City of Craig, City Council Meeting 9-17-26

One, basically two areas. One is Department of Fish and Game was given a temporary access permit for their shed, which is down by the city shop. Yeah, I think it's on the other side of the fence. Are they looking for a long-term lease, square footage lease? I have not heard that they are.

And then is, is, uh, Road Builders looking to get into that, that spot too. Again, I have not, not received any word from Road Builders on that. Only I had heard that Road Builders were looking at that Craig site where the fire department was going to be built, and I think that if they plan on setting up or if they get to set up there, it will, it'll push off the fire hall, right? I'd rather not. Way off.

I would recommend— yeah, I'm not gonna— I'm not gonna recommend that they do— they use that area because we are fairly close, I think, to getting that started. So, okay, thank you.

I have one other question, um, Marie, on the job description for the city planner, um, the grants and funding, is that—. Was that part of Ivy's responsibilities when she started, or that was given to her after? It looks like—. I, I don't know for, for certain if that was part of her responsibilities when she started. Looking at previous job descriptions and some of the interview questions, you could infer that it was.

So, Shawna, I do remember Brian had to do grants a bit. So I think it's been— I don't know if he bragged about it, but I think he had to do them. Brian was the city administrator. He was the planner. He was also the planner prior to—.

When I first met him. Oh, when he was the planner. Okay. I think some— I think the department heads all have some grant, some play with the grants just to a certain extent, but in the planning department it's a lot heavier, um, and then with the administrator A lot.

Thank you. Any other questions for Mark? Hearing none, moving on to City Clerk report. All right, I did submit a report. I have a couple updates to that.

Um, the mayor has asked me to change his— uh, he's no longer going to attend the Southeast Conference, so we can scratch that line off. It'll be, um, Maury and Mike will be attending that. Um, he'll be coming back, and Mike's— or Maury's going to come back early so that he can make the CalCAP meeting on the 2nd. So that should update our schedule section. Um, records management— I've got a beta file tree built.

Um, I'm going to use beta as like beginning. I know a lot of people have different word definitions for that word. I've got a, um, beginning file tree built in our share drive, and I moved all the city clerk stuff in just do myself as a guinea pig to see how that was going to work functionality-wise. It's— I've been using it for a week, it's been working smoothly, so I'm going to start going person by person and getting their files and moving them into the new spot, and then going around to the other department heads and getting an idea of what amount of stuff they have. And we're going to need to get a high-speed scanner, probably it's like a $300, $400 purchase on Amazon, but just something duplex high-speed that I can take to the files instead of having to bring all the files to the big copier.

So that'll be coming up. Elections are coming up, so this is one more meeting after this one for Millie. So that'll be nice. You'll get a little freedom from your Thursdays. And then on the city website, we just got the signed renewal submitted So we're proceeding with that.

We'll get on a schedule to get that updated. Our current code is being closed down as of the end of the year, so we have to sign up for that. We did not do the .gov change at the same time, just thinking that that would be a lot of IT-type challenges for us all at one go. So we'll just upgrade the website and then later when we're feeling up to it, we'll update to the doc up.

Did anybody have any questions? I do. Roughly how many more slots, boxes, are left in the columbarium? Oh, I could go, um, this is just off the top, 20? At least half.

Okay, good. You know, I think it's, what, 2 years old and we're halfway full. Maybe we look into something next year, you know, see if we can get another box or something. That was a good thing for the community. Um, I lost what I was going to say too, but that's it.

Thank you. Is absentee open? Absentee voting is open for the municipal. Yes, that opened on Wednesday. Okay, good.

I'll do that tomorrow. Okay. I do remember. What's the backup? Once everything's scanned, does it just go to your computer, or is there backup in the building?

So that's another thing that our IT people are going to put us on the cloud. So right now our share drive is on a server upstairs, and then— are we currently backed up to the cloud? We're backed up to the cloud. Okay. A portion is backed up to the cloud.

And then I was gonna ask more of it. I wanted to get one of those, um, terabyte—. Yeah, we're gonna—. Drives like RJ has, the big, um, couple terabyte drives, just to be able to have it, just to have another backup, primary, tertiary, and, you know, primary, secondary. Yeah, because you go through all that hard work and if you lose it—.

Oh yeah, yeah. Are you doing that skinning just by So, so far, what happened with— is Kelsey still working here?

Um, she is. She's been on vacation for a bit. Uh, her parents were in town. She will be helping. Okay.

Um, and I did have a— we had a discussion about that, so—. Okay, that'd be good. I do, I do like it that just one person designed the file tree though. But yeah, I, I anticipate having department heads help because they've, they've all been—. This will be a group effort.

Yeah, and they, and then they'll know where their files are. So, Marie, I do have a question, and, and I forgot to bring this up at previous meetings. I've had, um, some citizens stop and ask me about the closure once a month. Oh, this closure— closure of the office? Yes.

Okay. Um, happy to talk about it.

I think once a month is a bit too much. I mean, if we get them quarterly—. I would like to get the quarterly. I think right now there are a sufficient level of problems, mostly due to no training during turnover, right? Right, that I'm trying to attack these issues that keep coming up over and over in the community with the training I'm doing with the staff in here.

Um, I don't even get through maybe a quarter of what I'd like to talk to them about usually for an all-day training. For the all-day training, it flies by. You can ask the staff if it's valuable, but I think it's been very valuable so far. Um, I don't I'm trying to target them so that they're not— so that I, I can minimize our downtime. Um, we're not going to do one this month.

I haven't decided yet for October. It kind of, um, I'm kind of targeting them on our— I'll call it hotspots— things that are bubbling up the most, um, and, and narrowing down things that we need to tackle in terms of shortfalls and understanding process, procedure, and just overall, you know, knowledge level. So that's, that's what I've been doing. I had kind of a, a couple issues that needed to get tackled, um, thus the months back-to-back monthly trainings. I don't intend to do that all the time, but when it, when it looks like there's a recurring issue that's causing problems within the city caused by the staff, that's when I— that's when I shut it down and I talk to these guys.

Because that's—. I don't have— I don't have a good time to get everybody together otherwise. Um, so that was my— that was my tactic. If you'd rather see me not shut the city down, I can look for something else, maybe some—. So it's just office staff?

It's just office staff for the most part, yeah. Okay, that might— there's a few things I have in mind for other departments and other places, but I have yet to tackle those.

Okay, one thing at a time. Oh, Millie, Millie got your attention. Any other questions?

Hearing none, moving on to reading of correspondence. Nothing under there. So moving on to considerations of resolutions and ordinances. Resolution 26-18, supporting the roadless rule. Can I get a first and second?

Move to adopt Resolution 26-18. Second. I have a first and second on Resolution 26-18. Any questions or comments? Well, I have a comment.

I, you know, this is kind of a unilateral saying I'd like to see Pow Cac take it up. I personally haven't had anybody pushing it. I think it is a political topic, and I just want to say that honestly, if somebody was silly enough to build a road all the way to Boh Can Mountain to get their workers to come to the clinic or to come and buy groceries, I don't really have a problem with it. I did look at the map. It's considerable distance, and they'd have to zigzag through a bunch of places.

So that's my heartburn.

Yeah, I'd like to address, you know, this. I included two articles, you know, along with this resolution. You know, it's clear, and, you know, and I come up here in 1980, 21 years old, working in the woods. I cut timber for years. I loved it, and it really is what set me up here.

But I can also say that it's clear to me that we are, we have not done this sustainably. The median age of an old-growth stand of trees, it's a commercial kind of, you know, where you would log, is somewhere in the 300 to 400 year range. And yet the Forest Service's plan for long-term harvest is to rotate harvest at 80 to 100 years. So what that means is we are never going to get back to old-growth condition in quality of the timber or also the habitat, because the habitat value, well, it flourishes after a new harvest for somewhere around 20 to 30 years, you know, the understory and all that stuff with all the extra light, it flourishes and you know that we can see that helps deer. But on a long-term basis, and if you go out to, you know, Staini today or over to Thornton Bay and you drive the roads, when you get to about 35 to 40 years and the young growth, because it's even-aged, it begins to shade out the light, you know, and I've said this before, I've used this example of out in Staini, a lot of the forest out there, there's about as much food for a deer on the forest floor as there is on this rug.

And that's why we've seen our deer harvest go down. And that's why we've seen, you know, the challenges to get deer here is they're just not there because our habitat has been altered and degraded. And I'm not opposed to logging, but we just need to find a balance and opening up the forest again to continue down the road of old-growth harvest is simply going to exacerbate what is already a problem that's going to take us several hundred years through a natural process to recover from. I mean, this is generational, what's happening. And, you know, more roads for old-growth harvest, major old-growth— actually, I'm not opposed totally.

So the Forest Service right now, the protocol, although they want to change it, the protocol has been up to 5 million board feet a year, which would keep, you know, our small mills here going, you know, Keith Landers and, you know, I can't think of all the other guys' names, you know, the Cone Brothers. I want to see these guys keep going. And right now they're using almost exclusively old-growth. They're small, they're special. Kind of special niche areas that they cut for.

And it would be a real challenge for them guys. As a matter of fact, most of them would probably not be able to transition.

So I want to see these guys keep going, but to open the forest up and then allow large-scale harvest again is also— that's, you know, it's just not a long-term solution for us. So there's that. You know, the articles talk about— one of those talk about, you know, kind of what I'm talking about, the habitat issues and the changes in the forest. And then the other one, you know, that talks about timber sales are actually a deficit, a major deficit, millions and millions of dollars. And, you know, I remember the conservation group saying this 30 years ago, and, you know, I was just like most of the other guys who were working in the woods, you know, shit, you know, these guys, what are they talking, they're just making excuses.

They're not, you know, we're running our timber program at a significant deficit and that's taxpayer money. So that's, they either have to pay their way or we shouldn't be doing that. So anyways, that's why I proposed this. I see this as supporting, you know, the cultural traditional needs and interests for people today and for generations to come.

Any other council comments or questions?

Hearing none, can I get a roll call vote? Michael Kettner? Yes. Melissa Goodover? Yes.

Jen Churchin? No. Shawna Thomas? Yes. Josh Bennett?

Yes. All right, passes. Moving on, unfinished business, we have nothing. So on to new business, request to approve donation, recreation department.