Cordova: 10-29-2026 Council Work Session

Ready? Okay, and I'll call to order the City Council work session for October 29th, 2026. Um, we can get a roll call.

Mayor Smith in absence. Debra Adams here. Lee Collins absent. Aaron Hansen. Here.

Kasey Kinsman. Here. Michael Mickelson. Absent. Wendy Ranney.

Here. Dave Zastrow. Here. Have a—. We're.

Going to be making any decisions.

Purpose of the work session, look at the agenda and see everyone is just budget development, big picture stuff. That kind of came out of the last work session, and then we'll look at draft enterprise budgets. Know we have some community participation. If there's not objection— hope it's an objection— but if there's not objection, if we want to give them a few minutes, they want to say their piece as we go into it. And I know we have some correspondence, it looks like a lot of them came in today.

They want to highlight something as we go on to this process. Any objection? Give 3 minutes to anyone in the community wants to say anything. Objection. So will be there anyone in the audience who'd like to come up and, uh, have some input on this work session and the topics as we— as you see on the agenda, we give 3 minutes to let council know what you have to say.

And if none, then all— I was waiting for your speech. We did receive a numerous amount of correspondence as well. It'll be in next week's. And I just want to know that the correspondence that came in will be in— looks like most of them should be in next week's. If I miss something, yeah, next week's.

Scheduled City Council meeting. Go ahead. Name, name,. Address, social. Uh, Craig Coons, 444 Street.

Um, I was going to prepare something, but I didn't, didn't know we'd have the opportunity. So thanks. Um, thank you guys wholeheartedly, everybody, whether I agree with you or disagree with you or not. Thank you guys for being here, because I couldn't, I couldn't, wouldn't do your job. So thanks for being there.

Um, that said, things— I don't have to tell you guys, things are tough. The town to me doesn't feel very, um, stable. Morale seems low. I don't know, I'm sure you guys feel it and see it and hear it every day. Tis budget season, everybody's favorite time of the year.

Um, good luck to you guys. It's, it's really hard seeing and hearing and living through the, um, not if we're going to cut things but what we're going to cut, to what extent, and how much things are going to cost and, um, etc., etc., going forward. Um, I get it, you have to pay for things with taxes, and the smaller the tax base, the more we get to pay, those of us that are left here. So, um, good luck to you guys. Just, I know you guys think hard, and it probably keeps you guys up a lot at night, every one of you guys, and then some staff included, I'm sure.

But, um, your guys' decisions impact the lives of everybody else, so good luck to you guys.

Thanks, Chris. Any other community contributions? With that, I think it being a work session, we'll turn some time over to you, Sam. What do you got? Not Samantha, you're Sam.

There's Samantha. Samantha should probably just come on up. She may. Probably proven.

How is microphone from now on? Did you see that I moved it? No. Number 2. Thank you.

Um,. So we're going to pick up from where we left off. Um, yeah, feels like yesterday, sort of. Um, last week on the discussion about, um, things in The information on the first page is in reference to the $45,000 table that was in the first packet, and this is kind of a look of how it is divided out, um, by use. Just wanted to see, and then basically we're just looking for what you all thought about since last week.

Um, Samantha, you want to say something first? I appreciate the consideration and answer to move forward with this event. Uh, hopefully we gave you some good options to choose from. I did want to say about that, um, the numbers from this are just a snapshot. It's not exactly the same every year.

So I just wanted to give a good idea of what we're looking at for it. So I anticipate with the cabin open, the new cabin, there's going to be a lot of usage there too. So I did want to reference that.

I guess Really, regarding that, questions for Samantha, clarification, concern? I just wanted to identify— I, I just asked you here a little bit ago about— but just so all council members remember that last year's fee split when it came to nonprofits included a 25% reduction on the full fee, correct? Okay. So as we're considering what we might do this coming budget cycle, just wanted to to remember that that was what was in place, right, before 26.

Is that the proposal now, Keith? I think whatever we— I. Think. It's what— it's up to us to make that decision, whether it's less, more, none at all.

We're going for consistency the whole time, but there are people that are paying You know, there's more, there's larger user groups. So either, so yeah, that's, that's the hard part for me is going into this position and telling some nonprofits that historically have not paid that they have to pay. And the opposite too. So this year we haven't, especially with the parks, we have not charged rooms.

And a part of it was from Council's direction. I know, yeah, you know, they know that Some people are paying and some are not. So when they come and say that, it's a hard— like, why?

It's definitely a big pusher.

Yeah, starting off the conversation about— yeah, um, we were given this last, uh, council meeting about— thank you also, staff, and Samantha, you specifically— about the potential options for how we would charge fees consistently with all nonprofits. And the, uh, also the, um, definition of what is a nonprofit, what is not. There's existing entities in town that are not considered nonprofit. Maybe there's confusion there. So thank you for all that information.

Um, as we go through these three potential options, I guess my feeling for discussion is that when we're talking about entities that haven't had to pay anything in the past and whatever we decide to do, whatever that number is going forward, I do feel it's in order to give people, organizations the best way to enter into paying fees. I would see Option 3 as the most effective way of doing it. I think it gives people opportunity to kind of enter into making payments they weren't making before, whatever that ends up being, phasing in over 3 years. That feels like the right thing to do. So that would be my choice is to Sweat, probably for 3-year,.

Which then still requires a separate conversation about what that nonprofit contribution is. Right.

And that's why I wanted to just also have that out there. But we did have 2575 established last year, so may— maybe that's a starting point for that discussion,. Right? We did have it, I guess loosely established, it was never implemented. Well, it was— we voted on it and we made it part of the fee schedule.

We decided to set it aside after we had other discussions. Correct. And as of today, this SWRM team, ICEWARM SWRM team, in that capacity hasn't officially started up and paid any fees. Correct. And we already know, I think everyone's aware of where we're at with Cordova Little League also has not paid anything.

So we are really looking at '27 as the first year to collect, if any, fees and what that consistent contribution would be. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page of what we're looking at, level setting going into '27, having a clear conversation about this. I think there's, uh, we, we've seen correspondence from Cordova Ice Storm recently. I mean, that's been recent in our inboxes, and, and, uh, and their opinions and thoughts on that. Uh, we haven't, uh, we haven't seen anything recent from Cordova Little League, but we know what they've said, and when it was pertinent to the beginning of their season earlier this year.

So I just— I just— if there's any questions on that, if someone hasn't seen some of those correspondents, I just want to make sure everyone's had an opportunity to look at those.

Yes, ma'am. Yes, thank you. Um, I have had a couple of, uh, Little League people approach me, um, with regard to fee schedules and Little League and Iceworm Swim Team, in my view, are apples and oranges in comparisons and what is going on with both groups. The ball field, in my mind, is a park.

And like all parks, if we don't charge people to step onto the property so they can go on swings and monkey bars. It's a piece of property that the city maintains. The city owns in the same way that the ball field is a park in my mind, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. And so whereas the pool is a huge facility that needs to be maintained, and it's much more complicated to maintain, obviously.

And so I see these as apples and oranges and two different user groups for two different, very different things. And I'm not in favor of doing a graduated fee schedule. I am more in favor of a set fee, a nominal fee where there is some buy-in by the user group, but not so much that it prevents anybody from participating.

And Stephanie, I just— then I think Samantha maybe is probably leaving. I am going to go to Council Member Rainey first, unless you want to yield to what they have to say. Yeah, go ahead. I understand when you look at the difference between those two places, but it still requires maintenance. It still requires fertilizer, mowing, all the parks, and there are fees set for the parks.

May I also add that it's not, um, I appreciate, yes, fields are, that's what they're there for. This is for exclusive use of those fields, um, so they're open, you know, for both, right? For, yeah, so that's, you know, mostly what I'm looking at and just in having an objective opinion. So, Mark, I appreciate—. Um, yeah, I do understand, um, that there does need to be a fee.

You know, I will concede to that. But with that being said, the swimmers already pay to use the pool. They pay for a pool pass. And if they pay for a pool pass and then they're charging them again because they're a part of an organization, then I have a problem with that. They are paying to use that facility.

The pool pass gives them the right to use the facility. So to have them pay for the facility and then charge them again because they're a part of a nonprofit, that is supporting itself. I mean, they're willing to provide their own lifeguards. You know, they come in at obnoxiously hours around other swimmers so that they don't take up prime time. You know, that's an issue for.

Me. I, again, I'm not trying to argue these points, but I just want to make sure that you're hearing both sides of this and you jump in when you told me we could, because I, I definitely respect. What you're saying, Wendy. And even if it was that they—. Most of their kids have passes because they have them during public use with their families, um, that was, uh, you know, that can be on or off the table too for, for this discussion.

Um, I get what you're saying for that. I mean, they were required to have a pass to join us, right? And it's, again, it's for the exclusive use of it, of the pool. So at an hour that nobody else is going to use it, I disagree with that too. Lap swimmers, love mornings, right?

Yes, go ahead, Councilor. I'm just thinking, not to complicate things too much, but back to the consistency discussion. So this, we're talking about one group, uh, the ice swim swimmers, um, they were required to have a personal pass to swim, and now we're talking about them having to pay an additional amount for the exclusive use. But we have another entity wanting to use it that's a nonprofit. Are we going to require any entity that's going to use the pool for an exclusive use to also have a personal pass that we use any other time?

Again, because if we're, if we're taking into account they're already paying once and we're going to discount them considerably for the exclusive use. We need to apply that to all nonprofits then to be consistent, right? So not to complicate it, but I, I think consistency is something we also have to keep in our, in our view. I think, and from, I mean, there's things in place, like you said, we know you're a part of Iceworm, you have to have a pass, and the code just checked that. And so to Council Member Zastrow's point, what do we have in place to enforce if another nonprofit is going to use this estab— even if we establish there is a discounted—.

So I, I can say that I'm going to use a birthday party, for example. Sure. Um, we do not check passes for birthday parties. Not everyone has that when they come in. So, but if they were going to come in at a different time, they would need a pass or get it, you know, a day pass.

So I see, I see that what you're what the issue is. So I think—. But if we're saying— if just— I just want to make sure we're clarifying there. So if I say my kids are gonna have a birthday party there, I'm not saying I'm a nonprofit and I require any kind of discount. I'm just saying I want to use this pool and I'm going to pay your full rate, whatever's in the fee schedule, to do that for an X amount of children that are included in this fee schedule, right?

I can understand then why a pool pass may not be required. To the complicated part to what Council Member Ranney was saying is we're saying we have an entity, a group, an organization who has paid this fee, and it's been established they've paid their fee. They've paid their— I mean, and I know when my children were doing it, it was an annual pass. They had to have an annual pass in order to do and participate in Ice World. They're— they are contributing something.

And so I think we need to define, are we saying they're not contributing something, or how does that weigh into this exclusive piece of using the pool? The reason the pool passes were even required originally was to try to get to this—. Get to this day. And it's been a process of like having the conversations about how the ice rink's going to be supporting. Their rental costs.

So that pool membership at the time— it's been a few years now that they've swam— was, I would say, in lieu of that. So are we saying now, if we move forward with whatever the contribution is, that is in lieu of any ice rink member needing to have an annual swim pass? I just want clarification. Yeah, I think that's That's a discussion on the table, I guess. That makes it apples and oranges when we're talking about Little League or the swim— the Iceworm swimmers.

Well, it brings it closer to apples and apples when we're saying they don't need to have—. But it's apples and oranges in the sense that there's not an individual pass, they'll use the bulk of. It. Right. And if we're saying that the Iceworm team doesn't need to— if me or my children want to participate in Iceworm, they no longer need an annual pass.

They are going to pay Iceworm whatever fee is established, which then could include that annual— whatever that makeup is, which might be the equivalent of an annual pass. That brings it to me closer to apples and apples than apples and— because they're not contributing anything at this point. Well, yeah, so if we charge regardless if they have a personal pass or not, sure, yeah. But just because they have one, it makes—. Pool at any other time though, they will need a whole pass.

They would need a standard pool pass. Right, yeah. And that— and I think that piece then becomes less burdensome for Parks and Rec. They don't have to then check with the Iceworm swim team, hey, here's the roster, let me see which swim— what their swim pass number is, or the Parks and Rec number is. But when they come in individually, you already have a mechanism in place to ensure that they have a swim pass, whether it's day, a punch pass, or an annual Yes, and we just.

Get a head count for who's there. There used to be that too, extra head count for—. That solves that major issue for me. I just was like, you're not going to penalize and double charge them to utilize one facility just because they're in an organized group setting. Like, we— I mean, we had— I had to get a roster from Parks and Rec and check it when I was doing swimming.

That one, it's been And that was definitely something that was implemented at the time because this was, you know, high chemo. We could bring something like ours to use that.

So if I might, a question. I'd like to get back to the question of exclusive use of the whatever facility it is. And I would post, you know, propose the question of who else would use that field on a Saturday in the summer for the month of June?

Yes. So I say Saturday is probably the worst case you could give because there's probably people who would use it on a Saturday. I would say if you want to make the argument, you could say on a Tuesday in the middle of the day. It's far less likely to be used on a Tuesday in the middle of the day in June than on a Saturday when it's generally speaking traditional family has a weekend done.

I would take it. Out. But again, I would, I guess I would, my response is that, you know, how likely is it that there's going to be a family that wants to use that field on Saturday when clearly there's over 100 children who are participating, who are members of Lindley.

And why would a family, you know, say no if we're using it right now?

So, and the word exclusive Bothers me. My, uh, so my argument to that would be, so for example, there was I think 18 girls that wanted to play softball and, uh, they didn't meet the Little League standard for the amount of kids, so they didn't have softball. So for the children wanted to participate in softball and not do co-ed baseball, there wasn't an opportunity. So for the 6 or 8 weeks, that is time that the field is utilized pretty much every single day. For those kids, it's unavailable.

So that would be my definition of being— it's exclusive use. Exclusive use. No, you can't where anybody else can't utilize that facility. I would also say the same if a lap swim, you know, they really want this time slot and it's for several months, it is unavailable for the ice because of the ice swim team.

My argument, and I'm just going to call it out right now, we're basically talking about two different entities.

And require an extensive amount of time to utilize facilities.

I'll go back to my original argument when I wrote a letter last year, however long it's been.

Swimming is very important for this community, for the health and safety of the kids. Goes back to the exercise, the team sports I think team sports in general are great for kids— structure, mentors. It is something that we need, and we have a growing community with lots of youth.

I personally think that it'd be cleaner to implement the B schedule and have an MOU with these two entities, or any entity that chooses to want to work with the city, who shows, uh, I guess, dedication and time to actually work with us, with you. I mean, that, that's where I would be, is to establish what that fee schedule is for these entities. And no, some, whatever it is, it is going to cost the city for staff time and all the maintenance.

But I'm just speaking for myself here. I, I think if we're going to eat cost, um, the swim team is where I would push us in that direction.

Happy here. Yeah. A couple of things. One question. You provided us some numbers.

The Ice Swim Teens, 38,880 unrackles, and then the Little League, 6,644. So these were— these actual numbers from previous—. So the Little League was from this year. We can copy those numbers onto the record. And for Iceberg, it was the most recent year that they swam a season.

And for the eyeswim team, that $38,880, where did that number come from? That was— they were already using, so they had a pretty clean schedule that we could put plug in for it. So that, that's what it cost the city, or is that what they paid? I guess I'm trying to understand where that—. That was what they— if they had paid, right, if they had.

Paid. For the hours. So my question is, does that take into account the fact that every single member had to also get a personal pass. No, they did not.

And this number too, again, it's like, it's from then. I realize that this year we've had to scale down. We already know already in the beginning of the season we're gonna have to scale down, so it will be less. And, um, a note, um, um, Uh, not to argue the point, uh, with Council Member, uh, um, Hansen's request for MOUs, I guess I would shy away from any kind of MOU with any organization only because MOUs really don't do anything, in my opinion. They're just a— it's just a, a piece of paper that, that entities agree that they're going to do certain things a certain way that they can at any point refuse to do.

It doesn't hold anybody to have to do anything. And I think it start becoming complicated if we have an MOU with multiple entities in the community. I think we, we need to knuckle down and make a decision about how we're going to charge or not charge or something in between. I, I don't— I think staff time and the complications of MOU doesn't really get us any closer to what it is we need to do. I was shy away It's— I'll say it doesn't get real complicated.

I— the exclusive use is a big one for me because I— it doesn't matter if it's, you know, just a family wanting to use the ball field on a weekend, or maybe it's the Forest Service or the Science Center. They want to have an exclusive use on a Saturday or a Tuesday. I think we have to take into account exclusive use, and I think there's additional cost to staff that have to be considered costs that are required of the city for a specific entity that is gaining from access to that park. So I think exclusive use shouldn't be just set aside. There, there, there it does have validity for me.

How much? What's the number? That's what we need to figure out. I mean, how much weight does that carry? But I, I think it does have some bearing on our decision-making.

It's used across the board in Parks and Rec, in resource management with Park Service, BLM enforcers. They all use exclusive use to make determinations on these.

I think from that standpoint as well, it's— I know we're focusing on two entities that are two largest entities, and rightly so. They have the numbers to be the most vocal, which is There's nothing wrong with that. That's great. That is. But we also have to look at what does this look like for any other nonprofit that's going to come up.

So we're not having this conversation every single time and piecemealing together an MOU or a different fee schedule based on who you are. The other thing we— I know going into this, the beginning of this year, we had conversations about even what risk does that bring up to the city as far as lawsuits. Also, we, we have to establish something that is consistent for every non— if we're defining it as a nonprofit, then it has to be consistent with every nonprofit. And that, that's what it is. And I agree with you with your exclusive use statement that again brings in a level of consistency regardless I mean, there you have to think to the baseball field example, there may not be any family wanting it.

Softball is valid, but because this is something that's established, that doesn't mean that it's not valid, that we're providing this exclusive service to whatever entity.

Um, I think we need to, in order to establish something as far as guidance on this, um, we can look at the cost analysis too. If we want to establish that every swim member has a swim pass, what does that look like in weight to Iceworm's contribution overall? Do we want to look at it as excluding that standalone? What is Iceworm's contribution to this What's— and I, I just keep looking at this percentage. I think it's great.

Thank you for putting that in there. Really establishes— I mean, what we're looking at is, again, back to two entities. But, um, you can look at another way too. Instead of requiring a pass to be on the swim team, you flip it around. Whatever the cost is, cost for swim team.

But if you're on the swim team, you can get a break on your personal pass if you're already paying it. I mean, could look at it a couple different better. I mean, I, I— we talked briefly about the consistency of whatever that fee is across the board. And is that fee independent? In my mind, I also have to think of, okay, if we're looking at the burden on the city to even do that piece here— I'm part of the swim team, so now you get X amount off of your annual pass— someone has to manage that, right?

Okay, please, that to you. Um, and, um, you know, again, just looking for consistency with it. We did pull numbers for the passes when they they were swimming before. A lot— it's an amazing town that we live in. Almost every family has a swim pass to begin with.

There were only a few that were getting individual ones at the time, just for context. And the ones that were—. So what makes it a little bit more complicated with that about discounts or whatever is decided, they already get discounts through their workplace wellness programs here. So they get a— you know, most families do. They're working at the hospital, the school, here in the city.

We all have a workplace wellness discount for that for their families. Does that agree with CDFU?

I just want to make sure. I really steer away from that because it's— it becomes more inclusive than exclusive and who has access. So it changes every year depending on who has 10 employees to participate in. 10 Or more employees. 10 Or more employees.

Yes, answer that. What do other communities do? I'm curious, you know. Does Valdez Lily pay, um, an exclusive use fee? It does.

Sewer communities in and around sound? It varies, really. And for, I mean, in my opinion and what I've researched, each town is different. Kodiak supports their little equally. They have their money to do that.

So depending on what the need is of the city really is what it boils down to, it seems like. So there are some that have, I wouldn't say MOUs, but they support in other ways with just being, you know, maybe an MOU, I guess, maybe I can't rule that out, but that they're taking care of the facilities or they're participating in another way. Some places are not doing any discounts across the board because it costs what it costs to run a facility. So it depends on what it is and what they're finding.

Is there a proposal for a percentage of what these— any nonprofit should be contributing?

Oh,. We've done that. Yes, I was just thinking about what you just stated about the differences across communities. Great question about, um, literally in particular One of the things we talked about with Little League, you know, in years past, they were a huge part of getting the ball fields up and running and providing a lot of capital improvement work. And one of the things we talked about about months ago was if we were going to do some type of an agreement, that it doesn't make sense to try to do something along the lines of operational costs or standard maintenance or even deferred maintenance.

If there's a capital improvement project that is a one-shot, you can bring them on board to help, you know, lay new sod or put up a new scoreboard or build a new building of some sort, that, um, that's a great way to provide a discount, um, to the Little League. So that's something I think should still be on the table, whatever the fee is, but the opportunity to work with the city to find ways to at least reduce their costs. So, but again, I think it's a real tough one to throw and say they start mowing because the consistency wouldn't be there. I can also say that I haven't had any luck contacting them, as you guys know, this year. And that is very time-consuming for us to keep reaching out and trying to make that communication.

And I always will. I want to be part of it. I want everyone to do all the things. And, um, you know, it's part of being a community too, is doing all these things together. But you only need so much.

And I see, I, I see that. We all see that you're willing to, um, um, be creative and find ways to make it work for everybody. And, and what I just mentioned would be a way of doing that from time to time. And I know you're open to that.

So, sorry, so I just— I something I wanted to say on that vein, but Debra Adams question.

I think probably one more point of clarification. As we're looking at moving forward, establishing what the fee would be for a nonprofit, are there opinions, thoughts on whatever the exclusive use fee is, it is independent of any other common use fees, parks and rec fee, a darkie pass, a swim pass. If an entity is going to pay this exclusive use fee, whatever it might be, that other memberships are not required, other chapters' membership. We all on the same page for that, or are there other opinions on that? I think that's important as we establish what that percentage is.

So in other terms, in order to be a part of the swim team, you no longer have to provide proof that you have an annual pass.

Okay, so with that, then I think unless there's other comments, we're probably at the point where we need to establish— unless we need more information from staff And we need to just establish what that percentage is and how that percentage is distributed. I know the Option 3 over multiple years was presented, or all at once.

I think that's where we're at. So is there any proposals for a percentage of what nonprofits across the board, based on the fee schedule, should be charged?

That's me. Yes,. I. Guess. I'll just put it out there that my original thought coming in here this evening was if there's going to be any kind of fee, I would have it not increase, it would stay the same, and it would be at a 10%.

It's, um, That's nominal. It's a little bit of buy-in.

It's manageable, I think, for a nonprofit.

And I would say that it would stay consistently at 10%, not go up, not option 3.

So to be clear, the nonprofit would pay 10% less of the full cost. I'm just looking at this, this schedule in front of us. So the nonprofit would pay 10% and the city would cover 90%, is that what you're saying?

Yes. And even after our conversation of just saying that, uh, you're going to participate with Iceworm, you no longer have to prove that you have an annual pass. So 10% and no annual pass is required. I just want to make sure we're all talking the same thing.

And they have a sliding CivicRec. Yes, and I should have prefaced everything with that, and I appreciate you already calling out ICERM, and thank you ICERM, I know your representation's here. Thank you for using CivicRec. It is important. That has, I think, really taken our parks and rec to the next level, and I've heard that from community as a whole.

Really has helped out, and they've been very supportive of the use. They were kind of our guinea pigs, so I, I really appreciate it very much. It's just all on the same page.

I can just do some simple math based off what Nina provided. So we're saying that really the ice, the ice storms here— I'm going to call ice storm out because they're here, they're represented, which is great. I love it, love it when people show up. But essentially they'd be paying $3,800 a year for a season, and their season is what their season is, and that gets to be established But it generally is about 6 months. In the past it has been.

We're saying for 6-month exclusive use of the swimming pool without any other contribution, they will pay $3,800.

Is that why— $38,000, 10% of that?

Am I missing something? I'm looking at this chart. Page 5. Yeah, so page 5 takes into account both what the Little League would pay and Ice Worm. That's where the $45,000—.

Oh, I see, you're splitting it out. It's splitting it out. If you look above it, it actually breaks out what the Little League is running, which was about $6,000, and, and, and swimming pool was $30,000. That just over—. Right, so not happy at all this year.

I think, I think you need to explain that. I'm not sure. I, I, I just the concept. Yeah, so there, this was for, they were using 6 days a week, right? Uh, and so that's what these numbers are on.

Already this year they're going to be less than that because we don't have the space. We don't have the space for 2, 4 staff now. So this was when they were swimming 6 days a week. Okay, so the fee is based off of your current, uh, usage schedules on here. Which is 3 days of— is that Monday, Wednesday, Thursday?

Boom team, right? It's on that October 5th. Um, so what the numbers are, just a snap shot of a whole year that we were using before. So I calculate the hours, um, with that rental cost, 2 and a half hours of use of Yeah, currently that's what I want, but Iceworm is going to be using the same 3 based off of your staffing availability, 3 days a week. Exactly, yes.

They had to— more than that, and unfortunately we can't accommodate that right now. Um, I would love to say that in the future we'll be able to accommodate more hours, but right now they're, they're using the lower range. But the $38,000— round up to $39,000— it's referenced here is based off of pre-pool closure, 6 days a week. Correct. So this is the top end, the maximum amount.

Exactly. Of—. If anyone else would like to—. But yes, sure. But I think that's relevant for as you— yeah, I have full confidence you're going to get more staffing, you're going to be able to open up the pool at different times.

Um, that would be the 10% that I'm looking at based off of what was proposed that would be required for an ice firm to pay. We saw rounding up to $39,000, which would be $3,900 for their pools. Yes,. I think we might have a relevant comment. Sorry,.

From our point of view, if you guys are losing money on that, if swimmers will have passes as a whole. We buy passes. We buy passes. We are okay with that because I think that's going to bring more money to city and for parking, right? Am I wrong?

I, I feel like most families have passes anyway, so it wasn't directly because of the ice. So if we all have passes, now we have to pay extra, then like, where—. And I'm only saying that for 6 months of use, $3,900 among 70 people regardless of pass is a screaming deal. And even if we required everyone to still have a pass and it was still $3,900, that is still a screaming deal for any organization given— and that's— this is just me talking. And me thinking of— yeah, yes, go ahead.

I didn't mean it that way. I mean, after, like, if we started over, I did not know— I don't know how many who's going to sign up and who has passes, who's not. For me, if you're going to start it clear, nobody has passes, that's less money for you guys. Yes. And we'd rather to have a passes for all our swimmers to bring more money to the DRC or Rec Center or anything.

That was our point of view on this one. So sorry. No, you don't need to apologize. Thank you. It is that— I understand and appreciate what you're saying.

Yeah, thank you. Yes,. Here we go. Yes. Oh, thank you.

That's— what would the line up for 6 months per person? Per person, 70 people.

Essentially $56 per— and you can split that up over 6 months.

We do not have— like, we do not have to pay that. Yeah,. In this screaming deal, I want that only if we're going to start over. Nobody has passed this and we're going to start over. It's just not feeling your folks' city, you know.

We want to— we appreciate what Samantha does for our pool and staff. I don't think everyone's going to cancel or cancel that pass. I, I, that's, that's why I would look at our revenue from, you know, like when swim team isn't happening. I really am—. People are getting their passes to come in during other times, and I get them in the other complete I've never swum in the pool once my whole time here in 10 years, and I bought a family pass because I had 3 kids in swim team.

That was it. That's the only reason I had it. They wanted to do it, and that was great. If they weren't going to do it, I had no reason for me to do it, because even if they want to go use it, I'll buy a bunch of passes. And again, that's just me, that's all.

Um, I know the pool doesn't get used by every I know children use it, I know they use it in school, and I know obviously if at the peak we were at 70 youth and various ages participating in Ice Worm, I would lean towards a higher fee if we're not going to require them to have a swim pass. That's, that's where I'd be. Go ahead, Jeff. I'm just curious about the fee schedule that was determined last year, which was the nonprofit was to pay 75%, and then the city's going to pay 25— that subsidy was 25. How did you come to those numbers?

I actually, um, researched a bunch of. Different nonprofit, um, fees around the state. And did that— did your calculation include that every member— as far as the swimming goes with the, the Ice Worms, was that not considered those that they were required to obtain? It seems like you did a lot of work with that. I would propose that we set the fee as we had accepted it at last year, which was 75-25, 25% subsidy.

That would be my suggestion. Seems like you put some time into it, looked at a lot of different communities. You came— I know you don't come up with these numbers lightly.

Regardless if a member has a full pass or not.

So in, in a way, that for those who don't get full passes is going to be considerable break.

And I would go about as in between as we could get and say 50/50.

Especially with the clause of there's no requirement for anyone to have a full pass. 50/50. It's a community— it's a benefit to the community. And that's not just Iceland, that's Little League is a benefit. We can say any of the— any nonprofit wants to start, even softball, if they decide they're going to branch off and not participate with Cordova Little League, and they want to have use of— and they work it out through Civic Rec, great.

And it's a 50/50 fee schedule. And again, I know the numbers that you're using is based off of— if I— if everyone's okay with this, generally ice worms are 5 to 6 months.

It depends when we get started,. Right? Right. We don't have happening. Pre, pre-pool, pre— and the peak of it was nearly 6 months.

Is— am I correct in that? Yeah. So, and that's, I think, what these numbers were pulled off of, with 6 days a week and 6 months worth of use. That's where this nearly $40,000 came from. And then splitting in half, which we're not even to that point of even being close to having that much exclusive use starting out.

We may get there, and that might be great. And there's probably not going to be 70 kids anymore, as Iceworm's going to be rebuilding their program. Um, and so the 6 days a week may not be needed or required, and that's okay. And both parks and recs and organization of Little League get to establish what that looks like. Um, so that's where I'm at.

I'm proposing 50/50. Across the board, talking about all nonprofits? All nonprofits. So it'll be, because even if we take this, that's less than $4,000. It's $3,000 that we're saying for use based off of what they've used in the past.

And they have about 100 participants that they can spread that fee over. So 50/50 is what I would be proposing. In between what you said and between what you said. Council Member Sacco, Council Member Adams. Yeah, if I may.

Yeah, please. Such a tough one because I agree, I think we— the city facilities are here for the community support of people who pay their taxes. They do all kinds of the community to make it a great place to live, and the city doesn't have Parks and Rec to make money. That's not the point of Parks and Rec facilities. So it's the fees that are collected are supposed to be there to maintain existing infrastructure, put a little bit away for deferred maintenance and the potential, hopefully someday, for some capital improvement.

So those are the things that— those are the numbers we should be looking at, and those do change year to year, which is why we set the fee schedule every single year. We reevaluate, is this enough of a fee to cover the additional costs for these facilities? I feel like when we just throw out percentages randomly, I don't know that we have a full picture to be able to make those decisions. So that's why I keep looking at you, Samantha, and that when you tell me you've done a bunch of research, I, I maybe to see some of it or to hear more about it, or maybe from Sam, from our city manager, what he has done in the past for these things. But I, I feel like we're just throwing out numbers right now.

So what would you like to see for that? Or so again, you know, it's hard number to find, I, I would say, and I know it's tough for you to, to nail it down, but, um, you know, we're trying to figure out what it costs to maintain these facilities and to provide a safe place with everything required for the public use. So you're asking for the all—. I don't know what I'm asking for, Sam. Okay, well, nothing—.

What I'm— all I'm saying is, like, it's— this feels very random to me right now. Well, it's definitely, um, we're not recouping, you know, a percentage of the whole maintenance. I don't think— like you said, it's This is a benefit of the community that we have this. I think we're trying to recoup some of it. And I don't know what that number of maintenance and running these facilities, even a percentage, a low percentage of them, the whole thing would be astronomical, I think, to take under.

But these ones are meant to be something that is affordable to these entities. Um, and these— we all know that these places, parks and rec, cost a lot to maintain, so they're not really based off that full maintenance. Yeah,. So that is hard to, to think about, like wrapping my head around. Facilities were brand new, right?

And they're not. So, and we're not actually doing all the maintenance we can every year right now. So, um, it's, it's the— it's to recoup or not, you know. I didn't put in there nothing, just some guidance on it, um, some of, um, some of what we are having to pay for. I.

Will hasten to say fees aren't intended to cover everything. They're just not. I, I, again, I go back to my my background when I talk about things within outdoor recreation opportunities like cabins. That's my big thing when I was working for the Forest Service. Those— there's a fee that's charged.

Never were those fees ever designed to maintain even the basic level of maintenance for those cabins, but they do offset some of the costs. And Sheryl's just showing me some numbers right now for reference of the pool for this year. We're looking at over $500,000.

Operational budget just to—. There's no expectation these fees are going to cover. There's no way they're going to cover. So, um, I guess my, my asking— again, every town does it differently that I've researched. Uh, a lot of places are going to that it's a rental fee across the board, um, because it costs what it costs to, to staff it.

Um, but also just some consistency with it. I know I keep going back to that. And we could bring— we are providing a service still, but. These facilities too. So, so if anything, again, we go back to this basic operational cost for that particular exclusive use at the time of the use.

Yeah, we're still subsidizing all the use a lot.

And to your point, the community is aware of that. And, and through very— the, the city isn't a cost center, so the community is paying for these things. There's value in that. And I think to the point that we've discussed is this exclusive use piece of these, what would otherwise be a public space, whatever it is. We're saying that because this entity, whatever it might be, me having a birthday party I am saying, and because of that, I want to pay whatever it might be, whatever fee is established, so that I can have exclusive use.

So no one else can use the pool, so no one else can use the baseball field or grassy field. I want to use it all for myself and whomever else I decide I'm going to invite to whatever it is. That's the exclusive use. That's what we're saying. It is otherwise a public space.

And the fool about being the only thing that really has— and bidarki— a fee schedule associated with— for me to go and involve myself with other public members of the community, I still have to pay to go and do that. Everywhere else, if I want to go to Manny Hansen Park, I can go and do that and take my kids there, knowing very well that my neighbors or other people across town or someone from not our community also could go use that same space right alongside. I just want to establish that the threat— that's what we're saying— this entity, whether it be a nonprofit or not, is going to have exclusive use, and in order to have that exclusive use is going to pay something. How much are they going to pay is what we're having a conversation about. It's not meant to cover all the maintenance.

It's not meant to I mean, we can say offset, we can go back and forth on that, but at the end of the day, it's, it's, they are paying for an exclusive use of whatever facility it is. Yeah. And, and to your point, I mean, it, it provides some buy-in. Absolutely. If I'm go— if I want to rent the Forest Service cabin, I'm buying into that.

I'm committing myself to it. I'm gonna pay the $75 to $100, whatever it is. Because I want that exclusive use.

So that's where this comes in. What do we want for a nonprofit organization to pay for exclusive use? Whatever the nonprofit is, what percentage of the total fee do we want them to pay? And how much on the other side, as the rest of the community, are we going to subsidize these nonprofits, whatever it might be, for their exclusive use.

You're wearing a thumbless jacket collar.

You wear it under your sleeve. I said I need So we have 10%, we have 50%, we have 75% of nonprofit to pay.

Oh, I forgot my—.

And then 75% came from the, the original fee schedule, which actually, if I— yeah, I guess it would be because this is, say, 75%, but I don't know that it actually could be based on your chart. Does, does this, uh, chart reference updated fee schedule, not from last year? I don't, I don't have anything because I'm looking at this and I think of 8515, if I'm just taking— we take 45— first, 45,000, saying that this ice horn portion would have been 39, 6— 39 and.

$6,500. Is that the fee they would have paid? Is 30— is that their portion they would have already paid? Correct. Is that my understanding?

That would be their portion. With the reduced previous fee schedule, or without any— or based on the fee schedule and the reduction of 25%, it would have been 38? No, no. Okay. I wanted to start with a fresh, you know, if there's one that wasn't even—.

Yes, Debra Adams. I, I think all of us are real hesitant to, to come up with a number because, um, no matter what we come up with, people are not going to be happy about it. Now, people don't want to pay fees, and I think we need to establish that there are going to be fees, and not just how much are they going to be at this point.

No one's going to be happy. No one— can I ask to say something? Yes. I appreciate everyone's passion with this. Um, I say this a lot, uh, I have to be objective in my position to all of this.

Uh, the people that come out about the swimming pool and swimming are just as passionate as the Little League people and just as passionate as other people that want to use these facilities. So I understand that, um, that fees or not fees, if you decide not you are hard to handle, but having, um, you know, everyone is passionate about it. And so yeah, it's, it's an upsetting conversation sometimes. So, um, yeah, the consistency— I keep going back to that. Good.

Uh, thank you for your comments, Councilor Rabs. We've now been from, at the very least, the fee schedule last year comments have been made. Ice worms were really out of pool, now going through a little leak season, I think.

And how near and dear this is to the community as a large— everyone knows there's going to be fees involved. I think we may— that's been made clear. I don't think there's anyone who's involved with any Little League or Ice Worm, the conversation's been going around long enough that there is some kind of fee coming down, and now it is up to us to decide what is that fee. What is the fee going to be? And I think we've been able to clarify today with whatever the fee is, it is independent from a membership usage, a Parks and Rec annual pass, The darkie annual pass, whatever that might be, it's independent of that.

You're paying for exclusive right, your organization's taking that on, you're going to pay for it built into the fee schedule, includes that no one had this. If you're going to pay 100%, we're saying no one in your organization, we're not counting you having any kind of pass. So knowing that, which is different than what it has been for Iceborne in the past, and that's done. To the most recent years of Iceworm when they were operating out of the swimming pool, that is a completely different definition and expectation than what has been there in the past.

And is there any more information that the city needs to make this— from council, from the city to make this decision?

We need to land on a number, don't we? I, I think we do. Been an hour now. Um, Vice Mayor? Yes, Council Member Hansen.

Uh, just with some quick math and reasonable numbers.

Um, I would say full pass and 35% of the cost.

And so to be clear, you're saying to require an annual pass and to contribute 35%? Yeah. Is there not?

There used to be. I have looked at one. It had— it's an annual pass, is for full tuition. There's not individual anymore. In the past there used to be, am I correct?

Paper. Um, all their other ones were combined. So we put a pass back into play again. Then you have to make different decisions about the ball field. And that's what I would—.

Well, you mentioned that, you know, Little League uses the field for a month in the summer as opposed to between 5 and 7 months for the pools. There's a vast difference there. There's a vast cost difference too. There is a vast cost difference.

Awesome. Yes, for sure. So looking a lot higher for operating rate.

We're not trying to break the— I understand that, Sam Greenwood, um, and I, I appreciate your position. So please, I don't want it to come off like I don't—. Oh, not at all. I mean, it's It's a hard conversation for everyone involved.

I just know that if we don't support youth in this community, we pay for it in other ways. Absolutely. As a community. And any kind of healthy activity for youth and families in this community is well worth the investment.

And that's what families pay taxes for in this community.

Councilman Hansen, you proposed full pass and 35%. What are your thoughts on The ball fields, I, I have a hard time.

Um, they're very separate, they're very separate costs. Um, I mean, in all honesty, the pools, it's a, it's a hard comparable. Um, the cost of diesel to heat the pool is skyrocketed. Everything— I mean, we talked about shipping costs just for chemicals. Unfortunately, the, the pool is one of the best things for this community, but it also comes at a high cost.

The other thing that— I mean, I— we're already an hour into this and I don't want to muddy the waters anymore, but, uh, I also I'm not 100% in favor of the, uh, the just blanket nonprofit. I, I mean, I, I'd love to see it separated for youth activities. And if we're going to support something, I, I'd push to support youth. I mean, if we're supporting youth, these entities are supporting youth, then maybe that's a, a basis for separating it out as far as what the fee schedule is. I mean, the prime examples for the school— if a group of adults want to go, uh, rent the facility to play basketball, you pay the fee.

But if you are running something for youth, it's at no cost. I mean, school, that's what it's for. But, um, I am much more in favor of subsidizing youth activities. Than just a general population, um, for adults.

Just didn't want to get too far in the weeds, but that's my— that's my opinion.

Do we have to come up with another tonight? Yeah, preferably. Yes. Yeah.

35%, Which is to hopefully be more accessible for everybody to come to an agreement. So when you say 35%, that's the subsidy, or that is what they—. That's what the nonprofit will contribute. I just want to be clear, when we're throwing out percent, let's make sure we're talking the same. You're saying percentage, we're referring to the nonprofit's contribution So 35%, 75%, 50%, and percent are the numbers that have been thrown out for the nonprofit's contribution.

Is the baseball game the same fee as the pool? Hourly? No, there are different fees for that. I mean, it's like the pool is more because we have the staff there. What's your question?

Does your— the cost of operation go into that hourly fee as well? I know there's the staff fee, you have to pay them whatever, $25 an hour, it's probably what it's at now. Right, I do, but it's not the whole thing. But you have at least the basic for an hour's use is basically we're going to use this much chemical if we break it out over the day. It's at least factored into it, is that fair to say?

Okay. Right. Yes, we know we'll never get the formula right and we'll never be able to accommodate what the price of diesel is and all those type of things, but it's factored in. Yeah, great.

All right. Yeah. So you had proposed 50/50, is that right, Councilor? That's what I proposed. I think to move things along, my thinking is that so We're essentially talking about two organizations right now, primarily, which we all know.

We've never charged them anything in the past to use— utilize these facilities. We do set the fee schedule every year at this time before the budget cycle. We start looking at revenues. I would join you in a 50/50 split in order to move this forward so that It's understood that moving forward, at least for this next fiscal year, it's be a 50/50 split between the city and the nonprofit in what they cost. Next year, if we could reassess, and if it seems like that's too much or too little, then we can reevaluate at that time.

Yes, I think that's too high.

I'm Given the horrible fishing season—. Oh, too high on the, uh, on the nonprofit? Yes. And given, um, the situation of last year's fishing season and the price of everything in this community, um, this cost me $75 to fill up my Subaru the other day. Um, and everybody— that's for everybody.

If I were going to move on this, I would And to increase it from my original 10%, I would go to 25%, but that's about it. The nonprofit pays 25%? Yes, that's as far as I will go. So I misunderstood you previously when you said 10%. I thought, I thought you had it flipped.

Yes, for what, to be honest?

No, no, that didn't make sense. I,. I'm asked to pay 25% and and, um, revisited every year. Yes, we did. I, I think that's key to keep in mind, that this isn't set in stone.

Whatever we choose to do today gets revisited in a, in a year, this time next year, and we can reassess. But again, as Council Member Kinsman has already said, I think everybody realizes there will be some fee set moving forward, and I think people understand that that has to be the way it is. Determine what that is is the sense known from here until eternity.

Yeah. What would you like to contribute to this conversation? Well, Ideally, I would exempt those two organizations from fees to support youth sports in this town because the parents are already contributing a lot of time and a lot of money to those sports for those kids. But with that being said, I do realize that there needs to be something We're just going to implement it for one year. I would look at the 25, but I wouldn't go any higher.

What does that mean, just implement it for one year? Like, revisit it. All our fees go to revisit it every year, right? And revisit it next year. We see how it impacted those two.

Organizations and have another conversation. And I—. This is going to come around every year. I don't want to charge those two groups. That's, that's my feeling on it.

My feeling is we don't charge those two groups, period. Those two nonprofits support majority of the kids in this community, and I think it's important that we subsidize those two nonprofits.

If you want to know really how I feel, that's how I feel. I think we all agree with that. I think Council Member Ranney— thank you. I don't want I want you to know that your, your view is valued at the table, and thank you for your contribution to this conversation. Um, I want to be clear as we're going into 25, that's what we're looking at.

We're saying 25%, and if we're talking about Iceworm, saying they'll pay 25% of whatever their usage is. We know it's not going to be $40,000 because we as a city can't support that type of usage, and they may not have the demand for that where they're at today. Um, so likely it'll be less than whatever we're showing here, 40,000 homes. Um, but that X— that also then means that their participants do not need to show that they have a SWAMPass, and, and I support that. I, I actually really support that because that then takes some burden off of staff or anyone else to show and prove that they have these things.

Sounds like there's probably— if a family's passionate about swimming, there is probably a good chance they have a swim pass already and they can support in their own way. But from a, a separate piece of that, they are contributing by however the Ice Worm as an organization decides they're going to charge their participants, whatever the fee might be. And so that will be incumbent on them to do however they want to do it. Um, so 25% across the board for nonprofits. So I know we're talking about two entities, but I think going out of this and, uh, looking at— you really want to draft something differently because I don't want to just say that if you support youth, you get to do this.

There needs to be some criteria behind that. I can't just decide that I'm going to go do something crazy and say I want to support youth and it benefits my family, my neighbor's family, and I get this exemption. I'm— and I'm— that's an extreme view, but I want to make sure I have parameters around that. What are we as the city determining is worth our collective, our community collective, uh, resources? Because these are This is our property tax, our sales tax.

This is, this is the money that we're paying into the system. And what do we want that money to go towards? What do we want it to subsidize? And that's— I'm— me saying this isn't saying I don't agree with you, but I— we need to have parameters, and tonight's not the time to establish those parameters. So I want to make sure we're all clear.

If we say 25%, that is for all nonprofits, and we have a definition of what a nonprofit is And so that could be a nonprofit for adults or youth or anything in between. And it's established, and anyone in the public can hear my voice and hear our conversation if they so choose. And hopefully the people who are in audience and listening can spread the word in all their various forms of what we're looking at. 25% Is an incumbent on the nonprofit organization to pay, 75% would be subsidized by the city. And subsequently the taxpayers of our community, um, in release.

So we're saying 25% of the full cost when it comes to the pool. We're still not requiring individual pool passes. Correct. Correct. That's so— yeah, seems to be consensus.

So I would ask, since we're not requiring it, As an organization, it would be really awesome if you could encourage your participants to have a pass. It's up to you. You don't have to, but that'd be really great. Most of them have it already.

So thank you. That's my only— that's me talking, not in any official capacity, but thank you. And thank you to the community as a whole. Do we have support for 25%? Knowing that next year we're going to revisit this at the fee schedule— go ahead, Councilman Hanson.

I guess I'm just thinking, and I'd be curious to hear Samantha's thoughts on this, um, especially with the pool. We're not requiring pool passes, most get them, but still. And we're requiring 25% of pool costs. Is that the net negative coming in to these? It sounds like—.

I think that a lot of— we already have a lot of pool passes for families. I ran the numbers before with it, and with the workplace wellness and the amount of kids that swim after school too, they're getting passes. So people are having it whether they're required or not. What's that? As individuals are getting them, whether they're required or not.

Right. And I, yeah, I really do continue to invest in the pool. And as this builds up and having not only more swimming for swim teams, but having more open swims for, you know, the public, we'll continue to see people getting those pool passes. So it really is my ultimate goal across the board to have it open. To the community, um, not just one, you know, entity, but public swim for, for at all different times, more rec swimming, open on Saturdays, you know, working towards that again is my ultimate goal.

So I think that pool passes come with that. All right, so with that understanding, I support 25%. Council Member Adams. I can support 25%. Know that it's going to be well received, but, um, this is the reality of, um, what we're facing.

Council Member Rainey? I don't support it, but I don't want to talk about it anymore. So this has been lying dormant for, we'll call, a long time. Absolutely. Council— thank you for asking.

I just bring that up. We, we just needed to flush this out properly and thoroughly. So thank you for everyone's contribution. Obviously no one wants to talk about it. We wish we could do something different, and I hope we can work towards doing something different.

And that might be as we increase hours and do different things for some of these facilities, we might be able to do something different. So then, uh, really, thank you everyone for your patience and having this conversation and, and getting to a number And, and first off, thank you for allowing us this time to flesh this out and really talk about it and, and really put some of these conversations on public record. People can hear and, uh, uh, hear really the thought process that's gone into this.

So, thank you, Samantha. Thank you. And I guess, Samantha, do you have what you need from council to move forward? Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, Sam.

Let's move on. Yes, it was important, everyone. It was. Important. It needed to—.

Yeah, we had to do it because otherwise we're going to be right, right back where we started from.

Um, so we're going to start with, uh Public Works come in and the enterprise funds, the packet is there with a little memo in front and then they jump into their budgets. And just, I don't know, even got hit. All enterprise funds got hit. It takes a lot of water to process fish and it doesn't take a lot of water if they don't have any fish. So, cost, whether we're processing or not, there's still cost.

Yeah, so again,. I had a quick question. What are the number of employees with water sewer? Because it's together, right? It's 50— the employees are split 50/50.

So how many employees in total? 50— Um, yeah, Sheryl, we're going to pull it up currently. We are currently in flux. With the employees. Um, we just had an employee that transferred from the Water Sewer Department to the Harbor.

Okay. And then, uh, Joel, after 17—. After an amazing amount of years with the city, um, he is retiring at the end of the year. Um, he is our superintendent. He is a huge resource, kind of We are milking all the information out of him before he leaves.

So you're down— you'll be down Joel at the end of this year? We'll be down Joel at the— as of December 31st. And you're down one employee that's going to—. And one of our, uh, labor— uh, that's not the right term, but, uh, yes, one of our operators. And they've already transferred?

They've already transferred, yes. So we are currently down one employee. Uh, Joel will be moving on at the end of the year. This budget includes 5. Fully staffed,.

Yes, between both sewer and water. Yes. And so the—. So 10 total? No.

Okay, 2 and a half, 2 and a half. Yes. And so, um, the plan is, um, we are going to do one less employee for '27 with the intention of going back up that additional employee in '28. I know you have to probably put it out there, but are you looking at hiring from within? Is there anybody qualified?

We have a qualified employee that we are hoping is interested in moving up into that superintendent position. However, we won't know that until obviously we put that, uh, offer out and. See what we get for,. Uh—. And if I fully staffed is including a superintendent, the position?

Yes. Thank. You. Um, one other question. Um, is there an agreement— the teachers union— the positions are advertised within first sentencing the city?

There is a, um, there is an agreement where we can publish it publicly. However, with. Anybody that applies within a certain— I think it's the first 5 days of that publishing— they have priority, um, consideration. Yes. So from day one it goes out?

Yes, it goes out, it goes out publicly from the beginning. Just anyone that applies within that first period, they get priority consideration,. Right? And so, uh, yeah, so just again reiterate, um, we're already down an employee, we're going to be vet down a superintendent as of the new year. Um, we will see if anybody within the existing employee pool, um, applies to move up into that superintendent position, we will then either hire from that employee pool for the superintendent position, but we will anyway need to hire at least one employee no matter what.

We'll still be down one employee during the '27 year with the intention of backfilling that position in '28.

But this budget shows—. This budget imply— this budget— this budget does not include backfilling that employee, so shows. 4 Empty—. 5—. 5—.

5—. 6 Is— 6 is—. Okay, that's— great. Yes, yes, 6 is going to staff. We're going to staff to 5.

For the. 27-Year with the intention of going back up to— sorry, we said so many numbers— back up to 6 and 20. We'll note how in the past we've had the FTE count off to the side. It's helpful for endo for the future.

And you FTE guys equate that, like, that's equivalent for whether they're hourly or non-hourly? You guys use that term FTE? I know some organizations have it separate. Yeah, whether they're exempt or not exempt, if they qualify for full-time employment, they're, they're one FTE. Okay, perfect.

Yes.

What are your concerns going into this next year with water, water sewer?

Loaded question. Um, I think with the budget that's presented to you, um, we are taking advantage of the fact that we are not going— well, maybe that's not the term— with the, with the intention of not backfilling that employee However, you would think that we would have quite an additional surplus of money by not backfilling that employee. We actually don't have that much when you consider COLAs, step increases, health insurance increases, things like that. With a little bit of additional money by not backfilling that employee, we are planning on doing some deferred maintenance, operational maintenance, whatever you want to call it. Um, so we have quite a few pumps, uh, motors, you know, lift station improvements and things that we are planning on doing.

Um, we have operated with this number of employees in the past. I do think it is going to be— it's going to be hard. It's going to be— we are going to be pushing the crew pretty hard this year. Um, as you'll see, we have asked for a good amount in temp employees for the water department. So I don't know if we're starting with water and sewer.

I know they're combined and when you want to, you know, really talk about it, but they're also different. Um, on the water side, we have asked for a good amount of money for the, uh, water temporary budget. Uh, that is because the Heaney transmission line had quite a, uh, substantial impact over the, uh, the winter. We don't know if that's just because of natural causes. I know there was a couple earthquakes that happened over the winter.

Either way, once things finally melted out and we were able to access into that valley, because I don't know if any of you have ever hiked up to the reservoir and then hiked further into the valley, it is pretty treacherous and you cannot get into there until pretty far into the season just because of where it's located. Cordova, can you explain, like, I don't know if everyone knows how that water gets to the reservoir. Yeah, so I mean, just to explain that, so, you know, and no one online can see this, but I'm just going to do some hand motions. We got the, we got the Heaney Valley. The water comes down that, comes into a catchment, and then the force of that water actually then comes up the valley and then through a pipe into the reservoir.

That valley is in a heavily shadowed area because you've got the, you got Mount Echoes on one side and then you got the Heaney Range on the other side.

So it does not get good sun exposure until pretty late into the season, which then thaws things out to allow our crew to get there.

So realistically, we can't even do observations on the conditions of that transmission line until pretty late into the season. You know, I'm talking like late May to even late June, depending on the year. By the time we were finally able to get into that area, because even though if we have a mild winter, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's mild everywhere. We all know this town is full of thousands of microclimates.

So by the time we were able to actually get into that area to assess the situation, we realized that we had multiple breaks in the Keeney transmission line.

And so we, we did our best throughout the season to address those breaks. It's one of those situations where you start the lower one and then you wait and see if it fills up and if you spill water. If you don't spill water at the reservoir, then you have a leak, you gotta hike back in, you gotta see where that next leak is. We did that time after time after time. By the end of the season, we had realized that there was at least 5 breaks in the line that had occurred over the winter.

So that is the reason that we have such a high request for temporary employees, because we did our best to address those leaks this year. We got them repaired. However, we were able to repair the line itself, but again, I'm going to get into some technicalities, and the best way I can describe this So the line, the line is in the, the, uh, the creek, and then as it comes up along the valley, the trail is there also. So it uses the trail as bedding for the transmission line as it works its way out of the valley. That trail washed out multiple locations, which included, uh, gabions washing out, the trail washing out, multiple landslides.

So not only did that limit our access via the trail, it also destabilized the line in multiple locations. So we basically did our best to work our way in, start from the bottom, and before even addressing the trail and the stabilization itself, we just had to focus on the line to make sure, you know, fix the first one, where's the next one, fix the next one, where's the next one. Once that was done, we are now getting water out of the transmission line. We now have a huge stabilization project that we have to do next year, which is rebuilding the trail slash line bedding, which includes rebuilding gabions, installing new gabions, putting anchors, chains that go up the hill that can wrap around the transmission line. Secure those to trees and drill into rocks and all that sort of stuff.

Um, so I guess to circle back, um, the reason that we have such a large, uh, request for, uh, temporary employees is because we have a huge stabilization project to do for the heat transmission line. So in conjunction with that, the, um, down towards the bottom, the 18,000 repairs watershed, is that also part of the same. Yes, that is, uh, I— and we can work our way down or we can jump around however you want, but yes, um, the, the temporary employee number, that is, that is assuming if we pay temporary employees $25 an hour for 10-hour days, we can get 33 hours for 3 temporary employees, or not, sorry, 33 hours, uh, 33 days of temporary employees. We believe that should be enough. However, you know, it's just an estimate, and we're going to do our best with that number.

The number below that is just for equipment supplies, replacement of the supplies that we use to do these repairs and those sorts of things.

Quick question: are temporary employees eligible for health insurance? No, absolutely. Um, shifting over to the previous page, number 7, listing out the additional percent increase for the '27 budget. Um, I, I should have got in here earlier today to talk to you about it. Just curious, how do you came to those numbers?

Yeah,. Yes. So, um, I am— I have currently, uh, contracted with a company called Waterworth. They do, um, they do fee and future financial modeling for utilities.

I've been working with them unfortunately only the last few weeks, probably the mid of— middle of September up until now.

We've done multiple forecasts, we've done different models.

And so these percentages are basically at the low end of what we have shown that is necessary to not only continue to cover the cost of production but cover the cost of just operational maintenance. We, uh, we do have some presentations that we're preparing to present to you all in the future to show you the situation that we truly are in when it comes to looking at future capital improvements. Uh, we're obviously looking at our best to find funding sources that are outside of, uh, loans and repayment type of things. However, the grant situation for water and wastewater infrastructure is— it's grim, right? Almost everything that supports water and wastewater is in the loan format versus the grant format.

There are some that I've been going through. I'm still going through more, so I haven't exhausted our resources yet. However, What I have gone through so far, the grants that do exist, we just do not qualify. And I said this before, and I hate to say this, you know, we love our Valdez neighbors, but we are lumped in with them when it comes to a census area. And it creates a situation where the funding mechanisms that allow us to qualify for things We do not qualify because they drag us in the upward of what it would take to qualify for the state.

So, so far I have yet to find true grant funding for these projects. So we are still looking at when it comes to future funding, it is going to be in the loan category. There are very low interest loans. But they are still—. Like, what percent?

So currently, I mean, I can use the landfill for an example because it's the same style of loan, uh, 1.875%. But when you're looking at a $20, $30, $40 million project, it's a lot of money even at 1.875%. Thanks for the explanation about that. Yeah, yeah, that was good. Thank you.

And I, and I look forward to this conversation. That's one of my top priorities as council member is I mean, we can't do anything if we don't have water and we can't flush the toilet. There's not a lot— we can't even— we can't— there's no point in going to a swimming pool. Sure, no point in driving down the road. So I look forward to that conversation, hopefully shortly after the budget cycle.

And I know we have some December— after December 4th,. December. 12Th. Well, after the budget cycle, which implies into the new year. I, I have, I have gave— we.

Won't do it Christmas Eve, I promise that. I gave her some preliminary, uh, presentations, and, uh, we have determined like they're much larger conversations that we need to have. We're not going to solve them in the '27 budget, um, and but we are going to have to have some very serious conversations about, uh, water, sewer, and refuse a little bit. But, uh we have some serious conversation to have about these funds if we are going to cover future just year-to-year operating expenses as well as putting money aside for future capital improvements.

I appreciate that.

I think generally as we go through this, we'll just call out things that we have questions on. So, I mean, if I did in, in, uh real reason I like to ask all the department heads, what are your risks, what are your concerns? So thank you for speaking that with your staffing. Do you have concern for— I know you're bringing on temporary staff, we're doing without one. Is that going to then subsequently bite us with additional overtimes?

Or in some of those departments, I know that can be hit or miss. Is there a reason to buffer that with additional temporary staff to hopefully to get negates them over time? It's— I just— are we looking at that? It's really hard to project when it comes to the water and sewer side. I mean, you could say that on any fund, but, um, you know, we did look at what the projects we are looking to do.

Then there is also the unknowns that are going to come up, you know, and that is really— especially in the water and sewer department, that is really where we get, uh, I guess we want to call it bit, um, on our overtime, is because, uh, you know A water main blows out in the middle of the night, we have to call a crew in. We can't account for that. And so we do our best to put some overtime budget in, but it's just like the streets budget where we put money in for, uh, maintenance and equipment operations. And, you know, we, we know we're roughly going to use this much, and we put a little bit of buffer for, you know, emergencies. But until something happens, it's really hard to say.

I think with what we've put in front of you, we should be able to handle most usual situations. Sure. So yeah. And you do any kind of modeling— maybe this might be for Sheryl too— as you're, as you're creating this forecast for the future, are you looking back 3 to 5 years of average of what overtime is to then build that into what your current overtime projection might be? Just curious if you as a city are doing this.

Yeah, no, definitely. So when we're, when we're presented with, um, you know, our— so they send us over draft documents and they say, you know, give us your projections for the next year. Um, we're given columns with the last 3 years. Um, and so we do look at those and we use that for everything from utilities to wages to, um repairs and other things like that. So we do try to look at that sort of thing.

The hard part is, again, I'll say it again, you know, I mean, some of those years, you know, I mean, there might be a repair line where it was $20,000 one year and then it was $60,000 and then it was $10,000, you know, because things crap out and we try to stay ahead of those things. We also try to push them as long as we can. To get the most out of those pieces of equipment as we can as well. So it's— we do and we don't. And, you know, we do our best to not, you know, just replace things to replace things.

But if we can replace things before they've gone out, if we have the money, we will. Yeah. And I think that just speaks to our broader conversation after the new year.

Um, can I clarify though, for— by bringing these temp employees on, we're not avoiding overtime? Um, yes, we do have to make sure we're not. This is for a specific project, that's why we're bringing it on, not to cut somebody's overtime. Good answer. So quick question, how many employees are in the refuse department and what are the temporary employees who are.

Um, the temporary employee for that, they, um, they mostly do litter pickup at the landfill. They do litter pickup at the, uh, transfer facility. They also do brush clearing around perimeter, um, things like that. 5 Employees. 5.

5. Can I make—. 3 Are team superintendent and 4 superintendent and 4 FTEs, the normal, uh, full-time employees. But yes, the times are for, like I said, that. Okay, so they're not specifically for like the fence project or—.

No, no, no, no. And to that point, are there any other comments for water, wastewater, or continue on? Just at least one. Yeah, I'm just thinking about increased costs for fuel or such. Um, how is that factoring into your budget this year?

Cost of fuel going up? We predicted the best that we can. Uh, we've, we've looked at, uh, we looked at, like I said, we usually look at the past 3 years. Obviously this last year has had an event that has caused an increase. Um, we can't just assume that that's going to, you know, double or triple, but we do look at that.

Uh, usually what we do is we'll look at the last 3 years, we'll kind of average that, and then just add a little bit on top of that to hopefully account for whatever potential increases are coming. Yeah, definitely. They're not going away very— most—. Yeah. All right, but it's not going away next year either.

No, there's no indication. It would be very prudent to plan on this year. Well, it feels like even if that one incident was to resolve itself, there's a huge catchup Yeah, so it's not going away. That's not— sure. Exactly.

We're being prudent going there when it comes to fuel costs, as we've learned lessons this year. And sure, we have that. Yeah. Anything else for water, wastewater, before we move on to refuse? All right, questions on refuse.

Thank you, Council Member Ranney, for clarifying questions on that.

I have one question, and that might not be reflected in here, but where are we with the Bear Fence? Yeah. And is that a particular line item? Yeah, so we were not accounting for the initial payment on the Bear Fence loan based on when we will do a distribution from the state. That will hit in '28.

Another reason I'm not asking for a refuse increase is because as part of doing this project, I may or may not have directly said it, but we are taking on this loan with the intention of not increasing rates in 2027. There is going to probably need to be a small increase in '28, not necessarily directly because of the fence itself. But we need to be— and I'm going to just speak broadly here, just not about refuse, but, um, and we'll talk about this again when we have the bigger utility conversation— we need to be raising rates in the utility department every year, uh, whether it's been a bad fishing year, whether, you know, we're having to raise property taxes. Like, these funds are independent of those situations they have, um, they have, uh, effects that are based on— all right,.

Well, it's an enterprise fund, so it's independent. It's got to pay for itself. Yeah, well, yeah, between inflation, cost of living increases, things like that, steps. Increase,. Insurance premium goes up.

Yes, everything else is going— it's inflated. It needs to keep up with inflation. We have, we have looked at '27's budget. We believe that we can manage without an increase in '27 to, you know, build that faith with the community that we took out a loan, we're not going to immediately, uh, raise rates in '28. We, we may need to raise rates.

We don't anticipate it to be a large increase, but we will need to raise rates in '28 to just keep up with inflation. So yeah, so that's where we're at that. I had a question about the health insurance numbers. Are they reflecting of what we currently have or reflecting of what we potentially may have with the change? That's the new change.

So why is the health insurance in the refuse department going high? Let me just double check real quick. I would think it will. It's a weird thing, and without disclosing like personal information or anything, but with our old plan with Primera, we had different rates based on single employee, employee with family, employee with spouse, employee with child. So anyone who was single employee, theirs actually did increase with this new plan.

Okay. It happens that we have a number of those in that one department. Okay, so it's not going to be a cost saving across the board in every department, but overall it's an overall—. It's across the board, it's a saving. Each department, it, it can fluctuate, but across the board we're saving money.

That's a preceding year where it won't just jump dramatically.

Intentionally backed Cordova. Yeah, I have a question. Uh, what are professional services for $120,000? Uh, are we talking specifically about refuse? Yes, it's toward the bottom of the page, on page 12.

Uh, that number sounds off. Let me make sure we're looking at the right number. Is that when they come in and test the water? Which number? Which page number are you on?

Page 12, and it's down at the bottom, like 520. I'm seeing 120,000. That's what I said. Yeah, you said 420,000. Yeah, I said 120,000.

That's—. Yeah, so that is a— that's a multitude of things. Um, we have, uh, we have, we have multiple different state testing that we have to do. Uh, we don't have the staff that is qualified to do certain report building. So we hire out those services.

And so the reason it was higher in '26 is because a lot of those tests are on different cycles. And so we had a bunch of things that lined up in the '26 year that we won't have to deal with in the '27 year. Yeah, it's already $26,000. Yeah, permit requirements. We also, uh, we also had to do a survey in '26, um, like an actual physical land survey, um, that we haven't been required to do before.

And so that was a pretty large expense to survey a 40+ acre property or whatever it is that the landfill is. So yeah.

Any other questions for you on refuse? Kind of refuse related, the bird pile, how's, how's things going out there? Yeah, so we tested the camera in a couple different positions. I am glad that we are doing a testing period and not just jump into something. We've realized that even with this early in the season, before the sun has completely disappeared, we are having issues with charging of the camera with its single battery.

They do provide a battery bank option. So we're going to be looking into that. Also, we're looking at how, you know, based on how— where we push the pile and people drive in and different coverages and what the Police Department needs to be able to do enforcement. Uh, we, we've learned quite a bit over the last few weeks on that. Uh, the camera has now been moved out to the landfill to do some testing out there to see how we can use something similar for, uh, trespass issues at the landfill.

So, uh, we have not made a final decision on how we're going to do monitoring at the burn pile at the landfill. Um, But we are, uh, we're working on it. That's been great. Nice. I thought, I thought somebody got pissed.

I called him because I saw the cameras were gone.

Yeah, the pole was like, like laying down there. It's like somebody just got pissed and pushed the pole down.

Anything else? Really very public works, I guess, at this point. And look at— yeah,.

I, I've got a, I got a list of different, uh, things that we're going to replace and fix and deal with if we want to get even through it. But otherwise, you know, it, it's gonna, gonna cost what it's gonna cost next year to, uh, do the maintenance operations and, uh, staffing for what it takes to run our water and sewer system. As well, Rockies. Yeah, thank you for that. Streets, how are we looking?

I know it's going into the winter. Uh, yeah, we're, uh, we're doing our best to, uh, get all of these snow dumps prepped. We have the typical situation that we run into in most years where people love to use the right-of-way as their personal parking lots. Uh, we are, uh, working with police department to tag vehicles, boats, trailers, and all those sorts of things to let them know you have, uh You got time to move them or, or yanking them. And so we're getting those things ready.

We've done most of the other prep and yeah, at this point we're just ready for the snow to come. Yeah, it's freezing over. Yeah, yeah. Crazy. Yeah.

Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, supposed to be an El Niño here.

We always have that. Every year.

Yeah, perfect. Are we ready to move on to Harbor Biscuit Harbor Enterprise? Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, thank you, Kevin. Thank you.

You get to beat up on Tony now. Yeah, bring it. He's gonna get her right back. Be careful, let's not make it last as long Evening. Evening.

And you said you have 6 employees including you, which obviously you could get rid of. So, Tony, or keep—. You can't have both.

We're not here to talk about that.

Um, again, my question would be, Sam, so where— how did you come to the increased percentages? Well, some of them came to comparing with other places around the area. Um, another one was that we're not putting anything away, um, ever since we did South Harbor. As you all know, that it cost us a lot of money, you know, sort of borrowing, stealing it, whatever. And making those payments are tough, especially on the bad years.

I mean, it's hard for everyone, but, you know, we're here. We are $60 right now, $60 a foot per year. They're $84.46 a foot per year. We're here. Um, Valdez is like 50 cents to a dollar cheaper.

They have weird rates, really hard to figure out, but, um, Sewer is $62.51 right now, foot per year. So when it comes to permanent slips, um, the— I looked at what's around us to an extent, and further out, we are one of the cheapest besides Valdez and all of— not Southeast Alaska, South Central and out west. So, um, and we haven't raised rates in 2 years, so to make up for the South Harbor payments on that Um, breaking up a lot of it, we just haven't raised the rates.

So of your 6 employees, how many are qualified to run the travel lift? One. Just one? Just one right now. Is that something that's going to change, or—.

Yes, we hired, um, Daniel Adajar from the water department,. Right,. To jump into the supervisor job that, uh, John Hutchins was in. Okay. Which he's— his job title is travel lift operator.

Okay, so he is in training right. Now to do that job. Because I noticed you don't have any temporary employees. We haven't for years. Yeah,.

Yeah, yeah. And then is that included in here for professional development, whatever training he needs? On all the job— on the job training. And then Travelift is here, they come do maintenance and, um, inspections every year. They go through them and train on mechanical stuff and what to look for and everything.

Is that part of the fees, or what's that? Is that part of the travel fees, or was that the travel fees? The travel fees? Yes, from use of the bank vessels.

Yeah, I will agree with you. I mostly traveled through Southeast and are concerned. I mean, you start comparing to the lower 48, we're way—. Try not to do that, but yeah, yes,. Go ahead.

No, I, I mean, the comparables that you just said, I mean, we have, we have fishing fleet, we don't have what those other people have, we don't have the, the charter boats, we don't have the little mini cruise ships. I mean, we, we are supporting fish.

If you look in our harbor and you compare to the ones that you just said, oh yeah, we're 10% recreational. Yeah.

So you're able to take— is— are the facilities using all the oil right now so you don't have to ship any used oil out? Right now we're doing really well, really well. And I talked to Kevin about, um, of public works building, and they're burning it like crazy. Schools start coming online now, they're in business again. We don't have a centrifuge.

We don't—. We don't have a centrifuge? No. Okay, because I know that would help. I think that's part of the problem with the pool is just the quality of the oil.

But okay, the pool— I mean, like, doesn't the pool use— no, I mean the, the high school, right, maintenance issues because of the quality of the. They have settling tanks, and we've done a better job now that we've gone in. Years ago, we went over and started plucking the antifreeze separately, so it's already separated out. So the oil is better. It's always going to be a bit dirty, but we settle it out, and then they also settle it out in their tanks.

Okay, I'm going to shift gears on a whole other question. Um, how did you come up with the fee for cruise ship and day cruise passenger fees? Looking at what they charge in Juneau and Ketchikan, and we don't get enough to start charging that state fee that comes back to us, really. So it's like, I think Juneau is like $35 or something like that a person, um, plus there's a state fee on top of that, um, the facilities they use, they're always using our facilities. I'm down there greeting them most of the time when they come in.

So I don't dispute that. I'm just wondering why it's not higher. Well, a number of years ago it was 5. Yeah, I mean, after a couple years, we just don't— we also, to the other side, we're not— we don't have as much to offer as some of these other people. I understand.

Yeah, you know, we do have something they want to see. We do. Um, but yeah, to a point. I mean, I talked with an awful lot of them when they came in on the bigger ones. Um, yeah, we don't have anything to offer per se to get to those places.

We have a lot to offer, but to get to those places— so I mean, I don't want to scare them away either. I want to try to get them here. I mean, I encourage it to an extent. We don't want to be too no catch can, um, but start throwing a big increase on top of them. And so I figured we put a little bit on top, see if they keep coming back with uncrused, and then see if they come back with um, Hurtigruten, or I don't think they're Hurtigruten, whoever bought them out.

Yeah, and we're also meeting people who are getting businesses going and doing— yeah, taking people places and things like that. So as we continue to grow and people— the word gets amongst the passengers who ride in the boats that are coming here, they're not cruise ships, you know.

Cordova. Yeah, my understand, a very different tourist than Juneau or Ketchikan. Yeah, um, just think something we need to establish before we get too carried away with it, with scaring away right away with $20, $30 a person. And right now, and there is all kinds of— Council Member, we start— we had 5, and I remember I raised the question. We did, we started at 3, 3 to 5, and it'd been about every 2 to 3 years we raise it.

I know this last year we had the Harbors, we weren't raising it then. Now we have some different amenities. And so that's kind of not saying it needs to continue to be this way, but that's what it has been from the conversation from $3 to where we're at now at $10, is assessing every kind of year to couple of years of increases, just slowly and gradually. But Tony, do you have an idea of the average income that produces over the last several years? Um, and pastor fees, I think we took in like $3,000 last year.

Okay. Um, I don't know actually those tours, but those are free tours to try to promote, right? Is that free? I don't know. I'm not sure if it's free.

Um, there's a nominal. Fee. It gets people easy, right? Yeah, it's the line item that's, um, passing your vessel tax share out of the bottom there, 502-300 What are your concerns going into fishing season? I mean, obviously, that's, that's our people.

And just, um, and then of course the other one is we're not putting any money away. And so we're not doing any grants, we're not doing any big projects. You know, we've talked about before when we looked at the PID about doing South— I mean, North Harbor. Um, we. Didn't bring for it because we don't, we don't have a match.

The city, the general fund, you know, sooner or later we need to, you know, we've done small repairs on the ocean dock, the city dock, but they're all pretty small. Sooner or later we're going to have to do another big project,. And we got to be able to fund it.

And you're doing, and just based off your conversation with the current fee schedule, based on— I'm hoping you're using just an average fishing year, not great, not as poor as we've seen— that allows you to put some money towards repairs and maybe a little money away. Maybe, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm hoping for. Yeah, it's not going to be huge, but it's something. Yeah, I'm just curious, as far as the south harbor, everything's functioning properly, there's nothing there of any concern? Cory's there.

Well, we're still waiting on the remote metering system. Oh, we made some progress today, I think. We— I think so. We got some— we actually got people to respond back and say they just needed this and this, and they got. A little bit of.

That. Yes, they did get one thing. So yes, that's over there. And we're still working on the drive-down cranes, which, if we get a sunny day soon, Calvin from Cordova Airport now, um, is going to change out the valves on that. He thinks he's figured out the issue with them.

Um, blowing their return filters. We can get those up and running, fishermen will be very happy about— they'll be happy.

Good way to call it.

Yeah, besides that though, the South Harbor has been, it's been great. I mean, we've had so many good comments too from people coming in, transient people who just love it. The dock is fantastic. It is. Yeah, that is like the highlight.

Yeah, I know people are like, why are we spending this money? And now they're like, this is the greatest thing in the room, this drive-down. Yeah, yeah, everybody.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very well used, utilized. Um, questions, concerns, Council on the Harbor Enterprise Fund?

We can't let it go out that easy. I was in Belize last week. They got everything over there. Yeah, if you just get— we're different tax bracket, right? We are.

Yeah, the proletariat. Yeah, we're in the community center for a conference and someone came out and said, wow, you tell they have a pipeline here. When I hit the paper towel dispenser, I got this much of a paper towel on it. That is the line of prosperity right there. Yeah, two, two-ply toilet paper.

Yes, I think I got three-ply.

Oh, okay. I'm sure— why don't you just stop by? We'll have coffee. Yeah, I'm gonna make it. Yeah, we got good coffee.

Uh, is that in here? Yeah.

When the sign machine can be up and running again, it's going to be blacker than ever. Hopefully this month. Ah, yeah, so we get it back up, get it running again, and then start making some more. Great. Nice.

Excited for my switch house. Yeah, you bet. Get ready to put my old one back up.

Never to move this along, anything, concerns? Thank you for addressing— obviously generally it's fishing season, but Thank you. Thank you.

What do you need from us, Sam, to move forward? Talk about—. Oh yeah, yeah, oh, thank you. Such as it is. Yeah, Samantha hasn't had enough time up here.

All the. Time.

And if not this family, come after if you want. Yeah, if I can score votes enough, probably.

Probably. Next concept of the. Year. Um,. Tell us about OIA.

Oh, I love OIA. Um, yeah, it was a hard year this year. You didn't make out with me though. Um, I didn't have a lot of complaints about the fee schedule. Uh, it was more that people just weren't here.

Using it, so that was a little disappointing. We did have a lot of rain at certain times when festivals and that sort of thing, when people would be coming in. So I think we came up with a plan for next year doing some improvements, and I just really want to continue to invest in it. I think it's a huge resource for the community, and I think with the road work being done and a bike path there in the future, it's just going to really open up a lot more possibilities with it. So.

Is there any way to reach out to some of the construction that's going to happen next year and let them know if they brought a camper, there's a place to put it? There might be able to, but last time that happened last summer, they were reaching out to me quite heavily, right? So, but I can do that.

Yeah, so, hey, thank. You, Kevin.

I, you know, there's a lot of work that needs to be done over there. That's— there's no secret to that, to build up to, you know, doing more and more improvements to it. Is the temporary restroom over there still functioning? I haven't been out there. Yes, it's still functioning.

And, um, but our, our restroom too is, is functioning. Um, you know, the showers and that sort of thing. We did, uh, invest in some key codes for it this year because we were having— we did have a lot of people going in and using it and misusing it. So our maintenance was having to deal with that. So now when you reserve it, you get your permit and you get the code to the door to use those facilities because that was a big maintenance thing during the summer.

So even though they weren't staying there, it was hard to enforce people actually using the way.

So do you have a functional boiler? I do over there. Yes. So that was another— yes, it is functioning over there quite well. So it's propane now.

And so that was put in last year. It's great. We're going to put one of the budget items in here is just putting a cover over it and some safety things around it too, which isn't there right now. So, yeah.

RV campers can come, uh, 12 and then 3, um, so 12, uh, spots for RV camping and then 3 tent platforms.

And there's power as well? Yes, the power— that there is power there, but that is something that we need to look forward to is And it's been on, I think, the list for a long time. It's replacing those stands for embedding old— any.

Other questions?

Thank you. I appreciate your passion for OD in that county.

Over there. We've had great feedback in the last few years. Country, you know, right? Yeah, good feedback on that for people that have stayed there. So here's some from people who have stayed there, and I sort of— here's some more tips that you offer as a tip.

So You have one question about— yeah, just thinking about the Mark 5 Master Plan. We're going to— Mark 5 Master Plan. So the one that they're like— the one that's coming up? Yeah, I'm representing on the 17th. Yes, that's all looking good.

It's looking great. Yeah, if we could just keep everyone healthy so they can come to town. So it was unfortunate that they had the flu and couldn't come in. Um, they were, you know, they were just as upset about But it was, um, person that was going to present the, the numbers. Very important.

Is it rescheduled then? Yes, for the 17th. Of. November. November 17th.

And then they'll present on the 18th City Council. Great, thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, thanks for keeping me on track, everyone, for ODF. What do you need from us moving forward, Sam? Our next—. We'll bring the fee schedule, bring these budgets forward as they are with the increases. The new schedule will include fees.

Um, typically we do that reschedule at the same time we pass the budget. Um, the entire budget, two separate documents, of course. So we will have the meeting before the final vote. We will have a complete— a reschedule of the budget as we want to see it next meeting. We have a special advertisement time.

So,. So you're saying that there's— we got a lot of meetings coming up. General funds on the 4th, it's going to be a big one. We need to see where you're going to land there. And that's going to be on the agenda also to approve it?

Okay, we're just looking at a work session. Yeah, it's a work session. I'm sorry, gotcha. We have work session and we can— it's pretty light meeting as of now, uh, as far as the regular meeting. Amanda Tiffany Godd, she's not giving— you're the problem.

No, she's the helper. I forgot that. I should Um, is there a reason if we know what the fee schedule is going to be, we can't— it just— I might be missing something. Why, if we're ready for the fee schedule, can we just bring that forward to vote on and start that process? Is there— uh, well, I'm not sure that we're ready for the fee schedule.

So the police— there's other departments that have fee schedules. Police, planning— I mean, we can, um, start moving that forward. I don't think we would have it on the 4th because we're about to try and get our packet out Monday for the—. Plus the packet. Yes, I mean, it's not appropriate to ask this here, but I, I would be interested in just seeing the actual numbers of those potential savings for insurance component for employees I mean, we've talked a little bit.

I mean, you've brought it up to us, but a hard number—. A year over year, so you're saying? Yes. Okay. Do you— per employee or— no, no, no.

Okay, total. See, no, please. Um, we'll be here. But yeah, I think that will be in that— for the work session, that is, because it's general fund. We just didn't pull it out.

We— well, we, we did the enterprise fund budget. Before we even—.

All right, any other asks for next week's work session? What we want to see?

Yeah, I'd just like to say I'm really glad we spent the first hour the way we did. That needed to happen. I am too. I am Very uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad we got to it.

Anything else? We good? Any objection to say we're in a— a— or motion to adjourn? I move we adjourn. Adjourned.