Council. It's been mined for coal and they've put railroad up the valley a couple times and gone and really, you know, made a bit of a mess back there, and sediment transport is really an issue there. And so they're having these big buildups of these mid-channel bars that are then splitting the flow and so reducing stream power, right? Exactly. And kind of creating these unnaturally braided systems, which we're probably seeing, you know, more braided flow in Russian River than what we would think a stable state for the river looks like, and Really addressing that is a large project and a large analysis that needs to be had with some different type of data.

I think the conversation that this report and this analysis has definitely brought up is that there is kind of messed up hydrology. I think everyone knew it, and so I was putting just a little bit of a detailed lens on the fact that there is a lot of influence that could be had farther up in the Russian River system to be able to be moving sediment in a way that I think would be more advantageous for the landowners of the area. And so I agree with you. I think that there are some solutions, and it is a sediment solution that probably, you know, if— you know, having jurisdiction, I don't— with the fact that these are anadromous streams, and so, you know, Active Flow, ADF&G, really has a big say in how you monkey around in these systems. But I think they are being more lenient and allowing, you know, more in-channel work to kind of fix these systems and heal some of the headwater so that you're not seeing as much of this negative influence down where you have infrastructure and homes.

So all that to say, I do agree with you, and I think there are other more extreme alternatives that could look at, especially, maybe it's not so obvious, but I think, you know, we can see really—. Right through there where you're running that cursor. Yeah, unnaturally straight section that comes into this mid-channel bar right here, right? We've got split flows and that is, you know, as we get into depositional areas and get out to the coastal front, like that is where we're going to see more braided and more braids in the system and you'll have multi-threaded flows, but the problem is, I think it's happening where it really should still have its active flow channelized so that it can be moving material through here. Yeah, when it used to flow in the center there, we didn't have these problems.

But as—. Yeah. As that sediment got deposited over the years of it not being removed, it changed and moved to the sides. So, yeah. And so there's the human labor way of like, you know, yeah, maybe taking out that material and centralizing that flow so that you don't experience such high flows on a spread-out level, a plane.

But there is also then the element of, you know, figuring out if you don't want to do maintenance, maybe a higher investment now of figuring out what how you could get the river to start doing the work for you, right? Exactly. Maybe increasing or removing some wood from some of these in-channel bars, right, reducing their stability and using that wood to then increase some of the sinuosity. So if we increase the sinuosity, you know, increase— it's decreasing the slope and, and reducing some of the power. And so yeah, I wish, you know, I had some of these alternatives or some of the analysis for higher up in the watershed because I do think, you I think that's a big driving factor for some of these landowners over here.

I think a LiDAR would allow you guys to maybe carry out that type of analysis, especially if it was green LiDAR, which penetrates water so you can get a real understanding of what's going on below the flows. [Speaker:JIM] What I'm hearing you say is that it would be best that we do some more analysis upstream. So that will help. If for these landowners and for overall health, and I would really say maybe overall health even more for the Russian River than Sargent Creek. Correct.

Yeah, I think that there's been a lot of influence up there, and if you wanted that system to get into a healthy spot where it's functioning more as it would pre, pre so much influence and monkeying around, then yeah, that's—. That is something I would suggest. Jess, Larry has a question. Larry? Yeah, I appreciate your presentation and the discussion.

I was wondering, are, are you planning to do the same presentation out at the Bells Flats, Sergeant Creek communities so that they can understand exactly what is going on? It seems like I noticed in your report that they gave a lot of valuable input, you know, face-to-face. And I was hoping that there's some kind of face-to-face review with that community out there so they understand the complete study. I would be happy to share this same presentation and have this conversation and open up the floor for questions. I'll leave that in Amy and Chris's hands, but— Yeah, it'd be great to catch back up and kind of finalize conversation with them, but I know how much goes into getting a lot of people in the same room.

So I will say that I am open for that and leave it to the borough. Okay, Jared. Thank you, and thanks once again, Jess, for the very thorough presentation. I really appreciate it. It helped explain a lot from this 130-page 30-page report.

I have a question about the FEMA toolkit. The study says that the full functionality of the toolkit wasn't used. So I'm thinking next steps, you know, in trying to fund this project, if we pursue FEMA funding, will these BCRs stand as is, or are we going to have to do another full recalculation using, you know, the FEMA's full toolkit just to meet their standards? Yeah, I think you could take the information that you have from these VCRs and put them in. One reason why I said that the toolkit really couldn't be utilized is there was no way to set like a single road in and single road out, and so I felt I— it was undervaluing the, um, I would say like the severity of the nature of that road failing.

And so, um, it would account— essentially kept accounting for the fact that there would be another way to go to where you needed to get to. And so, um, I thought that the cost that it was saying it would inflict on the community was not accurate. And so that plus the, um, some of the other components in there that are a little interesting, um, kind of pushed me away from using that. But that being said, I don't think that FEMA, um, like I've, I know that people have kind of used that loosely, um, while having backup data on their own. So you can use this, um, kind of preliminary BCR and submit that a part of your, as a part of your application, and FEMA will we'll work through that with you.

And so I have seen that in the past.

So. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. Any other questions or discussion? Jess, thank you very much for the presentation.

Yeah, of course. Thank you guys for making the time. And I did not have a slide with my email on it, but you guys have the report and I believe my contact's in there. So if any other questions come up, now or in the future, um, yeah, please do reach out. I am in full support of seeing this work get to good use and securing some additional funding for you guys.

So, um, whatever I can do to help, I, I'm here. Thank you. We'll stay in touch. Okay, great. Bye-bye, guys.

Good night. Good night.

Okay, the next item we have on agenda items is review of the assembly meeting calendar for year 2026, and our clerk Nova will get this one.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the assembly. Ordinance number FY 2018-12 states that the assembly is to set and adopt a its meeting calendar for the following year by resolution. The code states that the assembly shall meet in the Borough Assembly Chambers in the Borough Administration Building, um, and meetings are to commence at 6:30 PM on the first and third Thursdays of each month, uh, or such other time and place as, as may be designated in the notice of the meeting. If the assembly wishes to deviate meeting on the first and third Thursdays of each month in the assembly chambers, it may do so as long as we notice the change meetings. If any of the regular meeting falls on a holiday or holiday eve, the assembly may advance, postpone, or cancel meetings as necessary.

And when the lack of quorum for holding a meeting occurs, or when there is no little or no business to be considered, the assembly may cancel such meeting. Meeting and hear its business at the next regular meeting. So the calendar is before you. You may make changes to it, and we'll make sure those are reflected. Any questions or discussion at this time?

Steve.

I'm a little confused on June not having a meeting on both the 11th and the 18th. Reason is usually in June after we've got done with the budget, we only have one meeting in June. Okay.

Any other? Jared? My only question is that work session on December 10th. Um, it's usually that second week of December, which is AML, and, um, the, the mayor and the borough manager always go to that one, but we haven't seen a lot of assembly member participation. So maybe it's not a big deal and we can't—.

I think the work session— I think it is because you have 3 new assembly members coming on and they'll have that, and they need to go to the newly elected, and at best if they stayed for the whole thing. Yeah, it's very educational. I know, it's—. Yes. So I think that may want to push that meeting from the 10th to either Monday the 14th or the 15th.

Yeah, I, I would agree with— yeah, with that, um, 14th or the 15th. So we're moving the, um, December 10th work session to the 15th. Yeah, yeah, because this year we moved it to the, to the 16th. So yes, I would, I would recommend that. Thank you.

Solely noted. Any other discussion or questions? Seeing none, then we'll move on to, um, review of the attorney hiring process, and that will be Amy.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

The current borough attorney's contract is set to expire on November 30th of this year. A request for proposals for legal services went out on August 8th, 2025, and the bids are due actually tomorrow. Uh, we're hoping to discuss with you tonight who you would like to be, um, on the committee to score the RFP or if you want all assembly members to see all of them. And then when it's convenient for you to conduct interviews, if there's a preference to conduct the interviews during a work session or you want special work sessions set up for that. And then how you would like to do that, if you want to have people come here and meet them in person or do it electronically.

Uh, Nova and Megan made a proposed timeline. It's on the second page in the packet tonight. We're obviously at the September 25th, uh, proposals are due tomorrow. Um, you will see the copies of the RFPs go out, um, October 2nd if that's what you wish. I think we did talk in agenda sending about who, um, may or may not be on there, but we wanted to get the assembly's wishes on who you wanted to review those.

Yeah, one of the things that we talked about was all of the assembly reviewing and scoring them. We're going to have new members, and I think it's, it's best to get them a little familiar with the process. So I'm not sure the dates, but I'd leave that up to the clerk and the manager to arrange that. I remember what we talked about in agenda setting made sense, so Scott, do we know how many have applied at this point? I know that there's at least one, but I haven't— they go into the safe and we leave them there until we open.

So, okay, if there's a great number of them, it's going to be confusing for everybody. So you don't think that'll happen though? No. Okay. And the second question I have is that When Mr. Sherrod was on the assembly, he complained a number of times about our attorney's consideration of things, and he had a different vision.

Is there a way to have an attorney involved in this to kind of help vet?

So part of the RFP is for them to talk about their experience inside of the government sector. I know one of the firms that is applying, one of our previous lawyers is affiliated with, and so it's not going to be hard for us to track down their, their record or their people or get recommendations from folks. I don't— I mean, it would be weird for us to involve our current lawyer and getting another lawyer. So, I mean, he did actually help us with RFPs and make sure that everything was covered because he is the most familiar with the way we do business. But I mean, we can do anything you want for the right price, Mr. Smiley, right?

So we would have to— it would be hiring outside counsel. Thank you. Any other? Dave. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

My experience with elected officials evaluating bids has not been has not been incredibly positive. So for my opinion, I think especially if we have a number of submissions, having qualified staff who are accountable to the process, conducting a bid evaluation and providing a bid tally sheet to the assembly with their top-ranked candidates for the assembly to consider and then decide to interview the, the top candidates would be my preference, but I recognize I'm one vote. That's what we talked about. I would very much like to include the assessor and the finance director in that because they are dealing even more than I am with the attorney on a day-to-day basis. So I think that their opinion would be very much appreciated.

Yeah, the intent was— that was the discussion that Jared and I had.

Further questions? Discussion? We'll move forward, see what we get for proposals. Dora's got her hand up. Amy?

Okay. So, okay, so then moving on, would anybody want a break before we do packet review?

All right, packet review. We have awards and presentations. There's a presentation of the award for for Employee of the Quarter and proclamation declaring the month of October National Community Planning Month.

Public hearing. Mr. Mayor, if I may, we did receive a request for a proclamation for the Filipino American—. I was just looking, didn't see that on here. Yep. Would it be possible to—.

Yes, it's possible. I have no problem. Thank you. Please do. Um, public hearings, we've got a bunch of those.

First one is Assembly review of the State of Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office beverage dispensary liquor license number 3299, transfer of ownership from El Chicano Incorporated, doing business as El Chicano Mexican Restaurant, to Antonia Bravo and transfer of location from 402 Marineway, Suite 100, to 202 Reznov Drive, with new restaurant endorsement application. Uh, NOVA staff report, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the assembly. As you probably remember, last week you voiced non-objection to the renewal of this license. This time, what is before you is the transfer of ownership and the transfer of location.

So they're transferring the license from the Marineway location to where the restaurant is right now, the, um, the one on Reznov. The one on Reznov also has some issues with fire code and sprinklers, but What I understand is that they're work— they're working actively with the fire marshal on this one. So you have 3 options that is before you knowing that information. You can either voice non-objection, you can voice objection, or you can voice objection with conditions. So those are the options available.

So if you do voice objection or voiced objection with conditions, after that meeting we're going to notify the applicant licensee and let them know that it's going to be— they're going to be given the opportunity to defend the application before you. So if that happens, you're going to be seeing this again before you on October 16th. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Any questions at this time? Steve?

I'm not sure if it's a question or more statement, is I would be in favor of protests with conditions stating that they— it would be non-protest if the fire marshal conditions were satisfied.

That's my feelings on the subject. Okay, any other discussion or questions? We'll move on to the next one. Um, public hearing is ordinance number FY 2026-7, amending Kodiak Island Borough Code, Title 2, Administration and Personnel, Chapter 2.10, Appointment of Officers, Commissions, Committees, Section 2.10.030, Compensation for Regulatory and Quasi-Judicial Boards and Commissions. Staff report.

Amy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The Board of Equalization for Evaluation typically meets twice a year in May to hear evaluation appeals and approve the rule for certification. The board consists of 5 members and 2 alternate members, each serving 3-year terms. According to borough records, the last time this board's compensation was reviewed and increased was 2008.

The board chair is requesting the compensation amount be raised from $100 to $175 per meeting. Thank you. Any questions? Seeing none, we'll move on to the next one, which is ordinance number FY 2026-8. This is public hearing amending Kodiak Island Borough Code Title 3 Revenue and Finance, Chapter 3.35, Real Property Tax, Section 3.35.030, Real and Personal Property Exempted from Taxation Regarding Good Cause Appeal Hearings.

Staff report, Amy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This ordinance is the procedure that we currently use. However, it has never been put properly into KIB code. So this— the changes that you see on the next few pages in the packet put the process we currently use into the code.

If you have any specific questions, our assessor, Seema Groot, is here tonight to answer them. Any questions? Seeing none, we'll move on to the next ordinance. It's on a public hearing, is FY 2026-9, amending Kodiak Island Borough Code Title 3. Revenue and Finance, Chapter 3.35, Real Property Tax, Section 3.35.040, Method of Assessment Regarding Correction of the Assessment Roll.

Staff report, Amy. In order to come in line with Senate Bill 179, which describes specific information for the assessor's roles in assisting the public during the appeal period after notice of values are mailed and how errors and omissions may be corrected. We have two sections of changes. The first section clarifies the assessor's role in determining full and true value notices, and the second section clarifies how errors or omissions will be handled when someone comes in to appeal. Again, our assessor is here tonight if you have specific questions on the changes.

Any questions or discussion? Seeing none, move on to the last public hearing. Which is Ordinance Number 2026-10, determining the disposition of tax foreclosed properties acquired by clerk's deed in 2024 and establishing intention to surplus and sell said properties by finding that a public need does not exist for the properties and authorizing the properties for immediate disposal. Staff report, Amy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

On July 12th, 2024, the borough acquired a clerk's deed for 4 properties via the foreclosure process established by borough code and state statutes. Of those 4 properties, only 2 currently remain unredeemed. Those 2 unredeemed properties were presented to the Planning and Zoning Commission during their August 13th work session and August 20th regular meeting, where they were determined that a public need does not exist. This ordinance accepts the Planning and Zoning Commission's findings, classifies the properties as surplus to the borough, gives permission for the properties to be sold, and establishes the conditions of sale. The conditions of sale set in the ordinance are that the sale is conducted by a sealed bid auction.

The bid shall contain a 10% deposit based on the minimum bid amount listed in the bid packet. A minimum bid is the amount owed to the borough including the cost of sale. The remaining bid balance must be paid within 30 days of bid acceptance. And the highest bidder takes ownership. If the property remains unsold after being offered for sale by sealed bid, the property may be listed online for sale to any approved party for the minimum bid.

A sale date has not been set. If you have any questions about these details, our finance director, Dora Cross, is here tonight to help. Any questions or discussion? Seeing none, we'll move on to Nexus resolutions. Resolution number FY 2026-6, authorizing disposal by lease of a portion of USS Sturtey 25369 Lot 1, remainder Woman's Bay.

Staff report, Amy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This action requests consideration for disposing of a parcel of borough land commonly known as the Kodiak Fairgrounds. The fairgrounds property has been under a 55-year lease that was assumed by the borough from the state of Alaska when the property ownership was transferred. The original lease is expiring on November 3rd, 2025, and the lessee Kodiak Rodeo and State Fair Incorporated has requested a new lease.

To enter into a new lease, Borough Code 18.20.030 requires consideration of the disposal of land via lease by the Planning and Zoning Commission, and if approved, consideration by the Assembly. A vote in favor of this resolution will approve the disposal of the land directs the manager to negotiate a lease. In your packet tonight, we did not have an actual copy of the lease, so I placed a copy of the actual lease in front of you so you could see it. The fairgrounds, or the, the rodeo and State Fair, asked for a longer lease than we would normally do because that allows them access to grant money. So we are looking at a 25-year lease period with a 5-year— we can step in and look at it and make sure that that rental rate is still appropriate.

The rental rate is $500 a year, which they easily make up by renting to the Kodiak Island Raceway. Thank you. Any questions? Dave. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Um, I'm not opposed to this. The caveat is, um, and we frequently talk about cost to our taxpayers by the decisions we make up here. Um, at a minimum, I think a fair market value assessment so that when we approve our budget every year, we're including that as an in-kind contribution to the Alaska State Fair and Rodeo for the difference, if that's going to be the, the will of the assembly. So that we are more— we are transparent in our operations, that taxpayers know the value of the donation of below-market lease terms that are being offered.

Jarrod. I would second also what Dave just said, if you need consensus for that request. I think staff puts together a pretty useful spreadsheet of some of the nonprofits when nonprofit funding comes around and kind of the assessed value of the land if they actually own land and buildings. So I think it would be very useful to us come budget time also. Amy?

Is it safe to assume that you would like to see that for, like, the gun range at Saloni Creek and the VFW property so that if we are doing it for one, we are doing it for all so we can kind of show them all? Okay. Okay, any further discussion or questions?

Seeing none, we'll move on to the manager's comments.

Good evening. Uh, for the manager's report tonight, uh, we— this week we got our business fisheries tax payment in. You'll see it in the last column for fiscal year '26 where we got $810,468.80. We had budgeted $900,000. Uh, Dora also included the '22 through '25 payments, so you can see how those payments have changed over the years.

This week I attended the pre-environmental review meeting with the Alaska Department of Transportation for the Chuniak Highway resurfacing project for miles 15 to 31. Uh, that has a, a long history of being on the STIP for '24 to '27, but then coming off the STIP and then being put in 3 phases and then being none of the phases on. But this was encouraging that they are talking about it. And this, because it was environmental, it mostly talked about how they were going to ensure that the ocean side of the highway remained stable and did not fall into the ocean. So it was way over my head, but very interesting.

We had a meeting this week with the city of Kodiak deputy city manager and finance director about the Deckard Technologies software for short-term rental compliance. That went very well. The city is interested. We're meeting with Deckard Technologies next week so that the both of us can review the modules together. We're gonna get this.

The issue that we're having is that the city already has a business license program, so we're trying to decide if short-term rentals owners are going to have to apply for a business license, then apply, you know, be registered inside of this system, have a state— like all the— so we're working out the qualifications and what they're going to have to do and what steps they'll have to do. But this system will track it for us. They can register for us and they can track accommodations tax, or we would know how— they would know how many nights that each individual short-term rental is being booked. Because they constantly check day after day and then they report back to us so we have an idea of what that should look like. So that's interesting.

And so that's scheduled for next week. I attended the strategic planning for the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce this week. I've been ex officio on that board since 2017, and I'm on the 5th director there. So it's interesting to watch how it changes, and it's very— they are very forward-thinking now and have some great things planned for the future, so that's interesting. Um, at our biweekly meeting between Engineering Facilities and the school district today, we talked about what was left at Northstar for the school district to take care of before that building could officially get transferred to us.

We've been having problems with that fire panel and setting off alarms constantly, um, so now it's alarming in the building but not sending out because our fire departments were coming to Northstar over and over again. I think they have it narrowed down to a— something in the office that needs replaced. That system is old enough that they had to buy it off of eBay, but it's been bought. It has to get programmed in Anchorage. It'll get installed here.

The only other thing is they're replacing some of the lamps in the parking lot, and they have a lift coming on Monday to do that. After those two things are done, that will be the end of the list of things the school district promised us they would fixed before the handover, so that should be coming very soon. We've already— I've already signed the form for the utilities coming over, so we've been paying for the utilities since the beginning of August. In Community Development, we just had our presentation from River Focus, so staff will be working to close out that contract, complete the final reports, and submit final reimbursement requests. Community Development also worked with Alaska DOT on a on the Kodiak-Rezanov Drive resurface from West Marine Way to the airport.

They just were asked to review zoning and make sure that there were no issues, and they did not find any. In assessing, we have 15 applications for either senior citizens or disabled veterans undetermined. CIMA has senior citizen and disabled village trips with CANA scheduled for the week of November 17th. There is an in-town application coffee hour with CANA scheduled for December 3rd and December 10th, and there's in-town application periods at the Senior Center on November 19th, December 19th, and January 13th. We heard back from the court about the Alutiiq Heritage Foundation hearing.

It is scheduled for July 27th through 29th of 2026. Fieldwork, uh, Sessing is working in on villages and remote areas this this year. Unfortunately, the Port Lions trips for the week were— had to be postponed because we're in the week of the Tyler software conversion go-live, and the final boat trip was canceled due to weather. For the Tyler conversion, both with finance and assessing, staff is continuing to familiarize themselves with the software. They're meeting with Tyler almost every day this week to try to go through things.

Finance has decided we're going to run parallel systems through December to make sure that we don't miss anything, because it wasn't a flip the switch and we're on new software and everything went well. But the Tyler staff is going to be in Kodiak to help us out from September 29th to October 3rd. You should see them here next week. We'll introduce them to you. If you paid your property taxes, um, late, you have a full payment deadline on Wednesday, October 15th.

If you were going to pay in two payments and you did not make it in before the August 15th first half, your full payment will be due on October 15th. If you paid your first half on time, you have until November 15th. Property, Dora put in something telling you about that parallel system. We're also having another property access module go live in early October, so it's a kind of a phased-in approach. Um, we had auditors here all last week.

They left on Friday. Now all of their questions were able to fulfill remotely. In information technology, IT has been working with Tyler Migration for assessing— in finance, they're assisting the clerks with their municipal election support, finalizing the server configurations for the landfill, and working with prospective bidders on the Alaska State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program that was awarded to the borough IT department. Also Last week you approved a contract for storage from USI. It was about $52,000.

We went to go buy that and USI does not carry it anymore. So we're going out for re— that, you know, it happens. We go out, we're going out for more bids. And so you'll see that contract come back before the assembly here in the next few weeks. I tentatively put it on the October 9th regular meeting, assuming that we can get the quotes in by then.

For engineering facilities, uh, I think we told you about the small fire in the egress, uh, stairwell over at the KFRC. Nodak Electrical, who is our contractor, is going to be here on September 29th to start replacing all the light fixtures, um, in that area. Our industrial pump Alaska order is moving forward. The new shipment date is, um, December 18th. They are actually going to the manufacturing site to conduct a quality assurance and quality control.

Since we ordered 5 of those pumps, we want them all to be correct when we get here. Uh, we were in a meeting the other day and Cody said he has been here for the, the purchase of 4 pumps and 3 out of 4 were wrong when they got here. They had the right name and the right inventory number, but the pump itself was wrong. So these are coming all the way from Texas. And so we are going to have someone check on to make sure that we are not paying for shipping back and forth and we're getting the right thing out of the landfill.

The Regional Solid Waste Management Plan update is due on December 12th. Uh, ENF has issued a request for quotes for the fence repairs that you've been hearing about. The work is anticipated to be done by October 31st. That will be in line with what Alaska Fish and Game told us we had to do. The Alaska Department of Environmental, uh, Conservation conducted an inspection of both the landfill and the leachate treatment plant on the 17th, and we're awaiting the results results.

We're expecting to get them next week. Uh, collaborative assessment of the LTB took place just on Tuesday with the director of wastewater from the municipality of Anchorage, Tetra Tech Wastewater Engineers, and the LTP staff. Uh, we've been learning the history of how we got to where we are with the qualification we're trying to meet. So when the water comes out of the leachate treatment plant, it is supposed to be a drinking water standard, and that was determined because the water goes into the bay and the hatchery is so close by. Um, there are a lot of feelings around that, that perhaps it could not be that stringent.

It could be stormwater because stormwater is also going into the ocean and that would make our goalposts move a little bit closer. Um, we haven't been able to run the Leachate Treatment Plant for a while because it is just messing everything up. Our next step there is going to be add chemicals to the pretreatment plant. So we've been working with Carl. Carl has a royal who is the lead out there.

Carl has a lot of really good ideas that haven't been listened to over the last few years. And so we are going to try what Carl wants to do because I just can't think of anyone who knows more right now than he does. So giving him some control over his own plant. So we'll see how that goes. I will say, though, we have testing due in 2 weeks.

We are going to do the testing in 2 weeks before we make any significant changes. Because then we have 60 days to get things back under control after changes. Uh, the preparation of the exterior at the Chuníac School is complete. The primer is done. Uh, we have an inspection of the primer on the 29th.

Um, we haven't had the best weather for painting, and so we are extending the deadline that till the end of October, which was a no-cost change order. As long as the inspection on Monday goes well, we'll be able to start painting. It's the same color. We didn't ask them, and they were like, oh, it's the same, it's going to be the same color. So for future school projects, we're going to talk about color earlier in the process.

For our multi-facility elevator modernization, both elevator systems have an estimated ship date of mid-October. We expect a minimum of 3 weeks for all the stuff to get here in Kodiak, so we're anticipating parts to begin arriving in mid-November. We've spoke with both the hospital and the middle school school about who's going to get priority and how that's going to work. Uh, we have several small projects going on. Dark Lake cleanup, um, is supposed to happen again over the weekend.

If you've seen it lately, it has grown significantly. We have a projects office stair replacement, uh, happened, uh, into the now YMCA side of that building. Uh, we're waiting the building official's inspection report before we call that done. We have a bid, um, an invitation to bid out for the Mill Bay stairs replacement, the landfill scale shack platform, Sergeant Creek Park tables, and a third piece of equipment to be placed out there, and Borough Park table replacement, all for the spring-summer of 2026. We'll also be adding either Old Harbor or Port Lyons to that, but we're bidding these really early instead of at the last minute, so contractors have time to get supplies and get their ducks in a row before they have to head out.

So this is a— this is something that Cody has done. We have a 3-year project plan, so we have a design phase, a bid phase, a work phase. And so this is— you'll see this kind of early bidding from here on out, as long as we can keep him as our project manager. And you have a list of upcoming committee and board meetings there. And then attached to the report tonight, you have our September Projects Office report, the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council summary for the September Board of Directors meeting that just happened last week, and we have our first federal lobbyist report of the year from Sebastian O'Kelly attached.

And I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. Questions? Scott. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] That's kind of unusual. Did they figure out what caused it?

Yes, and so we thought that it was the fixtures, and so we had, um, we're going to replace the fixtures, but now we're also thinking it might be the bulbs. When we bought a bulk batch of bulbs, we bought them for the cheapest amount of money that we could find them, and all of the stuff that has caught fire, both here in the building and over there are from the same batch. We contacted the manufacturer, no one else has reported issues, and so they're like, oh, it must be a bad batch, but it's not big enough problem to do, like, give you a refund or do a recall, so we're just going to bypass that and purchase new bulbs from, like, maybe a name brand we've heard of before. Good. Thank you.

Bo. Thank you. This is— I'm not sure how to approach this question other than there's increasing frustration about the Dark Lake dumpster dumping, illegal dumping scenario. I understand that that's a constant cleanup project by staff, so this is by no means a criticism of staff, but I understand that there's an attempt to put a camera out there. Fail because someone stole it, if I'm— if I understand that correctly.

But how do we— and this is a collective how do we question— how do we address this? This seems to be getting worse. I don't know what options are available for us to address that, but it's just becoming an increasing problem and people are getting more and more frustrated. And I agree with them. Spending additional taxpayer funds to to clean up garbage that folks are too lazy to take to the dump for free is really frustrating for everybody.

But I'm, without knowing what kind of solutions we have, I'm just kind of just forwarding the frustration. Amy? We've had a lot of different attempts, not just lately, but over the years. We used to have our code enforcement officer and one of our ENF employees go over there and sit there 8 hours a day. Like, they would switch out.

We had people there and we could get— keep it clean every day. They would then wait for those employees to leave at the end of the day and go dump there. And it has been traditionally a green waste place, and now that has grown into the monster disaster that you see today. So we actually have a contractor coming over the weekend to clean it up. It's not our staff.

We just don't if we want to do maintenance, which I really want to do maintenance, we can't have our maintenance staff and we don't have any laborers right now. So we're trying to keep our maintenance staff in doing maintenance. And so as having those dumpsters back there where there isn't a road going by and there's no, no, no one watching, although I've heard several times, even we had a city council member come up or come in today and— or yesterday and took pictures of, oh, I was out there and I just watched these people heave this stuff on and I told them that they could take it for free. And they're like, whatever. So, you know, she has pictures of the car and the license plate and she's going to send them to us.

Again, I don't have a code enforcement officer right now either. So I— one of the best solutions, it's not the cheapest solution, but I think is moving those dumpsters out of there, and I think we could build a fence along that whole road and just block that whole part off. If the community— and I know it's not everyone— but if the community can't fix that, it is a health and safety issue. There are houses all around there, and it— the pile today is embarrassingly large. So, um, that's good.

I mean, that's probably where we're going to be, is moving those out of there and moving them maybe back historical sites or finding new sites. It's not working. We've done social media, we've posted signs, we've put up storm fencing, we've said, you know, hey, please take it to the landfill, it's open 6 days a week, it's free for the first 265 pounds. I think the problem is that it's not free for contractors, and so some contractors are choosing to use that as their free dumping site instead of of taking out to the landfill and paying. And so, yeah, we can block it off and just keep it— keep people off of our land.

We can start doing citations for littering. I don't have an employee to do that right now, but that— I think that's probably our best tactics, is either blocking or start citing. Continue, Bo. Thank you. Well, without knowing what that would cost, it It seems like most other efforts have failed despite willingness to improve that scenario.

I don't know where— is that something that we need to place on an agenda? Is that an agenda item to look for— to look to fund that? Amy has been looking at it and she was going to bring information back to us when she was prepared. Okay, great. Thank you.

Larry. So if you did find somebody dumping there, what is the fine? I think it's $100, $300. Does anyone know? No one knows.

It progresses. It's like $100, $300, $1,000. I mean, it's a—. That's what I read. It's a progressing fine and then $1,000 every time after that.

Well, maybe we should increase the fine. And find some way with those houses around there to put up some cameras that could be protected a little bit. There isn't any houses right around there, so you'll have a problem. Scott, um, I think moving them and putting a fence around it, the area, is good. I mean, we had part of this kind of problem when it was off Salif, part of it when it was at the edge of Dark Lake there.

And then we moved them to this location where it's become really a big problem. But if you move those dumpsters out by Bayside Fire where the other dumpsters are, that's got roads on all sides, very visible, and it's going to help a lot. It's back in a hole where it is now, and the more visibility you have, the better. That's true. Bayside Fire would really like to get rid of the ones that they have, so I don't want to add more to there, but I I do think that that's a possible— like, I think that's a good solution, is finding new homes for those and fencing that off.

I don't— it doesn't seem like the warnings or the please asking or the funny memes or anything that we're doing is working. Well, we put them there for convenience for citizens, not for convenience of contractors, A. And B, with abuse, we don't have to do that. Move them to a place that is more convenient for us. And I am sorry that Bayside doesn't want them around.

I don't either. But who cares? Let's get it done. It is illegal dumping that is causing the problem. Dave.

Thanks. And to that, you know, I, again, as one assembly member, would be interested in a future project where we look at— I mean, I got a tech demo from Motorola Nestlé on what they can do with video surveillance, and it's amazing. You know, license plate readers, they've got AI, you know, this isn't a huge staff lift because their systems are now AI enabled where you look at that mattress and you click on it and you enter the command and it goes and searches all that footage to find where that mattress originated and, and creates a stitch for you. So, um, it wouldn't be terribly cheap, But I think it would be worth pursuing, you know, in the upcoming years, you know. And I think if it's true that we've got a small number of people creating a large problem, then, you know, if we have to go as far as a lawsuit or talk to the city about business licenses or other more drastic measures, then I'm in favor of it.

Any other questions? Jared. What Dave was just suggesting, maybe we should start your budget list of things that you would— last year you included at the end of your report. It was very helpful come budget time. I think that's item number 1.

I think we need to take care of it long before that, which is eliminating and moving it out of there. Amy? I think we talked about it, I think at agenda setting. I don't remember. I know that I talked to you, Mr. Mayor, but we were talking about how we're paying for this.

So it's quite costly to have a contractor come pay it. So we're going to track that and we're going to talk to Alaska Waste. When Alaska Waste was doing it, they— we totaled up that amount that it was going to cost And then once a year on every ratepayer's bill, there was a fee put in to divide that amongst all the users. And so that's what we're going to do again, if that works for Alaska Waste and we can do that. There is a cost to this, and that landfill fund that is screaming backwards cannot bear this.

And so, and it's not fair to the landfill fund. The general fund can't either. And we don't, and It's not fair for rate. So, and this will spread it out amongst all ratepayers. And maybe like if you get that extra $20 bill or whatever, you'll be like, why?

And maybe that will be the wake-up call to like not do that. I don't know. But I think when it comes to paying for that, we're going to put that on the individual ratepayers like we did before with the dumpster pad cleanup. Steve.

Um, I don't know how much difference it would make, and it wouldn't help with contractors that are dumping during the day and work hours, but has it been considered of possibly fencing and gating it off and shutting it at night, having an employee unlock and lock it so it's only open during the day? Because I know some of the residential people purposely go there in the evening to dumb things like mattresses. We could. I think we'd have to have an employee sit there all day and watch it.

And so, I mean, that's the— yeah, the same. Well, I realize an employee there all day is not practical, so yes, but I just think it might eliminate some if it were only open during daytime. I don't know whether it would do— how much of the problem it would take care of.

Yeah, I'm not sure. That is absolutely a possibility. That's hard to tell if it would be effective or not.

Any further questions? We'll move on to clerk's comments. Nova. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the assembly. Early voting is still available here in the Borough Assembly Chambers.

We're open from 10 AM to 4 PM, and it will close on Monday, October 6th. So 4 PM today, we have had 75 voters come in, um, who early voted. I highly recommend to those who have received their by-mail ballots, um, Chignak and all the villages, to take some time to fill them out, sign the certification, and get their signatures verified. Please send your ballots back in the mail at your earliest convenience. There's no postage necessary.

All ballots must be postmarked by October 7th, which is Election Day. We held our election training on September 15th and 16th. Our election workers are prepared to assist voters on Election Day. The local municipal election is set for Tuesday, October 7th. Polling places will be open from 7 AM to 8 PM.

I urge everyone to make it out to vote, and while you are at the precincts on Election Day. Please remember to express your gratitude to our dedicated election workers for their hard work. We conducted our logic and accuracy test on Friday at 9 AM in the Assembly Chambers. We invited the public to witness this process, and one member of the public attended to observe. The printed results from the tabulators aligned with the anticipated outcomes of the pre-mark test ballots.

We ensure that reject codes are established for overvotes and blank votes, and that any ballots containing write-ins are sorted by the machines. Our machines are prepared for Election Day. And that's all I have. Thank you. Any questions of Nova?

Seeing none, we'll move on to assembly member comments. Bo, we'll start with you. Thank you. I'm just going to keep repeating this till October 7th. Please get out and vote, and I will maybe put a different spin on how long it takes to vote or add another layer to it.

It takes longer to brew a pot of coffee than it does to vote here in our municipality, or it takes longer to sit in line at a coffee stand to order and have someone make it for you. Quite a bit longer doing it that way. So your cup of coffee is delicious every morning. However, voting for who is going to make decisions on how your day-to-day life is affected is far more important. Thank you.

Jared.

I just really want to thank Jess again for that report, that hydrology report. Report. I think, you know, that's such a— those are two very crucial intersections for economy, for safety, and I hope we can work with DOT to get some of that flooding mitigation into their plans, too.

Let's see, I think I have one more thing. I think it was also vote. Yes, please, please vote. I was trying to think of another metaphor. Really quickly and I couldn't.

So, Beau, you got me beat. All right, Dave. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I had an opportunity to listen to the candidate forum. I think to echo what my fellow assembly members have said, voting is important, but being informed in that vote is also important.

So highly encourage vote early, vote often, I think is the saying. And to steal a little bit of Beau's thunder, I think it takes longer It takes longer to drive to Dark Lake and dump illegally than it does to vote. Appreciate KMXT, KVOK, and our staff putting together and hosting that forum. It is important for our community to hear what candidates have to say and how they would represent us. Appreciate the manager and her dogged pursuit of the short-term rental tracking software.

Probably anxious to stop hearing from me about it. So, ah, glad to see that getting close to the finish line. Thank you. Steve.

Well, obviously vote. And then the other— being on the Lands Committee, we originally were going to have a meeting on the 8th of September. They got moved to the 22nd of December, and sadly I'd like to comment that the meeting was canceled due to lack of quorum, and hopefully we can get a meeting scheduled soon and a quorum will be available.

Thank you. Larry? I don't have any comments. Scott? Um, I appreciate seeing the candidate forums on YouTube.

I was stuck in a place where I had my computer, I could get on YouTube and there's Jared and Scott. It was terrific. So I really appreciate that. I also, uh, thank everybody and tell them to get out and vote. Thank you.

Mayor's comments. Once again, I reiterate it, please, please get out and vote. Every vote counts. A lot of races in Kodiak are historically close. So, um, please vote.

And with that, I will adjourn the work session at 8:10. Thank you all for attending or listening. Good night.