Soldotna: 10-28-2026 City Council Meetings

Yeah, we do a lot of that. We don't try to make Frozen.

Your kids don't watch Frozen anymore? You're missing out. I like it. Yeah, it's still a— oh yeah.

Yeah, probably just going to do the— well, you're going to run out. I don't know, you're right. There's time. I got to— yeah, yeah, this one's today. Yeah, that's good.

I think we're doing something Saturday too. Yeah.

I would like to call the October 28th, 2026 City Council regular meeting to order. Will everyone please stand and join me with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible liberty and justice for all.

Will the clerk please call the roll? Carey? Present. Chilson? Present.

Hutchings? Here. Nelson? Present. Parker?

Yes, ma'am, I'm here. Wackler? Present. Cox? Present.

You have a quorum, sir. Uh, thank you. The next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda and consent agenda. May I have a motion to approve the agenda and consent agenda? Miss Hutchings.

May I have a second, please? Mr. Carey. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I second the approval of the agenda and the consent agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda or consent agenda?

Seeing and hearing none, will the clerk please read the consent agenda?

October 14th, 2026 meeting minutes. Ordinance 2026-024, accepting grant funds from the US Department of Transportation Build America Rural and Tribal Assistance Pilot Program and increasing estimated revenues and appropriations in the miscellaneous capital project funds by $9,000.

$161,000 For use towards the Soldotna Safe Crossings study, sponsored by the City Manager. Public hearing will be on November 12th. That is your consent agenda.

Are there any public comments on any of the items just read by the clerk? Anyone here in the audience wishing to speak on any of those items? Did we have anyone online? Yes. And there's no one online.

Having no one else wishing to speak, the approval of the agenda and consent agenda is back before the council. Any objections to approving the agenda and consent agenda?

Seeing and hearing none, the agenda and consent agenda are approved by unanimous consent. And if there's no objection, I'd like to move the one proclamation for the Alzheimer's up to this point right now and do it. Thank you. And so we will do the presentation of the proclamation for National Family Caregiver Month. If somebody from the association Okay, here's the proclamation.

Whereas Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, is a progressive and degenerative disorder, brain disorder that causes memory loss and affects self-care, decision-making, and behavior. And whereas 8,400 Alaskans are currently living with Alzheimer's disease, supported by 25,000 unpaid caregivers who provide 39 million hours of care annually valued at $796 million. And whereas dementia is a leading cause of death in Alaska and the only leading cause of death in the country with no known treatment to prevent, cure, or even delay the onset or slow the progress— progression of the disease. And whereas, with early detection and diagnosis, individuals and families can gain access to medication and support services which promote quality of life, full— fully participate in planning for the future, and enroll in critical research trials. And whereas the city of Soldotna recognizes the Alzheimer's Association for promoting awareness and providing care and support, improving the quality of life for those living with dementia and their caregivers.

And whereas November is National Family Caregiver Month, a time to honor caregivers across Alaska and the U.S., raise awareness and strengthen support for their essential role. And whereas it is crucial to recognize the stories, resilience, and dedication of those affected by dementia, including the ongoing efforts of research seeking a cure. And whereas I urge, I urge all residents to support caregivers in our community by volunteering with organizations like the Alzheimer's Association. Every effort from helping with daily tasks to providing respite care can make a significant difference. Now therefore, I, Paul Whitney, do hereby proclaim November 20th— November 2026 in the city of Soldotna as National Family Caregiver Month, dated this October 28th, day of October 2026.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Carey. And I got a feeling there's a camera on. Maybe more than one.

Sorry, I took some of your time. You didn't.

Moving on to the next agenda item is presentation with prior notice, and we're Soldotna Visitor Center quarterly update by Sarah Handel, Soldotna Chamber of Commerce Executive Director.

Good evening, honorable Mayor Whitney and members of the Soldotna City Council. I'm pleased to share the third quarter Soldotna Chamber of Commerce's report. Uh, the third quarter was a full and rewarding summer for the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce, marked by continued membership growth strong community participation, and significant opportunities to promote local businesses and strengthen those connections throughout our community. The Chamber welcomed 11 new members during the third quarter, while 67 existing members renewed their memberships. We continue to support member businesses through ribbon cuttings, business promotion, networking, and marketing opportunities.

The Chamber co-hosted two ribbon cuttings and attended a third. Celebrating local businesses and helping increase their visibility within the community, within the community. In September, advertising sales began for the 2027 official Soldotna Guide, providing businesses with an opportunity to market directly to both visitors and local residents. The chamber also hosted all 4 weeks of the September Joint Chamber Luncheon Series. When a scheduled speaker became unavailable early in September, we were able to pivot at the Soldotna Chamber to create a new luncheon series called Business Bites.

We're going to be featuring, or we did feature, 5 local businesses who each had 5 minutes to do a spotlight for their business, and the event received such excellent feedback and attracted attendees who had never previously been to a chamber luncheon. It was so— the response was so overwhelmingly great that we already have a January Business Bites filled, and we have more on the calendar for 2027. We're going to have at least a minimum of each quarter having a Business Bites luncheon, but we're also going to have some of those be Breakfast Bites just to mix it up a little bit. So Um, if somebody's a sole proprietor and they can't leave their small business, they can maybe come at the beginning of their day. So we're looking forward to having, uh, the support of our local businesses in 2027 in that way.

The Chamber Summer Event Calendar was full for third quarter. We generated strong participation and provided numerous opportunities again for business businesses, residents, and visitors to connect. The Levet Amp Soldotna Music Series hosted 8 concerts during the third quarter, with the July 1st concert drawing an estimated record-breaking 8,000 people. And that was when we had the Harp Twins performing, and it was unreal, the crowd that was in Soldotna Creek Park that night. Uh, And it was, it was very exciting for me.

I did a 360 video and I just could not— it was wave, wave, wave of heads. Super exciting. The series continues to, or continued to, provide free community programming while bringing significant foot traffic and activity to the area. This summer, the beer garden operated as a chamber-led fundraiser. This was the first time that the chamber had did done that, and it generated such a successful source of revenue to support our organization's programs and initiatives that it's going to be something that we do next summer as well.

The Kine River Quilt Tour included 22 participating merchants and 122 entries. 70 Participants visited at least 16 locations, while we had 52 who visited all of the 22 locations. That ran for about a month, halfway through June, but then through July. It demonstrated the event's ability to encourage people to explore and patronize local businesses. Progress Days also saw strong participation.

The parade— yes, it was a political year, right? Or is a political year. That's why we had 77 entries compared to 50 the previous year, make it— making it one of the largest turnouts in recent years. The Progress Days block party reviewed 33 vendor submissions and filled available booth space. Following the, the event, staff identified opportunities to make next year's block party even more focused on children and families based on the success of this year's activities.

The chamber also partnered with Joint Chambers to organize the Narrowing the Field gubernatorial Forum, bringing 9 governor candidates to the Kenai Peninsula for a nonpartisan informational event ahead of the August primary. More than 200 people had registered for it, and the event held in the early evening was well received by the community. The quarter concluded with the 32nd annual pie and dessert auction, which raised more than $29,000 for the Soldotna Chamber Scholarship and Community Events programs while continuing the longstanding Soldotna tradition. The date is already slated. We're taking it back to its original month of October for next year, so that's already on the calendar for October 30th, 2027.

So that's just an overview of what our third quarter was like. So there was quite the momentum Uh, on the visitor center side of things, on the top of page 2, visitor center and marketing, we have had a rise in traffic in the visitor center, uh, from 23,373 people May through September in summer 2025 to this summer we had 25,251. July, of course, was our busiest month. Just in July alone, there was 9,151 visitors in the center. The Soldotna Visitor Center continues to attract those independent travelers, those on tours, as well as locals who are hosting family or seeking info about services that our members have to offer.

The summer visitors came from 48 out of 50 US states, uh, The most came from Texas, Minnesota, and then within Alaska. Visitors came from 15 different countries, with the most visitors coming from Germany, Canada, and Switzerland. And you can see the other countries that were represented there in that list. Um, our Soldotna Visitor Center geocache, we've had 76 people look for that hidden on the property. And I included a quote there from somebody who was visiting Soldotna.

"A quick and fun find today before heading out towards Seward, hoping it's a nice day for a boat tour from there. Enjoying being back in Alaska exploring and geocaching. Thanks for the hide." So when people log into geocache.com and they have found our hidden cache, they can leave us comments and they also have the opportunity to within their own geocaching community earn extra credit points by taking a selfie with a certain wooden figure that is on display outside of our visitor center. And I'll give you a clue, he's holding a fish. So they're having a lot of fun, those geocachers.

One of the things that I wanted to share was a note from Mary Beth. Mary Beth is our visitor center manager, and she has a little message that I wanted to share on her behalf. She says, I am new to my position this year and have a lot of goals for next year, including reviving the accommodations tour and the tourism after hours, becoming more familiar with our lodges and guides, and marketing the vacancy calendar to our members. I have made connections with the Anchor Point Visitor Center and the Cooper Landing Visitor Center and hope to explore ways we can work together to support these smaller centers and benefit the whole peninsula. I have also successfully cultivated relationships with some Anchorage vendors, calling them my post-peninsula partners because Mary Beth came to Soldotna from the last couple of years she had lived in Anchorage, and so she has worked in lots of different tourism places up there.

And so it's very exciting that she brought all of those connections with her to her position at the Soldotna Visitor Center, and she hopes to grow those. I attended the grand opening of the Mat-Su Gateway Visitor Center. She attended the Visit Anchorage Toast to Tourism event, and she most recently just went to the Alaska Tourism Industry Association Convention. That was held in Fairbanks just a couple of weeks ago. So she has been a huge asset for tourism in Soldotna.

Our Soldotna Chamber newsletter, we are up to 2,619 subscribers. We have this really awesome open rate every Monday when we send out the newsletter of 46%. That's encouraging. People want to know what's going on in our local area, and it's one of the best benefits we have for our chamber members who can submit their activities that they have going on. On social media, our Visit Soldotna page on Instagram is up this quarter.

As far as our followers, our Soldotna Chamber page is also up. One of our posts that did super well that had over 5,000 total views was our back-to-school post because I think it gives that human side of our organization because we had a staff picture of each one of us and shared how many days we had been at the chamber and some of the things that we like. So those real world, that human interest and it, it's fun to insert those throughout the year just so people realize that we're human beings and we're working on their behalf and hoping that they can connect with us on that level. For Facebook, our Visit Soldotna page has grown as well as our views are up, and this quarter alone, the views on Facebook for Visit Soldotna are 96%. Up, and that is incredible.

And that's because Mary Beth has been working really hard at engaging our followers to share things like #MooseMonday, and she's been sharing also a lot of different videos that if people have videos of wildlife, those do really well. Our top content posts for the Soldotna Chamber Facebook page. Our last quarter anyways was our ribbon cutting for Little Horse Ranch that's out in Sterling. If you have not made a trip out there, I encourage you to go because they have quite a few miniature horses and one miniature mule. If you've never seen a miniature mule, they have one.

So that was pretty cool.

Our Feature Fridays that Ever, our membership manager, shares are always a hit, and so we have one of those on the bottom right-hand side of the page. Also, our Artist Spotlight series, you have the lineup there. July, August, and September, we had quite a few different kinds of art, um, genres from watercolor paintings to photography to line drawings. This has been so successful this year. Mary Beth, I think, has 2027 already booked for different artists that will take a different month in the visitor center next, next year.

So that's very exciting. And then on the back page, it's just a little bit of an overview of all the different places we advertise for Soldotna in 2026. We've invested in the following different guides and maps, and you can see those there. We have for 2026 year-to-date either mailed or distributed over 28.5K Soldotna guides. So we're almost through all of our boxes because we had ordered 30,000 last year.

So we're right on par to getting through those. And then our relocation packets year to date where we had 19 leads come through our website and 25 in person. And for our events third quarter, you can see it was very busy. And then we have 2 callouts about Soldotna Pie Auction. And thanks to the generosity of 15 dessert chefs, 37 volunteers, 185 attendees, and over 100 businesses and individuals who donated cash, goods, and services, the 32nd annual Soldotna Pie Auction, themed Star Stripes and Soldotna Nights, was a tremendous success.

But what aided in that success was the high energy, the enthusiastic audience participation, and a significant increase in net revenue over the previous year. So last year we had quite the comeback from pre-COVID years of pie auction, and even though having the event in September and losing some of our return attendees due to moose hunting or other events that were on the same night. Even though our attendance was down over what it's been traditionally, we actually surpassed last year's net income. And so we're able to definitely award our $12,000 to our scholarship program and then everything above that for our community events. So Um, we had— there's always, when you move an event and have basically 3 out of the 4 of our, uh, team brand new to that event, there's always going to be some growing pains.

Um, but overall it was successful for being able to fund all of our programming. And like I already said earlier, we're back to October for 2027. Soldotna Progress Days and Block Party that was held July 25th. The Soldotna Block Party returned for its third year, drawing families to Parker Park following the parade. This year's event included designated vendor parking at Soldotna Senior Center, field games hosted by Parks and Rec.

Thank you, Parks and Rec. I loved that we were able to utilize the lawn more for all of those lawn activities. It was neat at the conclusion of the block party to look up and still see families that were hanging out playing the, the games that were on the lawn. We also had the return of Magician Robbie and free vendor booths for those nonprofits and businesses that had agreed to host kids games. We are especially thankful to the Elks Lodge for hosting a prize booth again where children could redeem game tickets for prizes and enter bike giveaways.

And of course, the City of Soldotna administration and council, uh, you all contributed to providing the free public barbecue. Um, thank you for doing that. Pre- and post-event meetings with you all, uh, were especially valuable in strengthening communication and collaboration, which we hope to see, uh, next year as well. Other activities, uh, included the Sakai Sprint, the water balloon toss, and the look-alike contest. And one of the things I brought is a show and tell, so I will pass this around.

So this is one of the newest things that we have for sale in the Soldotna Visitor Center. There's this company called Beacon Design, and they make commemorative ornaments each year for the White House, and They've done the same for Disney World. Well, Soldotna, Alaska now has their very own collectible beacon ornament, and represented there, as you'll see, it's one of the photographs that we use a lot in our marketing of Soldotna. It shows the bridge and of course the Kenai River with our island right in front of the visitor center. It says Soldotna, Alaska, home of the world record king salmon.

You have a salmon, you have beautiful Mount Redoubt, an eagle, and fireweed. And I'm going to pass this around. These, we just got them last week and Mary Beth made a social media post and we have had so many bites from outside of Alaska. We've already mailed like 12 of these ornaments all across the lower 48. And yeah, people have been coming in and asking for the ornament so that they can send them to their loved ones in the States.

And so these retail at $28. And then this year, because it was our trial run, we did not put a date on it because we didn't know how well it was going to do. But because it has been doing really well, And it's not just an ornament for your car. You can hang it on— or excuse me, for your holiday tree, but you can dangle it off of, you know, your rearview mirror, whatever's cool to you. Let me pass this around.

And then do you have any questions for me? Any questions for Ms. Ondell?

Vice Mayor Parker. Thank you, Mayor Whitney, and thank you, Sarah, for your presentation. Um, the relocation packets— yes, of those packets that you've either distributed through the web or people have picked up in person— do you track whether the people actually relocate here?

They're, you know, because those that we give out in person, we don't have any of their personal information to know if— how should I say that? A lot of times the ones that we hand out in person are from, for instance, if we go to a trade show like last year, We went to the Matsu Trade Show and we hand out a lot about people that are interested in either relocating here for their retirement years or they're just collecting the relocation packets to give to people that are related to them that are interested. But if we're giving them out in person, we're not collecting their personal data and so we don't have any way to follow up with them. Now, on the website side of things because we're mailing them. We do have all of that contact information and we could follow up potentially because if we try to contact them, they do have to give us a phone number.

So we could, we could get that demographics to you in the next report. It would be interesting to see if it does turn into people coming here. Yeah, it's a great question because I never really thought about that. Thank you.

Anything else from the council?

Being done, thank you very much for the presentations. It's quite informative and We're looking forward to next year as well. Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is public comments and presentations. Are there any members from the public who would like to speak on any item not appearing on the agenda? Anyone here in the audience, please step forward and state your name and address for the records.

Hi, good evening, Mayor Whitney, members of the council. My name is Angela Reed and I live at 730 Hester Avenue in Soldotna. Alaska, um, inside city limits. I'm asking the council to consider a simple citywide rule for mailbox cluster mailboxes in the city right-of-ways. In 2017, the families in our neighborhood, many whom built their homes together through a self-help housing program, worked with the post office in the city to put a cluster box at the East Readout and J Street.

We paid for it ourselves. Today, serving 16 households, it's most It's more secure within the roadside boxes, giving the carrier one safe stop and making the streets easier to plow. As Soldotna grows, we see more cluster boxes, but our code does not mention them. SMC 1216-010 requires a permit to put something in the right-of-way, but when a private box was added to our site without permission, nobody— not even residents, not the city, not the post office Not the police department had a clear rule, local rule, to point to. A clear rule would let these situations be resolved by the city with a simple notice instead of leaving homeowners sorting through rules spreading across city boroughs, state and federal sources to pay for court costs.

Postal rules already point to local rules, so one clear city rule that everyone can find and follow is the missing piece. Our Alaska community already solved this. One Alaska community, Matsu Borough, approached this clearest. A permit is needed for any mailbox or cluster box in the right-of-way Cluster boxes go only in approved spots or pullouts. A cluster box pullout is for official Postal Service units only, with no private boxes allowed.

The postmaster is consulted, but final placement approval rests on the local government. Unauthorized items can be removed at the owner's cost And permits give no one an executive right to the spot. Kenai's 2026 draft street manual also requires a right-of-way permit for any mailbox. Our own site is separate matter with Public Works. I'm not asking you to act on it.

I'm asking you whether the council members or the city manager will get a look at the standards like this, or an ordinance, public work standards, or a policy. The clerk has my letter with the details and sources, and I'd like your time and services to— I appreciate your time and your services to Soldotna. Any questions from the council? Ms. Wackler? Yeah, um, I just want to clarify your issue is a private cluster box being put on your property without your permission, or—.

No, I have— I, through USDA's Rural Self-Help Program—. Familiar with the program. Um, we are incentivized to set up our own services, get our own permits, and set up, uh, services for our whole Um, subdivision. Yeah. Um, we had 3 phases at the, um, this site.

So ours, and then the next year another phase, and the next year another phase. So total of 45 people were slammed in one spot with one cluster box available because of my inability, um, right after moving in to be able to order another cluster box without help from that other community helping me purchase a cluster box for them. So now that COVID is over, I've been able to finally financially be able to save up enough to order a cluster box that cost $2,600 compared to 9 years ago cost at, I think it was $1,699. So, um, it is at the cost of the homeowners, the developers, or HOA to be able to get mailboxes out to the community. Not the post office, not the city, not anyone else but us.

But who is there to help us when somebody encroaches on that property where I accidentally put my cluster box 5 feet out into the right-of-way? And now I'm asking for a reconstruction on my driveway permit so that I can bring that back into my private property and can't be encroached by guys a mile and a half down the road outside the city. City limits, where they erected a single mailbox right on the concrete where I had plans on putting a second unit for 16 more people. One person taking up that spot for 16 people, and I can't get it removed. And everybody tells me it's a civil issue.

Any other questions from the council?

Just questions.

So, um, thank you for coming, Miss Reed, tonight and making the presentation. So right now what you're asking from us is to look at what Matt Su has put in place and see about putting something like that in place for within our city limits. Yes, because it is in the postal regulations that cluster boxes do not have the same mode of delivery as a single mailbox. It does not take up the same footprint. It does not require concrete.

It requires a post to be dug and a mailbox to be erected. Not for it to—. You know, the guy did it deliberately. He called me and asked me.

I told him what it took, and he didn't want to be part of that community. He wanted to interfere, right? And it's been found that his mailbox is not in compliance. I will reach out to the city manager and see if we can put something together. Thank you.

Any other comments from the council? This is just the first I've heard of this. Have you had discussions with our city administration about this prior to this meeting? Yes, I have called the police department, asked for a trespass. I've called the USPS, talked to the postmaster, sent them several notifications.

I'm talking about collaboration with our city, not the—. And the city. Yes, sir. And not only that, but my driveway, my original driveway permit that shows the scope of the easement no longer exists. So just Still trying to catch up and wrap my mind around this specific issue.

So you were wanting to collaborate with your neighborhood to build a second cluster box, and the area that you had intended to install, a different neighbor had put up their own single mailbox that prevents that from being built. Correct. Okay. Is there—. Yeah, the guy lives outside city limits, 1.4 miles away from the cluster box.

He called me to ask me for a unit because somebody that lives outside can get a cluster box unit. It's their only option, either that, a cluster box unit, or a PO box. He didn't want to pay me for a cluster box, so instead he used— he, he scoped out my property and saw that my mailbox was 5 feet in the right-of-way and decided to claim it as a right-of-way instead of looking at my permit, that it was a driveway easement. It's not a— it's not listed as a public easement. It's not on record.

Got it. Thank you for your comments, and I'm sure the city administration will be looking into it. Thank you. Next, I— oh, anyone else in the audience wishing to speak on any item not appearing on the agenda? And anyone online?

All right, moving on to the next agenda item is assembly and legislative reports, and I see no representative from the borough or the state legislature. Here to speak. So we will move on to administrative reports, uh, fiscal year 2026 field report, a fieldhouse report, and the report from the administration.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The Parks and Rec Department is here to present this report, and we had talked previously about coming back to the council after the first year of operations, and this is a report from the first year. Thank you.

All right, good evening. I brought my whole team tonight. Uh, Makaelan Randall is our assistant director for the department, and Emily Hale is the fieldhouse coordinator. They're the ones that are making this thing move. Um, so we just got some pretty pictures for you guys to look at and some more graphs to, to show a little bit more detail that we highlighted in the, in the report that was in your packet.

A reminder that we didn't really officially open until September, so July and August was pretty quiet. There was still a lot of scrambling around finishing construction.

So although this is a fiscal year report, it's not exactly 12 months, so just kind of keep that in the back of your mind as you're looking at these numbers. And feel free to ask questions along the way if you want more information.

Um, next slide, please. So the big one is how do we do financially? Um, and you can see that we, we spent about $616,000, which is a slightly under budget, and we raised $380,000. These are unaudited numbers. They're still finishing up the, the audit, so Melanie made it very clear that these are unaudited but were very accurate.

So obviously revenue was a lot higher than we expected. We kind of thought we were going to get about $290,000 based on some make-believe guesses, and we did significantly better. You can see the programming number was a little bit higher. Originally, we thought we were going to have local nonprofits run our sports leagues, similar to like how KPHA rents ice in the ice rink to provide youth hockey. But we ended up running soccer and flag football, and so our rentals, which is renting a court or renting the turf field, is slightly lower than expected.

So depending on what happens next year or this current year, Those might fluctuate slightly depending on if we're running them or if somebody else is. And currently the plan is to have a local nonprofit run flag football, and then Boys and Girls Club is also running their youth basketball in there currently, or I think they finished last week. So rentals should be slightly higher going forward. And then special events, these are the ones that we close the field house for. Like the pie auction and home show, sports show.

We added 2, I think, events and so raised a little bit more money than we thought. So doing pretty good, a lot better than we thought. And this is not programming, the other, the other asterisk on this. In the fall, we were just trying to learn how to turn the lights on, so we didn't do a lot of real strategic programming. And then this summer we also were not exactly sure what was going to happen, so we didn't recruit as many camps as we plan in the future.

And so we, we hope and plan that these numbers will be even higher next year. And if anyone has any questions, just jump on in. The only other expense really that was a little bit different than we thought was the staffing, and this is for temporary staff. So this is our our rec specialists and our rec aides and our seasonal laborers that help move the flooring around or help with janitorial services, and then the rec crews that are running programs or working the front counter. We did overspend slightly in that particular line item of our budget.

Um, we're just trying to figure out how to— what the exact needs are. And we didn't do any changes to the budget this year, but we do think we'll probably slightly overspend in that area again, just as we kind of work it all out. A lot of that comes down to how much support is needed by the maintenance crew and the seasonal janitorial services.

Going to the next slide. So just looking at some numbers, we, we estimate that we had 88,000 total visits, and that's about a little over 19,000 unique visitors. So this is an And the unique individuals are just, you know, one person, but they might be coming 3, 4, 6 times. It looks like we averaged about 4 visits per person and we think about 106 minutes per visit.

And where are all these people coming from? Mostly the Kenai Peninsula, as you can see, with about 5 or 6, 7% coming from the rest of Alaska. We anticipate the rest of Alaska number to increase as we start bringing in more tournaments and more camps and recruiting more people to visit the peninsula. But we did have quite a few smaller soccer tournaments. Homer came up often for soccer tournaments, and so we're slowly, slowly building that ground.

Next slide, please.

This is once you dive into the Kenai Peninsula, where people actually coming from. As you can see, 56% of the visits were from the Soldotna zip code, and Kenai with 20%, and then Seward, Homer, Kasilof, as you can see. So Central Peninsula is, is like we assumed would dominate the use of the field house, but still getting quite a few people from Homer and Seward and the surrounding areas coming up to participate.

Just reading my notes really quick. Oh, this was, you know, there's kind of a balance. You guys have heard us talk about balancing the use of the Field House, and we obviously want visitors from outside to come to Soldotna and bring their tax base or whatever, right? But we also want to make sure that our local community is able to stay in Soldotna and not have to drive up to the valley all the time. And so seeing a large percentage from, from the Central Peninsula in Soldotna, Kenai, and Sterling kind of reflects that, that our families are able to stay in town and participate and not have to go to the valley or to Anchorage.

Flexible schedule. We've talked about this quite a bit. It actually, it works pretty much like we hoped. We did one court season, which is in the fall around Christmas time. We swapped out the hardwood floors for the turf.

We had a turf season. We rolled into that pink section, which is our events. This is Home Show, Sports Show, Safari Club, those types of events. And then the blue is summer. Where we just basically played pickleball every day.

I think, um, we— the number of events, the stars on that map, we do get calls on a weekly basis for people wanting to use the Fieldhouse for large events. We're kind of holding tough on limiting to what we're currently doing because we don't want to take away from the, the usual user groups. There is some frustration when people come to shoot hoops or walk on the track and it's close for a private event, but we try to limit those closures as much as possible. And it was built as an event space too, so there's a balance that we are constantly working to kind of make sure everybody has something, but it's not dominated by one, one user group or one event.

Um, I think we're good. Next one. Um, this is— this one has a lot of asterisks on it. This is just kind of looking at like how many people use the Fieldhouse during each season, whether it was sort of that court season, the turf season, event season. The tricky part is the court season was when we were trying to learn how to open the doors and keep the lights on.

We weren't doing a lot of programming, so that top purple number, um, oh, it's accurate, but it's it's low.

And turf season is when we were actually running youth soccer and youth basketball and the high school teams were using it. So we were just, we were kind of running at full speed there. But then you can see the events, even though it's a short window, it does bring in a lot of users, a lot of unique visitors that just are coming for that one particular event.

And you can see turf is very popular. We only have turf for about 3.5 months, 3 months. So it's a short window. But it is a very, very popular use of the Fieldhouse. And I think that's all my slides.

So now I'm going to let these guys chat.

You can go to the next slide, Johnny. Okay. So this slide really illustrates the versatility of the Fieldhouse, like Joel has already touched on. From the beginning, those who envisioned the fieldhouse wanted to ensure it would be a place for everybody, not just like the elite competitive sports teams coming in and taking up all the time, or the events like Joel said, um, but it'd be a space for drop-in users, folks who want to come after school or after work or before work. And you can see that our daily admission use outpaces our events and court rentals, and we plan to keep open and accessible space for just like the average drop-in user who wants to come use the facility.

Um, when we all— when we are all booked up, there has been a lot of frustration that I hear directly from folks who come in if there's no space. Um, so I want to hear less of that and make sure there's space for everybody. But go ahead, Johnny, to the next slide, please. Just before you—. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Um, I know there has been at least one suggestion to possibly leave the senior walking area a little bit extended time. I will touch on that on the next slide as well.

Um, there's something—. No, okay. So this graphic on the top breaks down our daily admissions for those who check in to use the walking track. Um, when somebody comes into the facility, they check into open gym or walking track or, um, an event that's going on or a drop-in sport, let's say. Um, but the walking track is 42% of all of our visitors to the facility.

So a very large number are coming specifically for walking, and just over 4,000 were drop-ins, which is anybody who pays the $5 or the $3 fee, um, entrance fee from like off the street. So they don't necessarily have an account. Maybe it's somebody from out of state visiting this summer, or somebody just from Seward who's not going to be here a lot, so they don't want to set up an account. Um, there are 15,000 or over 15,000 membership check-ins, and that's anyone with a 1-month a 3-month, a city employee, a hospital employee, or punch card. So any membership or punch card that we have, um, but our senior walkers are by far the largest user group that we have using the WalkerTrack with the walking track with just over 18,000 check-ins alone.

And this is a really large user group of the facility, as you can see. Um, seniors, for those who don't know, walk for free Monday through Friday from open, which is 7:00 AM until noon. Thanks to Central Peninsula Hospital, which I think you are all very aware of. Um, and it's a fabulous resource for the community, and it's, um, really, really well utilized, as you can see.

But this is not only a time for them to be physically active but also socially as well, right? People make new friends, people run into old friends out there. There's always groups of folks walking around during our free senior hours. But these hours were strategically chosen to be during a slower time of the day So a time when seniors can come in, uh, and it's not limited to seniors, anybody else can walk, but it is primarily seniors in the morning. Um, and it also helps with just track congestion, uh, maybe for some individuals who might be slower or less mobile and need a little bit more time on the track.

But they were strategically chosen, uh, those hours of the day, even though we do hear feedback a lot that, um, they would like free hours extended. Uh, but we now have over 1,400 senior walking memberships assigned to people in our system. Um, and many of those seniors bought punch cards or memberships to use the track outside of the free senior walking hours, which is actually really exciting because it drives up some sales for the facility. Um, and the seniors might be some of our best advertisement because they're always saying, oh, I've told my friends, and they're always, they're always bringing new people in. It amazes me that the facility has been here for so long.

Well, a year, it's not that long, Um, but there's people who come in every day that say they've never been here, and new seniors signing up weekly. And although I wasn't around for the design of the building, the fact that the track is on the second floor is actually really convenient, and it allows us to keep the track access open more than we can keep the rest of the facility open. So when we close for the events, we're setting up pipe and drape, um, or just there's no court access, we can keep that track open and allow walking to happen in the facility while we're prepping, um, like I said, for the large events that we have, um, is the least disrupted aspect of the Fieldhouse, um, and which everybody appreciates. We'll never— or we have discussed not ever renting out the track specifically. You'll just have to be a drop-in user, um, to just make sure there's always that space for folks to use.

Have you tracked at all the time frame when, um, like this, most seniors come in? Not specifically. We—. I, well, I don't have that right now, but we could get that off of our system because when everybody checks in, there's a timestamp on that. But it is very busy in the morning and we have seniors waiting in the parking lot at 7:00 AM, like when staff get in.

And one concern I might have is, especially in the wintertime, our seniors don't particularly like to drive when it's dark. And that's a comment we do get a lot. But thankfully, senior hours, you know, it's not just during dark hours. It—. By noon, it's typically light enough for folks to drive.

But we do hear that sometimes. I just talked— spoke to a lady this morning who said the same thing. Okay. Is there any consideration to extending those hours at all for seniors?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think everything's a consideration. I think we, like most things with the Fieldhouse, we want a couple years of data before we make any wholesale, wholesale changes.

But it is— if we went with what everybody's asking, like, it would be free senior walking all day, all night, all weekend. And so we can't do all of that, but we should and can look at ways to expand that.

Do any other events occur up there on the walking track other than walking?

I mean, some spectator use, like during, like, youth basketball, but that's— there's always just like one lane would be closed. And then during an event when the whole building is closed, there is some activity up there, but some limited track, like So High's track used it a little bit this year or last year.

But not much as far as like the total number of hours, because it's very minimal.

Joel, correct me if I'm wrong, but if someone checks in, a senior checks in at noon, they still can walk for as long as they're there. Correct. So they, it doesn't necessarily end, clear the seniors off at noon. They can continue on as long as they've checked in by noon.

Yep. We don't kick anybody off the track.

And there's—. Yeah, just a quick question. Refresh my memory on this. Is the track exclusive to walking, or if you come in and just drop in to use the track, are you allowed to run up there and just train for running? You can run as well.

And yeah, we have— there's rules up on the track. The inside lanes are for slower walkers, ideally, and outside is for runners. And I always tell runners that the walkers have the right of way. Okay. So as a runner, you have to Possibly a conflict between old people walking and people that get a little bit more active later in the day trying to weave in between them and then getting frustrations with, oh, these people are just whizzing past me while they're trying to run.

It really hasn't been like a conflict, but free senior hours in the morning kind of helps limit if there like would be a conflict because most of the folks, or not most of the folks, but a lot of our folks who are coming in are in running typically are coming in the later afternoon. And I'm not saying that's because they're not seniors or because, you know, they're out doing something else, or because they've come during senior hours and the track is just so busy. We've had folks come in and say, I'm going to come back later when it's slower.

Any other questions? Me, I'm a walker, but I'm a street walker. Go ahead.

Next slide, please, Johni. So Emily touched on a lot of this already, but these are just some numbers that represent the memberships that we sold this year. I think that's one area where we far exceeded our revenues in memberships. We didn't think we would sell this many memberships just with our, our closure schedule and sports weren't really ironed out all the way. So if you came in and you wanted to buy a membership just for basketball, we didn't really know when you could play basketball.

So why would you buy a membership? But a lot of these memberships sold were for that walking track, like Emily said. Several daily admissions sold as well, just people walking in and not wanting to buy a membership. Our punch cards are sold in groups of 10. I did some math today.

Joel said this wasn't a fun fact, but I thought it was fun that we sold 42 years worth of monthly memberships if you put all the months together. So it's kind of interesting. And then our league registrations for adult flag football, youth flag football, and soccer. All of these numbers kind of back up Joel's graphs earlier in the presentation that show, you know, where people are coming from. And this is really how they're spending their money at the facility.

Let's see, some ways that you can use your memberships and punch cards would be for any of our programs that are supported by memberships. These would be Tot Time is one of our hot programs. I was just at Tot Time this morning and it was a Halloween-themed Tot Time and it was packed. We did a yoga that accommodated or, you know, went along with that. It's also packed.

We do juggling, we do ping pong, and then your traditional drop-in basketball and volleyball memberships, punch cards all go towards that. But if you come in, you really just want to play, we always provide or we try to always provide access for just that regular drop-in user, even if it's not a tot time day, not a tot time time, you and your kids can go run up on the track and as long as you're under control. Next slide, please. Another quick question. I know there's that little conference room there.

How much use does that get? Yeah, it gets a lot of use. I was talking to some folks today and we had to keep looking at different dates because there was no time. It's very popular on the weekends, a lot of birthday parties in the facility. Okay.

Just yesterday we had Sunbeam Studios, which is a local daycare and preschool. They had their Halloween party there. They rented the party room. They had maybe some cake and popsicles, I'm not sure. And then they had a big Halloween carnival and costume contest.

So it's more than just birthday parties, it's also some local events and businesses coming in, which is—. What is the capacity of that room? Fire code, Kyle.

Comfortably 35 people.

Yeah, depends on how big you are.

Programs and community. Yeah, this was a really exciting year for, I think, our department as a whole. We launched some youth sports programs and adult sports. Youth sports programs are way more fun. 199 Soccer participants.

I almost just grabbed a kid off the street to get up to 200, but it was very exciting. Boys and Girls Club this year decided that they'd reached their limit on youth sports and they didn't think they'd be able to run indoor soccer, so we quickly snatched it up. We made some good revenue off of it. We have seen our soccer shirts all over town with the big S on the back. Great community feedback.

We passed out surveys and All but forced people to complete them, and 93% of parents that did complete it said that they had a positive experience, that they would like to re-register, um, and 87.5% said that their children's skills improved, which we think is a secondary part of this. Um, primarily we wanted these kids to just get out of their houses in the wintertime, uh, be somewhere safe, be somewhere clean, and just be active with one another. We contracted, or we worked with the local youth soccer organization to ref our games, which was also a great partnership. Kena Peninsula Soccer Club. It's good training for their refs in their offseason, some good money for some of the local soccer players.

And these are people that these soccer parents know already, so they weren't yelling at them as bad. And then we hosted adult flag football. The grown-ups loved flag football. They had so much fun. My husband played flag football this year.

Only injured himself one time, barely. Um, 94% of them said that they would participate again. I think all of them completed this survey because they were that passionate about us doing this again this year. So we are doing adult flag football again.

And, uh, one thing I wanted to touch on is, uh, different ways that programs can come to be in the field house. We have a couple different ways that we do this. You've seen maybe the community community school style where we contract or partner with a local instructor, somebody with more skills than we have, and we split the proceeds of that. We did do that with fencing and juggling this year, and it was great and well attended. And then other ways are, like Joel mentioned, these organizations can come in, they can rent the facility, they can run their own programs, or we can use our own facility and run the programs ourselves.

So those are our 3 models that we have. Another question. I know there had been some discussion earlier about rugby. Are they using it? Yeah, rugby has been chatting with us a lot lately, especially, um, that's actually a photo of rugby on the bottom there.

Okay. They did several youth clinics, or one youth clinic over several days, um, and they had the largest turnout that they've had. They really love playing on the turf instead of on the court, um, so they were super excited and they want to do a tournament, but they couldn't quite find a date last year. So we might get them back.

Let's see. Yeah, that's you. And Michaela touched on our youth sports, but recreation— oh yeah, go ahead. You haven't mentioned anything about pickleball. So pickleball, it's very early on, very popular.

Is it still very popular? Yes, and we partnered with a local pickleball We partnered— okay, we partnered with a local pickle— pickle—. Okay, wow—. With the club this year, um, and, uh, they hosted a tournament in the facility. Um, we, like I said, we partnered, uh, but next year they're going to run it all on their own and rent courts.

And, um, yeah, we're going to set them free after they've done it. And then before you go on, um, last year you hosted a turkey trot on Thanksgiving? Are you— is it going to be an annual event at the Field House? Yes. Yeah, uh, Jen Anderson in our office is very passionate about the Turkey Trot, so that will continue as long as she's here, and then we'll have to do it into the future.

But it's very—. I'm sorry, I will miss it this year. And I wish you wore your t-shirt today. I should have. Well, Mckaylin touched on our youth sports programs, uh, but if you guys have children who want to play or know people who do, registration opens Monday next week, so I think it's going to fill up before the— before it closes, so you better get on it to register.

But our court rentals, this is an area of the Fieldhouse or of my position that I am intimately familiar with. I spend a lot of time talking to folks to do court rentals and making sure the calendar looks fine and everybody's going to fit. I talk with every single one of the coaches, the teachers, or the program leads for each group that utilizes the facility. And a number of these rentals are bringing users from outside our local community, which Joel already talked about, which should be bringing revenue into the city as folks fill up their tanks and grab a meal before they ride home. And what we really want to emphasize with this slide is that there's such a wide variety of user groups that utilize the Fieldhouse, and I'm just going to— we talked about some already and I'll try to skip those, but I've got a little bullet list of some of our groups.

So KPSC, Kenai Peninsula Soccer Club, is currently running a futsal league out of the field house. They were just there tonight, Mondays and Wednesdays through December. And throughout the winter, they regularly bring teams or have brought teams up from around the peninsula to play friendly matches like Homer. We had a 3v3 air pitch soccer tournament this past spring, and we're going to have that. It's already slated for 2027, and that was a group from the MAT 2 came down and it was just a one day.

That's a picture up there of the blow-up fields they have, but it looked like a really fun tournament and they talked about potentially doing an adult tournament as well. Um, the Kenai River Rugby Club pictured on the bottom here, they host their youth, their youth clinic and their practices in the facility. And we're like, McKellen said, we're already in the talks with them for next year and they're hoping to host an adult tournament as well to add to their kind of lineup. And most of the local spring sports teams, so high, keen eye, you know, baseball, softball, track, soccer, utilized the facility in some aspect last year, whether it's renting the turf, being on the track, or they really filled up a lot of our turf time in the winter or the spring after spring break when they're allowed to practice. Special Olympics also holds their bocce ball practice on our turf.

Frozen Coast, our local live-action roleplay group, has a standing reservation, or came and used the facility all last year, but they have a standing reservation on Sundays from now until, um, till the turf is gone, which is very exciting. We hosted a number of field trips during the school year, and we most recently had a Halloween party for a daycare. We even had the Kenai Marching Band. It's kind of one of our more unique user groups. The Kenai Marching Band used our turf last year to practice for an out-of-state competition.

They were worried about the noise they would create for other users, and I wasn't there at the time, but oh, it's going to be fine. We also hosted a multi-day volleyball clinic in the facility that brought up a college coach from Nebraska and girls from around the state. They have some really good, like, social media videos they did from inside the facility that are really cool. And it was, it was, yeah, very popular. It was a 2 or 3-day clinic.

And each week throughout the school year, on Thursdays, we have either Connection or IDEA, our two homeschool groups, coming in and doing homeschool gym. And we've also hosted over 59 birthday parties at the field house last fiscal year. And this is not everything, just a smattering of the user groups that we get to just kind of demonstrate the versatility of the space and how much it really has filled a community need. Is there any possibility, or you may even be doing it now, to have that set up for tennis courts? There's been asks, it's been in the suggestion box.

So like Joel said, kind of everything is a possibility, I feel like.

But it's not the most popular request that we get. There's a lot others that we get more often. What's, what's the most popular? Oh, it's coming in a later slide. You have to wait.

Okay.

Okay, special events. We have 15 special events in the Fieldhouse this year. These are just events that closed down to the public. The top picture up there is, I believe, the Home Show. The sport show.

The bottom one is the Alaska Republican Convention. Top one was— we anticipated that one moving over to the Fieldhouse. The Alaska Republican Convention was one that came in Um, kind of late last year and was a really fun test of all the things that that space can be and do. I believe we had 11 different presentation areas going at once in that space with their own PA systems and different decorations and technical needs, so it was very fun and challenging. Um, part of this facility is not just sports, it's also hosting special events.

We pitched this as a multi-use facility, and this is one of its primary— I would say primary uses is as an event space as well. Here's a list of all of the FY26 events. We estimate based on self-reported numbers from these organizations, roughly 16,000 people came. It's slightly different than the numbers that Joel presented earlier because his is kind of a hot map of how many people are in the facility, including walkers, including staff, and this is really just a table count.

Um, yeah, over $66,000 in revenue from special events. That includes equipment that they rented from us and also the space time itself. It's $2,500 a day to rent plus $1,000 a day for setup. Uh, what we call setup is if we can keep our walking track open to the public, then you only have to pay $1,000 for that day. Um, some of the events that were hosted were the Home Show, Sports Show, the Kenai River Classic, was actually the first event that we hosted in there.

And they brought a lot of people from Anchorage down, did the fishing tournament on the Kenai. Soldotna Pie Auction was in there this year. They moved over from the chamber, from the conference rooms next door. We're able to maybe have some more breathing room than in the conference rooms, which was nice. And then Project Homeless Connect, it's the only event we hosted on turf.

It is, knock on wood, hopefully the only event we will ever host on turf that turf is extremely challenging to clean, but we do get requests every day for events during the turf season, so it shows that there is still a demand. Turf is just a little tricky.

Yeah, these were really mostly local fundraisers, local organizations, which I think is great. A lot of people were, you know, crammed into some of these high school gyms around here hosting events, or tucked into the old car is small, and so it's nice to bring them in and have a little bit more breathing room for them. And in order to preserve the public access, like Joel said, we're really strategic about what we book throughout the year. We try not to close the facility but one weekend a month, and that's because, as you saw, we have a lot of people buying memberships and we have to honor access for them. And just another hot number, in 5 weeks of April, We hosted 7 events.

And then also got So High's graduation next door. We did keep a couple events over in the ice arena.

That's on special events. We go to the next slide. Oh, yeah.

Kind of along the lines of special events, have you been contacted about using the facility to host conferences other than the Republican convention, but conferences. Yeah, I believe that we're on the books for a conference in August, the AMLJIA conference. We have conferences and tournaments are typically on those rotating schedules where they change locations every year, so it can be a little bit more challenging as to not displace our recurring events. But we have been contacted by a few. We weren't sure if the Republican convention would be an annual event, but it sounds like they're going elsewhere next year.

This year. So we, we hope that we'll have a few weekends a year that we can rotate different conferences into.

This is just a snapshot of one of the biggest transformations that the Fieldhouse saw. I do have to say, along with this photo, that Shanette over at the Boys and Girls Club thought she would have all 3 courts to host her fundraiser on, and I told her the month before, oops, we actually left a turf in, so you only have 2 courts to to put 550 people on. But she pivoted and her crew turned the Field House into a beautiful gala space. I believe it was Under the Clouds or something similar. Close to 500 people, maybe a little over 500 people.

And this is a quote from Shanette about the value of the space and what it did for her event and just elevating it. And, um, yeah, it was very functional, very flexible for them. And I think it speaks for itself.

Okay, community feedback. Um, so everyday Fieldhouse staff, um, are hearing feedback from users, whether the bathrooms need toilet paper or a kid is too far away from their parent on the track. Um, it's great that the community cares so much about the facility. And like I said, we're constantly hearing about it. We have a suggestion box which is pictured here.

If you've been in the Fieldhouse, you've seen it. Unless you weren't paying attention, then maybe not, but it sits right on the front desk when you walk in and we welcome all suggestions and we get a variety of them. Here's just some of them that we get. The ones with the green check marks are things we've implemented. There's a few coming soon and, um, as you can read the suggestions up there, but you can see that we can't implement all the suggestions, right?

If we did, we would have a pool. We would also have turf all year round, but also pickleball all year round. And a lot of other crazy things like that. But yeah, we get suggestions. I keep track of all the suggestions.

I have a spreadsheet on my computer so we can see kind of which ones we get the most often, can kind of prioritize and see which ones are realistic to implement. But we've done a lot. And I really appreciate them. A lot of times, you know, I don't know what everybody's thinking, what everybody wants to see in the facility, and it's, it's not mine, it's not yours, it's all of ours. We have to make sure it's a place for everybody to want to be and enjoy being.

Most common one? Oh yeah, the most common one, it kind of depends on the user group, but in the beginning it was the bathroom upstairs, but everybody's adjusted now that there's no bathroom upstairs. A big one we get though is an easier check-in process, and I think that's kind of from when we were still figuring out our check-in process and when, you know, there was in the beginning we had drop-in futsal and there was very, very long lines. It was a very popular program for youth, but we've figured that out now and everything's faster. And we recently, I think, talked about it at a local Alaska Rec and Parks conference.

That we like the fact that you have to come in and you have to talk to a person. You don't just have to like type your name or scan your card at a little scanner. It gives us that human interaction. Staff who work the same shift every day know the people who come in, and that's really nice. We've been building a lot of relationships that way, so I don't know that we're going to get an easier check-in process.

I think we're going to always make somebody stop and talk to us. But I mean, I guess we'll see. But that's probably one of the, one of the biggest ones we get.

Yeah, last one is just, uh, to highlight the staff. Emily and her crew, uh, do a lot of rearranging and, and helping the community. We're constantly flipping volleyball nets to basketball nets to pickleball nets to something, and then cleaning the cleaning the facility constantly. These are just a couple of our crew. We probably have a dozen-ish that have worked there this past year.

Most of our rec specialists and aides are part-time. Some of them are just 1 day a week. Some of them are, you know, 4 or 5 days a week. Some of them teach in the ice rink and figure skating or learn to skate programs and then coming over to the Fieldhouse. Wyatt in the middle, he helps with the local hockey teams.

He helps coach Soi's team and KBHA's team depending on what's going on. So, and Daniel is our, he's our black belt. I'm not sure if he's black belt. He's pretty close or he is double black belt. Yeah, he's our security.

And then the bottom picture is from actually from the employee conference that we had last week or a couple weeks ago. We have a lot of maintenance um, that not just the field house, our whole department. This is probably maybe half, two-thirds of our crew. A lot of, a lot of people doing a lot of work. It's not always glorious, but it's fun for the most part.

That's our spiel. If you guys have any other questions—.

Vice Mayor Parker. Okay, thank, thank you for the presentation and the report. So you had talked about you're already getting requests for future events. How far out are you planning on right now? Are you looking at 2028, '29?

For some events we are. A couple of tournaments are already hoping to get in on their schedule. They plan, you know, 4 or 5 years out. A lot of our local events aren't necessarily used to having to compete for the spaces that they're in. So I've been putting a lot of pressure back on those organizations, like, please send me your dates for the next 5 years so that I can start booking out.

But yeah, we are already looking at events in '28 and '29, which is exciting. I love a calendar planned out that far.

Oh yeah, the District Rotary Club is coming in '28, I believe.

Go ahead. So thank you. This is— thank you for your presentation and for all of your hard work. And as you know, this is our first year. We will continue to look— well, always, but especially budget time, as Joel alluded to, with staffing.

Any tweaks that need to be made or any adjustments that need to be made will come before you at that time. And as always, We welcome your feedback. I did want to share something, um, watching someone at the Fieldhouse up on the walking track. It is a person who has mobility issues, or had when I first started walking there, and I had to take the summer off from walking but have been back, and this person— totally impressed— has been there, my understanding, every day walking and in my opinion does not have mobility issues, the same mobility issues. And it's— I really attribute that to the walking track and being able to have that access.

It's very impressive to see the seniors walking and, um, the social interactions that they're having. Very good for our community. Mr. Carey.

I have the, uh, pleasure of getting to see a lot of people throughout the day and the week. I am so extremely pleased with the positive comments, the, the reaction from the people of the community. The Field House has become, in my opinion, this is bright light house of activity, of friendship, of recreation. There are people who are enthused because each day they get to go to the Field House. And so I want to— I began with the structure, and it's awesome, but by far what makes that structure work are the people such as yourselves.

I hear so many comments about the helpful, friendly staff, and that the people coming in are made so aware that the staff wants to help. The staff is there to provide the resources necessary to allow people to, again, to live more in this community. And I just want to thank each of you. I know that you are each a reflection, as well as all of our city staff, of that friendship, of that desire for service. But I want to let you know you are impacting people greatly.

For seniors particularly, it is one of the few places where you absolutely know that you're appreciated. You may not— you guys would know it, but sometimes people don't appreciate senior citizens, and particularly when they have some mobility issues, it can be a hassle. That's not at the Fieldhouse. And so I just want to say you're just a huge plus for the community. This community took a chance on whether or not to build it.

It is a huge success. And again, the staff such as yourself in such a great, awesome facility Thank you for all that you do.

Anything else from anyone on the council? Thank you for the report. Excellent. And as I've been saying for the last year or so, that the use of that field house is way past our original expectations, and it's a great asset to the community. And like Mr. Carey said, we've heard people People say that the sports activities have improved, and maybe some of the groups up in the other area north of here aren't too happy about that, but that's— that's tough.

Keep on doing a good job, and thank you very much.

Okay, moving on. Next item on the agenda, public hearings. Ordinance 2026-023, accepting grant funds from Washington— from the Washington Educational Telecommunications Association and increasing estimated revenues and appropriations by $748.01, which is a really unusual number, uh, in the general fund for the American Revolution Documentary Migrant, uh, mini grant introduced by the city manager.

May I have a motion to enact?

Mr. Carrey. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move the adoption of Ordinance 2026-023, accepting a grant fund from the Worston Education Telecommunications Association. Second, please. Report from the administration.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, as you know, there's several grants that come before you every year, um, and this one is different from normal, and the 1 cent, of course, our finance director will count for every penny. So this grant offers a series of multi-generational programs to help connect our community with the Revolutionary War history and a mix of traditional and innovative formats, including screenings from Ken Burns' upcoming documentary about the American Revolution. So it's a different grant for us, a different programming, and we're excited to have it at the library.

Are there any members of the public who are wishing to speak on this item, which is Ordinance 2026-023?

Anyone online?

Having no one wishing to speak, the item is back before the council. Are there any council comments?

There are any objections to approving and enacting Ordinance 2026-023. Seeing and hearing none, Ordinance 2026-023 is enacted by unanimous consent. Next item is unfinished business, postponed item, Ordinance 2026-021, adopting procedures regulating unsafe and disruptive conduct of public facilities, introduced by the City Manager. Uh, there's already a motion on the floor to enact as amended from the August December 12, 2026 council meeting. Now, report from the administration.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I am going to read the memo that is in the packet verbatim so that it's on record. I respectfully request the City Council fail ordinance number 2026-021, which would adopt procedures regulating unsafe and disruptive conduct at public facilities. This recommendation replaces my earlier recommendation for approval. I continue to support the purpose behind the ordinance.

City facilities should be safe, accessible, and welcoming, and employees should have clear guidance for responding when conduct threatens safety or materially, materially interferes with city operations. That guidance must also preserve constitutional rights, including lawful expression, criticism, criticism of government officials, and peaceful participation in public meetings. My primary objective in bringing this ordinance forward was to establish a reliable, consistent procedure for employees to follow when these difficult situations arise. After further, further consideration, I believe that objective can be accomplished through administrative procedures without adopting an ordinance. Administration will develop guidance addressing staff responsibilities, documentation, appropriate responses, and supervisory review.

The procedures will emphasize consistency, fairness, protection of constitutional rights, and continued access to essential governmental services. I appreciate the time Council has devoted to this ordinance and the thoughtful discussion it generated. The legislative process has helped clarify the issue and identify an administrative path forward. For these reasons, I respectfully request Council vote against adoption of the ordinance. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone in the audience wishing to speak on Ordinance 2026-023? Seeing no one, we have no one online. Uh, are there any members—. Oops, excuse me.

Having, uh, no one wishing to speak, the item is back before the council. Are there any council comments?

Saying none, we'll call for the roll.

Wackler?

No. Hutchings? No. Nelson? No.

Parker? No. Harry? No. Chilson?

No. Cox?

Um, yes. Um, I just—. You have 6 no votes.

Um, Ordinance 2026-021 has failed on a 0-6 vote. Next item on the agenda is new business, and that was covered under the consent agenda. Next item is 11, mayor and council reports. I have a proclamation here to read if I can find what I did with it. There it is.

The proclamation: The United States is a beacon of hope, freedom, and opportunity to people around the world. And whereas the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who fight to defend our liberty embody courage, patriotism, and loyalty. And whereas throughout our nation's history, our military men and women have boldly answered the call of duty to defend our nation's independence and precious liberties, risking life and limb for their fellow Americans. And whereas Americans have remained at the vanguard in defending freedom around the world, and our service members, veterans, and their families continue to spearhead this noble undertaking. And whereas America's military men and women and their families are vital to the security and prosperity of our nation, we have a responsibility to protect and serve those who have made countless sacrifices for love of our country.

As President Lincoln once said, Honor to the soldier and sailor everywhere who bravely bears this country's cause. Honor also to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field and serves as best he can the same cause. And whereas we recognize the integral role our military family members play in supporting our armed forces and contributing to their mission while our men and women are serving at home or overseas, it is our duty to provide their families with the resources they need to thrive in our communities. And whereas each warrior who fights for our nation, along with their families, has earned our eternal gratitude, I ask the citizens of Soldotna to thank and support those brave heroes and their families. Now therefore, I, Paul J. Whitney, Mayor of the City of Soldotna, do hereby proclaim November 2026 as Veteran and Family and Military Families Month in the City of Soldotna In honor and express deep appreciation for those brave men and women and their families, I encourage everyone to acknowledge and honor the service, sacrifice, and contributions of veterans and military families for what they have done and for what they do every day to support our great nation.

Dated this 28th day of October, 2026. Next is— comments, mayor's comments. And I would like to mention that tomorrow the public library is holding their annual or monthly book sale and an arts and craft show also, I believe, if my memory serves me correctly. And November 3rd, Election Day, just a reminder for everyone to Get out and vote, and we'll move on to the next items. Council reports on boards and commissions, and there are none.

Uh, last, City Manager's report. I do not have anything to report unless there's questions that I can answer from the council. Any questions for the City Manager? Seeing none, we'll move on to the next one. Public comments.

Are there any members of the public who would like to speak on any item? Seeing no one here in the audience and no one online. Next, council comments. We'll start with Miss Cox.

Hello. I, um, just after listening to the field house, um, presentation, I just wanted to say I am part of like track and field at So High, and so I have used the facility for that, and it's been great. And I think it is just a great addition to our community, and I think a lot of people are getting a lot of good use out of it. Speaking of sports, wrestling just had their first tournament and they have another one this weekend. And our football team took second for state.

The Nordic ski team, which I am a part of, just started today. Hopefully we'll get some snow soon so we can actually start skiing. And hockey is hosting their first tournament this weekend at the Sports Center. And volleyball has a home game this Friday and is in Kenai on Saturday. And then swim and dive, that's combined with Kenai, has regions in Palmer also this weekend.

Parent-teacher conferences are this Thursday and Friday. And, um, more stuff for this weekend: the music department is hosting a haunted hallway at SoHigh. It's their biggest fundraiser for the year. And then with that, kind of, Student Council is putting on the carnival. Last year was our first year doing it, and I helped plan it this year, and should have some really good turnout just with, um, from the elementary schools mostly, but just more community-wide.

And then some events that are coming up in the next month is the annual, our Annual food drive, which starts Monday and ends on the 20th. Also, I think last year was our first year doing it, maybe our second year, but the Veterans Day breakfast, which is on Veterans Day at 8:30 at So High, which is an event where a student can invite a veteran that they want to, and they can come join them for breakfast. And then they have this— they have a speaker usually, and I I think the community really liked that last year, so we're going to do that again. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Wackler.

No comment. Mr. Carey.

I wanted tonight to thank our manager. Um, she brought up an extremely important environmental aspect of our staff and and how the community interacts with them a few months ago, and in an ordinance. It is very difficult to legislate such things as courtesy, kindness, manners, compassion for each other. And yet, as a result of a very, very small number of individuals who didn't maybe get as much teaching weren't getting the teaching from their parents as they should have. She brought forward to us a way to try to mitigate some disservice that was occurring in terms of towards staff.

That's a difficult thing to take on. And I want to— I praise you for taking it on, but also I praise you that when Mrs. Wackler and others, but particularly said, wait, wait, wait, You responded so well, okay? You could have said, no, I'm doing this, and, and, and with all kinds of justification. But again, the, the attitude that you showed tonight on asking us to defeat this was exactly what good government is supposed to do, that we as human beings need to treat each each other with decency and kindness, as compared to, I've got a law, and if you don't do this, I'm going to do something to you, I'll fine you. So I just want to— I want to praise you and all the city staff for all they do.

You know, we certainly heard from the Field House, but I think of also all the things that Park and Rec do during the summers down here. People just— we are mobbed, and some of them are very courteous in many different ways, and they feel it's their right to thrash on things. And so I just, I want to praise you because I feel that you provide the leadership that we as a council, in hiring you and in again continuing to extend the great service that you provide to us, that's what we're looking for, and you've done it. And so I just, I was very pleased tonight. I wasn't sure how it was gonna, how it was going to go over.

And it went the way it should. And I thank you for your service.

Vice Mayor Parker.

My, my neighbor here is always a tough act to follow, but, um, I want to thank the city clerk for putting new artwork in the facility here. I haven't had a chance to look at it and see where it's come, but I'm Happy to see the new artwork in the chambers and that, uh, our kids around town and at schools are giving us new, new inspiration. Ms. Hutchings.

I would just like to thank Joel and staff for the wonderful job you're doing out here. I hear positive comments from so many people walking through my office, so thank you.

Mr. Nelson. Thank you. So just two things: don't forget to vote, as the Mayor mentioned, and just want to recognize as well today is National First Responder Day, and we have a lot of very good first responders serving the city, so thank you to them.

Mr. Chilson. Just wish everyone a safe and happy Halloween.

And happy Halloween.

The next item on the agenda is executive sessions, and we have no need for one. Next is pending legislation, and we have none. Meeting announcements. The November 4th Planning and Zoning Commission meeting at 5:30 PM.