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

Can I get a roll call vote or roll call, please? Josh Bennett. Here. Shawna Thomas. Here.

Shawna McKinley. Here. Casey Smith is traveling. Jen Turner. Here.

Millie Spinover. Here. Michael Kempnich. Here. Pledge of Allegiance, please rise.

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, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, we'll go into hearing from the public.

Go ahead. Hi, please state your name. My name is Kelly Lee Jenkins.

Um, Dear Mayor— he's not here— so Miss McKinley and members of the Craig City Council, my name is Kelly Jenkins and I am here to formally express my concerns regarding how the Craig Police Department handled my protective order and the return of my vehicle on September 11th, 2026. I was granted a protective order against Mr. Jason Anderson. My 5 children were also granted under the order. The protective order stated that Jason was ordered to return my truck to me. I purchased this truck with my own money.

After Jason was served with the protective order, more than one Craig police officer told me that Jason could keep my truck for another day because he had work the following day. I want to make this very clear that I never agreed to allow Mr. Anderson to keep my truck for another day. I told the officers that the protective order required him to return my truck to me immediately, but my concerns were not listened to. Later that night, I was walking to pick up my daughter from a friend's house when I saw Jason tampering with the vehicle. I began to record him and contacted Craig PD.

After a lengthy conversation with the police, I was told that I was responsible for getting the truck to my home. By that point, my truck was no longer operating, and I was told to have it towed. I used— I had to use $300 of my own rent money to pay for the tow. Earlier that same day, the truck was operating just fine. Jason had been driving it before he was served with the protective order.

I am not a mechanic and I do not know what Jason did to the truck while he continued to have access to it. The consequences of this situation are significant for my family. Excuse me. I have 5 children. I currently do not have a suitable vehicle.

I cannot drive to the store for groceries. I cannot take my children to school when the weather is bad, and I cannot take them for medical appointments when they need to be seen. We are walking everywhere that we need to go. I believe—. You are the last party—.

Negligent and failing to follow the enforced— and enforce the protective order as it was written. The truck was operating on the day Jason was served with the protective order. After he was allowed continued access to the truck despite my objections, the truck was no longer operating. The Craig Police Department paid me $300 today for the tow fee. I am also requesting that the city be responsible for the cost of having my truck towed to the shop and for the repairs necessary to make it operable.

I believe these expenses are a direct result of the Craig Police Department's decision not to enforce the return of my vehicle when Jason was served with the order, the protective order. I believe that the Craig Police Department's handling of my protective order needs to be reviewed. When court issue— when the court issues a protective order, a victim should be able to rely on law enforcement to enforce the terms of that order as written. I am asking the city to determine why Jason was allowed to retain possession possession of my vehicle after the protective order required its return and why my objections were not respected. I am also asking the city and Chief Ely to consider additional training for the Craig police officers regarding the service and, um, and enforcement of protective orders, particularly when domestic violence victims and their children are involved.

The Craig Police Department's responsibility is to enforce the law and help keep the community safe. In my situation, I do not believe that happened. The decisions were— that were made that night continue to affect me and my children every day. Excuse me. There is also a separate matter involving my daughter that I am waiting for the Craig Police Department to address.

I'm requesting that Chief Ely call me by Friday, September 18th, with an update on my daughter's case. If I do not receive an update, I intend to return to the next city council meeting to provide the council with an update regarding that case as well. I'm asking that the city council, city administration, and police chief to take these concerns seriously. Review what occurred and determine what steps will be taken to prevent another victim and their children from experiencing a similar situation. The Craig Police Department needs appropriate training, accountability, and a cle— and clear procedures for enforcing protective orders.

Our community deserves that, and victims who seek protective—. Who seek protection through the court system deserve to know that those orders will be followed. Thank you for taking the time to hear my concerns.

Thank you. Thank you. Sorry that all that's happening. Um, if the council would like to discuss this, we'd have to go into an executive session just because of the names and stuff so that we can talk about that, and that would be towards the end of the meeting. —Where we would go into executive session?

I would like to.

Do we have any objections to that?

Hearing none, we'll do an executive session.

All right, anybody else hearing from the public?

Hello, for those who don't know who I am, I'm long, uh, I'm the vice president of Craig, and my story is a story about water walls, so bear with me. Last year, on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, the city of Craig called and said, "You have a major leak underneath the ground, and we gotta shut off your water immediately." I said, "Okay." They shut off the water. And we got a water line from the neighbor and we packed water. And Richard Trojan was very, very busy that winter. He's always busy, but he was extremely busy and wasn't able to come and fix the water until the middle of February.

So our water was shut off from the end of November last week of November to the last week of February. I remember it was 3 months shy of 3 full months. But, um, little did I know that even though the water was shut off, we were still being billed for those 3 months. And I found out that Wendy just guesses, and that's fine. But, uh, so I went to Wendy and to talk about it, and she said, well, who shut off your water?

I said, the city. And she said, no one told me. And so she said, you'll hear from the guys at the shop. Well, I waited for a phone call. There was no phone call.

And then another month rolls by and we get these big water bills. And I go up to Wendy again and she gives me Oliver Lewis's cell number and I call that. There's no answer and no voicemail, but Um, if I was in his shoes, you know, I probably wouldn't answer the phone either. The, the needs are great, but nevertheless, uh, I've never received one phone call from the city. And then a month later, I would get these higher water bills.

Before, they were $90 to $167 at the highest. And now they've been just doubled and tripled, so something's going on. So, um, then I get this other large water bill, so I write a letter to Oliver and I tape it on his door at the shop and say, hey, I'm concerned there might be a leak underground, and if we have to dig up the driveway again, so be it. And then can you come and check out the water meter and contact me so I could make sure all the, uh, all the water shut off in the dwellings or whatever. And, uh, he called the next day, and I wish they would have contacted me, but, uh, he didn't.

But they looked at the water, and, and he said that, uh, he's gonna, um, go through all the data and all the information, and he said that I might even have a credit. He said he's going to call me the next day. And I said, well, let me be clear, we— I do not have a leak. And he said, that's correct, you don't have a leak. And he says, I'll call you tomorrow.

He, he said this twice. And, uh, then the next day was Friday, and Friday is a Friday, so I just figured, you know, maybe Monday or next week he'll call me. Well, another month rolls by and I still hear from him. I'm going to get this here, I think the water bills $1,200 or something by now. And so I write him another letter and say, what's going on?

And then he calls me and comes out and he has a— comes out and he's ready with a presentation. He's got all the data of the water usage and everything. And he wrote me a letter and invited him in. And, and I, at first I said, I'd like to ask a couple questions before we get started. And he said, okay.

And I said that the First was I said, when were you informed that we were being charged for water bills when the water was shut off? And he replied by reading a letter that he wrote to me, and the answer was somewhere in the letter. I had another question, but we just went with, uh, his presentation and showing me the water usage for this month and that much. And my eyes are real bad, and I I can't see for nothing, and I got to get shots every 3 or 4 months of an Anchorage, whatever. But, uh, and so this was just— I didn't know.

I said, well, because he said a couple of times that we might even have a credit, I don't know. But because Ted paid a lot, a lot of big water bills. But, uh, and, and then I said, well, he's reading all this here water usage and stuff, and I'm not making head or tail of anything. Well, do I owe anything? He says, well, you owe everything except for 5,000 gallons of water, which the city inadvertently charged us for, for those 3 months that the water was shut off and they did charge us for.

And so the important takeaway of his presentation was you just have bigger water bills and that's it. And I lost it at that point and I said, get the heck out. And I laid out the F-bomb like someone's house was on fire. I admit I was upset. I'm not proud of what I said and I apologize in a letter to Oliver later.

Well, they left and then We got this $1,600 water bill, and I just told my brother Leslie and Ted and I, well, we owe it. So we agreed that I was going to pitch in $500 and Leslie was going to pitch in $500 and Ted was going to pitch in $650, and we'll pay that water bill. Because I, I didn't want to talk anymore. And then lo and behold, we get another water bill right at that time from the city, and it's $2,500. So it was $900 $100 worth of water for that one month.

And we just said, well, there is definitely— so I write another letter to Oliver Lewis, and this is a long four-page letter kind of telling him of my frustration, a little bit of why I exploded.

And it was— and also said it was odd that not one city worker here, or one city worker ever came and said, we're checking your water meter, have you checked to see if, are there leaks or anything? I mean, a leaky toilet is one example and a running toilet and a leaky garden hose faucet are common examples of search for leak. And so, I don't know, I just— this is our, you know, this is our situation. So I wrote him back and said, well, we have this here $2,500 water bill, that's $900 for that month. And, uh, I apologized and, and I said, can we just get this behind us and be mature and go forward with this?

Because I want to get this over as much as you do. And, and the city called a couple days later and said, "We're busy today, but I'll call you tomorrow." That was great. They didn't call that day, but Oliver called the next day, and he was very, very kind and very positive and said, "We're going to do anything we can to help." So we set up a meeting because I wanted my brother Leslie to be there, and we all were up there by the water meter, and he says, "You do have a leak underground." And so my brother Leslie called Richard Trojan, and it was just a blessing that he was available. He was— I think he's probably excavating someone's property and they don't have plans to build in spring or something, so he was able to take a couple days off and help. And he just finished today, actually.

And but the But at the end of the day, Oliver Lewis and the City of Craig were very— they, they were, uh, very professional and showed patience and restraint. And, uh, they put in a new water meter, which is a big deal. I thought it was just a small meter that you change in 40 minutes, it's done. It's a big deal. And they also donated 300 feet of 1-inch poly pipe and gave him, my brother, gave us something to turn on and off the water if we needed to.

So that was really nice of them. And so I'm just here to say these few words that maybe you may show some sympathy to our plight and give grace to our water bill. We have a $2,500 water bill now, and then— and I'm sure there's a big water bill pending. I wouldn't be surprised if it was $500. I'm not sure how it works, but, um, and Ted has all the water bills here if you have any questions.

And, um, thank you for listening. Thank you, um, provided me the water bills, and I can look into that. I'm sorry, my water goes off. There was one, there was one I threw. I was upset and threw away.

It was like a $1,200 bill or something. Last word. You should be able to look it up anyways. Yeah. And thank you for coming and letting the council know.

Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Any more hearing from the public? May I be excused? Thank you. Thank you for hearing. Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Do we have any more hearing from the public? Please state your name. Paul Ingwe. Uh, I just want to reiterate, I have substantial donations from people to build a building over that morgue.

I don't call it a freezer, it's degrading for our people. But I went over there Tuesday, there's plenty of room to knock and Pete the row, nothing for a 20 by 20 building. I can start next week if I get your guys' stuff root. Like, it's a few pieces of metal, then it's scrap. Like, it doesn't look like it's operable at all.

And I'll pop a little bit, but I'll do it right. I'll need a locate on anything that's buried. But we're getting into weather and we don't want people sitting outside. We don't want the tents that I donated flying away. Like, it's I'm ready to go.

Oh, would you mind leaving your cell phone number with Maury and he can, um, give it to Oliver? So that's good, Tony. It's not a problem. Yeah, and we've already got a— we've got concrete donated, uh, already. So yeah, any donations?

I haven't even put it out. I haven't sent letters out. So they want to get out— Oliver, get the letter this weekend and start saying—. Oliver's getting all that together. So if you can provide your number and contact, and we can get that back to them with that, we'll get that.

And I'll do a ton of it after the John seeds. Don't need the equipment. It's all about some progress too with the Public Works folks too. So we're all right. Well, we appreciate you putting in all this time.

Definitely. Yeah, it's 209-0555. Okay, yeah, thank you. Thank you.

All right, any other hearing from the public?

Doesn't sound like we have anybody on the phone. Um, we did get a letter from the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office. Um, just saying if we wanted to make a public comment, it's just them talking about, um, putting just more wording in how much their edibles have, uh, total for THC per, um, bite and per whole packet. It's already— they already have it like that. It's just better wording for the whole thing.

So I didn't know if anybody wanted to have a letter drafted, but I didn't think we would.

I mean, we just— I've just seen this, you know. I think we all have this without a chance to look at it think about, you know, pretty significantly. Is it— do you know, is it suggesting or changing limits, or—. Nope, it's just, um, stating better facts on the packaging for the people, saying how much is in each individual piece and then per package total, and it can't exceed a certain amount, so it can't go over 10 milligrams. Per piece and over 100 milligrams per packet.

So that's all it's just stating in there.

I think, you know, more information is always better for the public. Yeah, I think so too.

All right, so it doesn't sound like we need to write anything because that's how it's going.

All right, then we want to talk about the subsistence harvesting. You guys all got that? Um, I think you said there was going to be a presentation on the 15th, right? The, um, October 15th, so the second meeting. They're planning to come back and just give a short presentation, but she did mention the rural status that Ketchikan got utilizing data that was 30 years old.

This process updates that data so that that could be quickly addressed.

Are they going to do a presentation to the council or just in the community? They'd like to do a town hall, so I think they're trying to go up to the school and going to join in with one of the craft fairs and have a booth. So that they can have flyers and pamphlets and be available to answer questions and talk to people. They are also going to be hiring folks that are really well-versed in the area to do kind of a mapping survey of the area kind of thing. So that— they'll talk about that too.

And this whole effort will take place in like January to February.

Can you say this is just a reminder?

Thanks. No hearing from the public. Moving on to consent agenda. I move to approve the consent agenda. Second.

First and a second on consent agenda. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Hearing none.

Moving on to reports from city officials. The administrator report. I submitted a report. I have a couple things that I want to add to that. Um, I did send the letter out to KIB.

Um, additionally, we have 3 applicants for planner now. Um, I have the first, um, interview tomorrow at 10:00, so getting some good engagement on people wanting to apply for the position. Very encouraging. Um, and I did want to, uh, note that billing did go out, um, for the first time in a long time on the first this month. So we're making strides on our billing issues.

We have several, um, that I'm trying to fix. That actually goes quite, quite well with the discussion during public comments, um, so that we do have some problems that we need to solve, and I'll continue to look into that and fix some of those. Any other questions on I just had a comment. Can we— when a staff member is contacted directly by a customer, can we have them say, can you please call the office? Like, more people need to be aware of what is happening.

I'm not saying that anything was done wrong, but I just would—. I mean, just for visibility. Yes.

Or to let some, like, you know, just if they could let somebody else also be aware of what is happening. Because 3 months of the water shut off and him continuing to get an increased bill each month should have been a huge sign. When someone's getting a $1,200 water bill when it's normally, what do you say, $67 to $100 And I think you're correct that it's sitting there in a vacuum and not being seen.

And that's part of the issue we need to solve. So yeah. Mike, you had a question? Yeah, along the same lines, we switched our accounting system, billing system here a couple years ago, a few years ago.

We were, you know, my recollection is we were assured this was going to be a big improvement. If anything, it went backwards. I, I can tell you that some of the tax information we sent out was calculated incorrectly by that software. We've had some issues and things that, well, even in the back taxes and the billing that we continuously have to work through on the daily So that particular software is causing huge nightmare for the city.

You know, I— hey, this software, you know, it's frustrating that we put so much effort into a switch and, you know, actually maybe it's gotten worse. It certainly hasn't improved things.

You know, I don't know, I'm not— I don't want to suggest that we have to change software again, but we We certainly— because I know, you know, I've talked to you, we have a billing issue that's going on since March, right? And I, you know, I've just been really low-key about it, but I don't blame individuals, but that's— something's not right when it goes that long. And so my thought is, is, you know, we either need to fix the system or get a new system. My vote is get a new system. I've already started looking into that.

We've had demos from the competitors. So once I'm comfortable making a recommendation on the technical specifics, I'll be presenting that to you guys for approval to switch over. I don't know if I need that because it's not going to be a new— it'll probably be part of the year turnover when we switch over, but we could get started early, and if that happens, I'll let you guys know. Do we have a warranty on the— there's no warranty. There's a contract that they're meeting, but it's, it's just difficult.

It's like pulling teeth. Yeah, everything we do, it's, it's unacceptable. I am on autopay and I just received a thing saying, um, we forgot to bill you. For one of the items. I mean, it is a mess, and it's, it's not making the city look very good.

Like, you know what the heck we're doing?

And it is, it's ongoing, it's every single month. It is unacceptable, period. That's actually one of my two highest priorities. Is getting this software replaced as soon as we can. So today, you know, I just, you know, maybe one in retrospect, maybe one thing we didn't do that we could have done, or maybe we didn't do enough of, is when we're looking at a new system of any kind, is, you know, outreach to other communities that are using it, and you know, what's your experience?

Is it fitting your needs? I mean, these kinds of— that kind of experience is invaluable. You know, I think you know that already, but I just—. And I think they did that, um, not to interrupt you, but I think they did that part of it. I think where they— what the implementation fell short in, that the city hired a third-party entity to convert from the old financial software to the new financial software.

And somewhere with that third party, things fell through and we didn't get the right data into the system. Um, what— more people you put into the loop, the lot greater the chances that you're going to see an error in the system. And I think that's probably what happened, um, because other cities have had a successful implementation with the software we're using, but ours has not been I think from day one successful, and it continues to have errors. And our most egregious— our customer support relationships with them, terrible, very inconsistent. They, they can sometimes tell us that we should solve our own problems.

That's sometimes the answer we get from these folks, which we can't do because it's their software. So they're— it's, it's pretty egregious. We have a running list of problems with them. Um, and like I said, I, I am in talks with additional— with other competitors, so to take a look. Hopefully you can save us money or, um, get more— some of, some of the other interesting things that we'd like to do with the city added in.

It's about the same price, price line. Um, I have a lot of information. I don't have it in a package yet, so please be patient. I'll get that to but it's definitely an issue and it's causing some of these building problems for sure. Appreciate you looking into it.

I just wanted to add my personal feeling is, is the people that, you know, have this, you know, significant bill, when there was a delay in them understanding that, you know, they had issues, you know, I'm not going to say a number, but I think there's some flexibility in working with them. I feel comfortable with that.

Uh, Maury, I had a couple of questions. Uh, first, uh, did Silver Bay get billed? We, to my knowledge, have not yet. They've been invoiced, but we have not yet received it. Okay, and that was meeting the requirements of not being operational?

The bill. I'm sorry, the bill, the total. It was either— yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

And then I had a question on temporary access permits. 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 gonna 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 that 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 part of the fire department. Yes.

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

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 He's no longer going to attend the Southeast Conference, so we can scratch that line off. It'll be Maury and Mike will be attending that.

He'll be coming back, and 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. Records management, I've got a beta file tree built. I'm using beta as like the beginning. I know a lot of people have different word definitions for that word.

I've got a, um, Banyan file tree built in our share drive, and I moved all the city clerk stuff in just to 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.

Um, so that'll be coming up. Um, elections are coming up, so this is One more meeting after this one for Millie, so that'll be nice. Freedom from your Thursdays. Um, and then on the city website, uh, we just got the signed renewal submitted, so we're, um, proceeding with that. We'll get on the schedule to get that updated.

Our current code is being, uh, 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, uh, 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 .gov. 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, maybe we look into something next year, you know, see, see if we can get another box or something. That, that was a good thing for the community. Um, I lost about what I was going to say too. Right, 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, um, our IT people are going to put us on the cloud, so 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 going to ask more, but I'll go ahead and just— I wanted to get one of those terabyte drives like RJ has, the big—. Couple terabyte drives just to be able to have it.

Just to have another backup. Primary, tertiary, and so on. Primary, secondary, tertiary. Yeah, because you go through all that hard work and if you lose it—. Yeah, yeah.

Are you doing that scanning just by yourself? 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, you know, we had a discussion about that, so that'll 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, nice. And they, and then they'll know where their files are, so Murray, 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. 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. I don't— I'm trying to target them so that they're not— so that I, I can minimize our downtime. 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, hot spots, things that are bubbling up the most, um, and narrowing down things that we need to tackle, um, in terms of shortfalls and understanding process, procedure, um, 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 month 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 what I— that's when I shut it down.

And I talked to these guys because that's— I don't have a— 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 issues.

Okay, one thing at a time. Oh, Millie, Millie got your attention. Any other questions for Beck? 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 thing. I'd like to see PALCAC 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 Bohcan 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 this. I included 2 articles along with this resolution.

It's clear, 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 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, Stainy 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, I've said this before, I've used this example of out in Estenia, 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, um, you know, more, more roads for old-growth harvest, major old-growth. I actually am not opposed totally. So the Forest Service right now, the protocol, although they want to change it, the protocol has been up 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 Cohn brothers.

I wanna 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. And 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, you know, 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 them does 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 that talks about timber sales are actually a deficit, a major deficit, millions and millions of dollars. And I remember the conservation group saying this 30 years ago, and I was just like most of the other guys that were working in the woods, "Oh, bullshit.

These guys, what are they talking about? They're just making excuses." They're not. We're running our timber program at a significant deficit. 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 propose 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? Patrick Gantmich? Yes. Millie Skidover? Yes.

Jen Churchin? No. Sean Thompson? 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. I move to accept the donation of the cost of shipping from AMAL, estimated at $2,340. Second. I have a first and second. The floor is open for any questions or comments.

It's a nice donation. Yeah, that's great.

All right, can I please get a roll call vote on this? Josh Bennett? Yes. Sean Thomas? Yes.

Jen Turchin? Yes. Melissa Yozick? Yes. Mike Kettmich?

Yes. All right, passes. All right, now Do we move into— do we go to council comments or executive session? Executive session would be first and then council comments after. If you're ready to go at that point, we need a motion to go out of regular session.

At that point, I can go turn off all the media, and then we'll have another motion to go into executive session. All right, do I hear a motion to go out of regular session? I motion. Second. I hear a first and second.

Would everybody like a break first, or are you ready? No, just keep going. Okay.