Seward: City Council Work Session 10/29/2026

Okay, we're streaming to YouTube. Ready when you are. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seward. Uh, good evening everyone.

It's 5:30 and I'll I'll go ahead and call the, uh, our budget work session to order, and I will go to administration. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So tonight, with our final night of the FY 27-28 draft budget overview— oh, he made it by the skin of his teeth! So tonight we are finishing and wrapping up our budget extravaganza week. We have two departments, the police and parks Department, as well as talking through the hospital and capital infrastructure.

And so I would like to start, whether he likes it or not, with the Chief of Police and have him come up here and we can go through his budget. And so Chief Tyner and Sully and I worked on— and James and I worked on this budget to showcase the different aspects of the police department and what we will be budgeting for in 2028 and/or 2027. '27 And 2028. And two of the big changes that we see going into '27 and '28 that are being proposed is the funding of a full-time employee to be the— an additional sergeant for Chief Tyner and his team. The employee is not a new position with the city.

It is a PERS position that already exists but was in the jail. So it's taking the jail sergeant position and making it a patrol sergeant. You're allowed to change positions upwards of 50%, and that falls within that line. So this helps us increase our staffing, increase efficiency, and I'll have Chief Tyner go into a little bit more about that position's necessary at this time, but we're also able to avoid a PERS termination from the closure of the jail. So really helpful to be able to do that kind of inventively, creatively, I would say.

Also, we are seeing an uptick in our budget this year, specifically for, full staffing. And so Chief Tyner and his team have recently hired and begun training 4 new full-time police officers. With that comes a litany of new uniforms and new training, specifically at the academy down in Sitka. And so when you're looking at the budgets, which are on page 16, 17, and 18, you'll see a variety of increases in those departments. Especially when you're looking at uniform allowance, which is up over 400%, but we're buying 4 new uniforms and everything that that entails.

And so with that, I will pass it off to Chief Tyner to talk a little bit about the sergeant position and anything you else you may have questions on and a little bit about all that goes into the police department. All right, um, good evening. Good evening, Vice Mayor Osenga and council members, public. Um, a bit nervous. I did prepare a laydown, but they said I couldn't hand it out, but I needed to talk.

So, um, um, so, you know, as, as this portrays, that department has 21 positions, and, uh, right now is the first time we've been full-staffed, I believe, doing the research, since 2016. And our sergeant's tasked with supervising the patrol position. There's 8 patrol officers underneath 1 sergeant, which makes that span of control just a little bit out of range for the kind of the industry— I'll say the industry or the profession stand. Which should be closer to 4 or 5. And his tasks have changed over the years, just, you know, with technology.

And I guess I really don't know when it changed, but sometime during the last 10 years, the sergeant's more responsible for reviewing all the officer reports, preparing the documents for the district attorney, making sure those documents get sent over in a timely fashion. Um, it, uh, includes body worn— well, it should include, but it's been limited, um, just because of all the other duties being stacked on, but body camera audits.

Performance documentation, just the day-to-day guidance of the officers, him working a shift separate from the officers working their shifts. If our sergeant takes time off, there's really no one to take his place other than the deputy who has the people that are underneath him to, uh, to supervise already. So it just increases his load. From, you know, the 3 to 5 that he supervises, you know, up to 11. So, I think that, you know, like I said, adding this new position would definitely improve the span and control.

It would give the sergeants enough time or the sergeant enough time to supervise instead of just kind of chase their tail following up after the fact. They could— they would catch issues that were, you know, arising in the patrol division early and address them. There would be consistent decision-making, you know, across the board on the majority of all the shifts with 2 sergeants. And he would also, or she would also be there to support them in their professional performance.

So really, I guess the request is we It's not to really— I mean, it's going to add another position, but it's not to increase our ranks or do anything like that. It's to support the staff that we have right now and just increase morale and help them become more professional and better to serve the community. I don't—.

Anything more than that, but I, I like your consideration on it and answer any questions if you have any. I'll also add to Chief Tyner's reasoning. The police department is a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week staffing, so that the patrol officers are working shifts 24 hours a day. So there'll be times when one of the one sergeant does not see the employees that report to them for a very long time because of that difference. It's not always, but it can happen.

And so having that second sergeant allows for more flexibility so that there's more interaction with your direct supervisor and, like Chief said, a lot more professional development with that as well. Yeah.

And then outside of that, I don't believe there's anything too outstanding. The big cost drivers that we do see in each of the departments— the police is the Axon and the fuel, academy, and training. And Axon is all of the body cam and equipment and everything that the officers are required to wear. The animal control building has medical expenses for animals but also utilities and maintenance on that great new building. And the dispatch department only includes personnel because we wanted to just make sure that we're tracking that accordingly, but all of the other resources are pretty much shared, so we just pulled those personnel out.

And they're responsible for enhanced 911 answering and routing emergency services for the city of Seward and Little Point, and so that's also a 24/7 division as well. Yeah, and then if there's any questions. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Oh, thank you, Vice Mayor. Um, just something that I noticed, and it's not a major thing, but it seems like in each of the three departments— dispatch, animal control, and police— that the, the overtime budget for 2028 has jumped significantly.

And if we're full staff. I was just trying to wrap my head around why the overtime— we would budget for more overtime if we have more personnel. So I will say on the animal control, that one we meant to change and bring back down. So for that one, we will adjust that. Um, we were having some overtime conversations and we were going to bring that back down to about $7,000 annually.

So thank you for catching that We'll, we'll adjust that one. Uh, and then for the other two on the overtime, um, Sully, did you have thoughts on that? On the dispatch? Uh, yeah, yeah, dispatch and, um, the police. It's more realistic in accordance with the overtime that we have had.

I would also say I believe that will go down But currently the, the staff is training, and so we'll have 2 officers in academy next year. So they'll be on staff but in the academy, and then back for FTO, which is field training officers. And so as we look at that and see the past high amounts, the hope is that that comes down into a more attainable and reasonable level because we are fully staffed, but I don't know, we're erring on the side of caution with what previous years were. So we could adjust it, but I also anticipate that first year we might see impact there. We also have a high probatory employees in place, so we might see the use of it or no.

With the employees on probation and FTO at that time.

Also, the closing of the jail, we have a lot more transports. Oh yeah, overtime too, and standby to cover that transport. Yeah, that's a great idea, which Chief Tyner did one of those at like 2 AM last week, but he didn't charge overtime.

Yeah, so that's a good point too. Thank you, uh, Deputy Schaefermeyer.

I think I know the answer, but the big jump— I thought we had— you guys had purchased new communication last year, had upgraded, or 2 years ago you had a big upgrade on your radios. So I'm just wondering why the communication is jumping in '27 by— and that's probably AXIOM. Is that—. Am I—. Am I misinformed on that?

I believe it may be because is it because dispatch is being pulled, or is it because dispatch is—. We upgraded antennas like this pen. So all like on the roof towers, that kind of stuff, which is not, that's different from like personal devices and what people wear and that kind of stuff for communications. Is that the question you're answering? Asking?

Yeah. Oh, so you're, and you're asking for the large jump from—. Yes, jump of 227%. Yeah, so what I would also note there is if you look at the previous years, this is us getting back on track with the actuals. And so that doesn't include the radios and everything, but it's the actual communications of the individual phones.

I think the radio ongoing costs is there, but not necessarily the initial one. And then we also— one of the things we're moving towards, I don't remember the update on it right now, is outfitting the officers with their own personal work cell phones so that they don't hand out their private cell phone information to people that they are dealing with. And so this was more of an increased budget. It's an appropriate budget line item. Okay.

And then the second question was contracted services on the same year, uh, a fair, a fairly big jump in contracted services. Is that associated with the new hires, or, uh, no, that's associated with, I believe, Axon and Tyler. Yeah, that's Tyler Technologies. Which is our dispatch system.

And dispatch was pulled back into the police budget, which— Correct. Would show an increase in that line, but in dispatch, in the dispatch budget, it would be zero. Am I correct on that? Yep, yeah. All of the non-personnel costs are now police and dispatch together.

So some of the big jumps you see are or dispatch being pulled. They separated dispatch out 2 years ago so that you could try to figure out how much dispatch was actually costing the city and maybe reasoning to see if maybe having Slobodna dispatch force would be economical. But, um, it, uh, it didn't work out that way, so we've moved— we just shifted it back in. It's just easier to manage it. We don't have the two budgets.

Move dispatch back into police budget. Because there's so much overlap in that equipment as well, and so that's— it's, it's more of a control for the whole department because they're working so closely together. And so we wanted to still maintain the personnel difference just to make sure we're being within overtime, all of that things for the dispatch office. But for the remainder of the department, it is significantly more time efficient and effective to just count it all as a shared services. We share so many things in there, you know, that have, you know, getting one bill for—.

And broken down. Yeah. It was not efficient. Getting one bill for just like the Xerox machines. And then we would have to separate it out like, well, this percentage goes to dispatch and this percentage goes to the police.

On it. So it just—. It will save time. I do have one more question, and that was, why are you full staff? What, what drove that full staff?

What—. How did you get these employees? I know you had pay rates. Um, yeah, I, you know, I think the increase that Council was able to get us, um, and the pay range was good. Um, also Well, we got lucky, you know, I don't know, we got applicants, we started aggressively pursuing filling the positions and doing interviews and I don't know, we got lucky with the first two and then asked them if they knew of any good guys that might be interested in coming and got another one through that.

And yeah, it just so happened that I guess the stars aligned and we got full staff. We were able to hire 4 within, I don't know, 3 or 4 months of one another. I know a year ago it was pretty stressful. Yeah, yeah. It still is because we're having to train all those right now.

And we don't have the trainers to train them. They just don't have the experience in the patrol division to train, but we're getting it. We're having to do a lot of shifting around. Two guys will be back next weekend from the academy, and we're looking forward to getting them trained on their own. So I'll add to that response that I believe the leadership in the police department between Deputy Chief Schaefermeyer and Chief Tyner are really, uh, a really exciting shift in that area.

So big kudos to both of them.

Yeah. Any comments? Council Member Cope? Thank you. I just wondered about the process.

So when we send people to academy, how— are they obliged to us for a certain amount of time? Or are they—. How does it work? I believe it's 5—. 3 Years?

2. 2 Years. Okay. Yeah. 2-Year commitment.

Incredible. Yeah. They can leave earlier, but they're required to pay back the investment that we made into them in the academy. And the academy is a 6-week? The academy is 17 weeks.

I'm way off. I didn't do it. 17 Weeks, dang. And the cost is around $15,000 per? Yes, ma'am.

About $15,000 per. And they live in Sitka for 17 weeks. Housing, food, and training. Housing, food, and training. Yeah.

Okay, are there any other questions? Oh, Council Member Draper. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mine's for Sully. Is the 2026 actual through 9/30?

Is 9/30 closed out on this one? It is. Okay, so that's all I wanted to know. Anything else from anybody? Um, can you remind me, do we ask public now?

Well, we're done with this. What we've been doing is going through and then all—. Okay, thank you. And everything, so I'll go back to you then. Great, you're off the hook.

Thank you, Chief Diner.

Next up we have Mel with the Parks and Recreation Department, which covers two funds, uh, well, it covers a general fund and then an enterprise fund. And, um, the general The general funds begin on page 29.

And across this fund, you will see the big shift that we talked about here in the first meeting as we went over general fund as a whole was the shift of a significant portion of Parks and Rec revenue and some of their expenditures in the campgrounds over to a the parking, which is now the Parking and Campgrounds Fund. And that was a shift that we made to bring more transparency and clarity to the money that comes into the, um, Parking Campground Fund as money that's coming from visitors and how that goes back into the general fund as support for our different, um, services that we provide the community, like the pool contract, the senior center, and the different things there. And so we'll talk more about that in a minute when we get to the enterprise fund, but staying in the general fund here, there are 4 different funds or departments that fall under Mel's team in the general fund, and that's administration, which is her general team and everybody in the building and the, the managers and things like that. Maintenance, which is I'll let Mel speak to that too. The laundry list of maintenance that Parks and Rec handle across the city is eye-opening.

When I sent her an email that said, can you let me know all the things that you plow? And the email was like 70 pages long, it felt. And then Sports and Recreation, which we also hear about often in this room, and all of the joy and recreation that they bring to the community. And their big task this upcoming year of growing and managing the community center building while engaging and continuing events and leagues. And so when we look at this budget, we are going to see a large jump specifically in maintenance and sports and recreation.

Sports and recreation has taken on the utilities for the middle school building in a total of just over $200,000. We also added a seasonal employee or part-time employee in there as well to handle the custodial services over at Parks and Rec— at the new community center of about $40,000 a year. And then we had a very fluid position in the Parks and Rec Department that was a maintenance/campgrounds coordinator, and that position was historically seasonal. That at some point in the— was historically the campgrounds coordinator and seasonal, at some point got mixed with a maintenance position. And then now we're recommending going back to the original intent of the position and just having that as maintenance to make sure that we're continuing keeping up with all of these things and all of the new things that are on Mel's plate.

And so that maintenance position will stay in the maintenance team while the seasonal position of campground coordinator is in the campgrounds and parking enterprise. Fund. And so that is the big overview of Parks and Recreation. I also tonight provided a laydown that's on there and will be online of all of the annual personnel costs individually— or not individually, together, combined— for Parks and Recreation to show the shifts there. And so You will see the change from the— and this includes the enterprise fund and the general fund.

And so you will see the change from the prior year for the entire fund is about 18%, which includes some of those changes we talked about, the new seasonal positions. And then the general fund subtotal change is about 9%, which includes that new seasonal position and then COLA and CPI adjustments for staff. I will then pass it over to Mel to highlight— Mel, what, what maintenance do you do? Almost everything. Well, um, I wrote down some of our highlighted department accomplishments for 2026, and, um, as we're ever expanding, so do our responsibilities.

So I'm going to start with Sports and Recreation and Teen Rec Room, we successfully launched the first annual Zombie Run with 100 participants. That's pretty impressive. All the 2026 races saw participation numbers almost doubled compared to previous years. And we still have the Turkey Trot left for this year, so, and that definitely increased. We added more sports and recreation activities, programs, and special events to every monthly calendar.

Just continued successful sports leagues with significant growth in youth soccer, soccer especially this year, and then offered an additional week of Youth Adventure Camp in response to the increased popularity and demand. We're also retaining and getting returning seasonal staff, which reduces training and costs for the city. And we'll be hosting our Halloween carnival at the middle school this year. We are going to increase our collaboration with the pool. We've been working with the pool staff to coordinate programming, including movies in the pool and water polo.

And just restructuring of the teen council, establishing consistent staffing and building trust among those teens. And then this year, the Parks and Recreation maintenance team took on a significant number of improvement projects throughout this community. This doesn't include the maintenance daily responsibilities and repairs. Numerous snow or areas of snow removal in the winter and mowing acres of green spaces in the summertime. But some of the 2026 projects completed this year were Hoban Park improvements to enhance that park area.

We worked with the museum on that and we also developed and constructed Seward's first community dog park and at the Woodlands Cemetery, the The crew worked diligently at that cemetery and completed extensive improvements, including brush removal, sign refurbishment. They added a garden bed there and reconstructed many of the crosses that were damaged. And then, um, of course, Jesse Lee Park improvements and surrounding memorial area— been working in that area. We are taking a pause on Project. We had to address some issues of vehicles driving on the newly seeded lawn that will need to be restored, and all the landscape is really— it's brand new and it needs just time to settle.

So we're just gonna keep folks off. We did get all the playground equipment to the location and we started putting most of it together, but there's this— a big structure that we're going to need somebody to come down and install it for us. So that will take— we'll put a pin on it and maintain, or we'll, we'll start back in the spring. So we'll pick up where we left off. And then we've been continuing this expansion of the disc golf course to provide 18-hole rather than 9 holes.

And then this year we had the Boy Scouts come down and we completed a lot of improvements on the Two Lakes Trail and addressed various outdoor restroom facility needs and completed plumbing replacement work due to vandalism on the waterfront. So that you just outside little things that pop up that we need to repair. Lastly, I just wanted to list off our top 10 capital improvement projects for the next 3 years. The completion of the Jesse Lee Park waterfront erosion mitigation, lagoon boardwalk replacement, skate park improvements, story walk along Two Lakes Trail, update the shower house and waterfront restrooms, construct a Wellington Pavilion. Develop an ADA accessible fishing access at Spring Creek Day Use Area.

Harborside Park development, eventually that campground's going to go away, and so we need to develop a— it's going to be, you know, half parking lot, half park area. So just developing a nice park area there. And working with the Rotary with the covered basketball court. Yeah. Anyway, um, that's all I got.

If you guys have any questions—. One thing I will add to that too is that a lot of those projects that you do hear from Mel are also sponsored in some way, shape, or form. So like the frisbee golf course brought in a lot of sponsors. The Boy Scouts came down and did that through a sponsorship as well. So the Parks and Rec Department itself has a high personnel cost, but they also are always out advocating for and recruiting sponsorships for these things.

That they bring to the community. Thanks for adding that, because we do get a lot of contributions and work with different partners, so.

Okay. I guess we can pop over, let's pop over to parking and campground funds. And so you'll see here the, I'll just go to this one, it's more effective.

And this is on page— I just lost my train of thought for a second. 43? No, not 43. 49? This is on page—.

49? 59? Yeah. 57? 59?

49? 49. Great. And this, um, this pulls in the information from the parking and all of the harbor lots and the Pavilion Camping Campground fees. And so this was signed, sort of something that we had discussed previously throughout the year of utilizing the Enterprise Fund to also maintain and to also house the campgrounds.

It's overlapping for the Parks and Rec Department in a lot of ways for their team and just brought a little bit of transparency into the amount of money coming into the city via parking, campgrounds, and visitors in general. And so the way that we did set this up seems a little bit of just moving one cup to the other, but it will be utilized as a transfer into the city annually in the amount of the previous revenue that came in. But allocated in a way that covers the different expenditures that we have as a community that are more of an investment in our community. And so that is the pool, the senior center, like I said. And there's a— is there— You have a slide.

Do I have a slide? I have some. At this point, I forget what's even on this slide. I've been through this thing so many times. Campgrounds.

Okay. The community pool, the after-school childcare, like the Boys and Girls Club and the TYC, the senior center, different community sports, the volunteer firefighters, SBAC stipends, and a small percentage of police, fire, and library services. So that's sort of how we are hoping to bring some transparency into that because it is a large transfer in. And want it to have something associated with it instead. And then like I said, there is the addition of a campground— go all the way back— there is the addition of a campground coordinator seasonal position in there that had existed previously, but we're pulling that position and creating just one seasonal position out of that.

So you'll see a little bit of increase there on the personnel. Other than that, I think that's everything from us, so we'll open to questions if you have any.

Okay, any questions or comments, Council?

No? Councilmember Draper? Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor. I had a question about the revenue for sports and rec. I mean, is it— I just wondered if there was any room for for increased revenue there.

I could remember people testifying, it's like, yeah, we want this and we're willing to pay for it. I just remember people actually saying that. Yes, we are looking at increasing our fees up at the community center and also with our races. That brings in a lot of cost, but we have a lot of overhead as well. We have a lot of operating costs And so it kind of balances out with all our special events because we give swag.

That's why we seek so many sponsors and volunteers to lower those operating costs. But yeah, you don't want anyone to be excluded. No, of course not. Yes, exactly. There's a line there, right?

I'll say one of the things I do enjoy that Parks and Rec does for races, and I run a lot of of their races and I'll go to other events and you'll just see thousands of t-shirts there for anybody who could potentially sign up. But I remember one day I went down to AVTEC and saw the sports and rec crew and they just had probably hundreds of t-shirts from events going all the way back to the '90s. And so now instead of just pre-ordering all of those t-shirts, they'll say, sign up for this event by this date and you will get a t-shirt. So they buy it. Specific, so we're not over-ordering everything, which is really great, but it means that I get less free t-shirts every once in a while.

I missed my chance for the hat for the turkey trot. One line kind of stood out for me, and it's on page 4 because that's the revenues, but class registrations— we took in $15,000 through 9/30, and we're only budgeting for $2,400 next year. That? Page 4. Yeah, on page 4.

Yeah, that's—. I don't know off the top of our head what would have done that, but that's a good thing to note and we can look in and see if that's a—. That one year just jumps out. Something must have— maybe something's misclassified. Yeah, I'm trying to think of what that class would be, but— but yeah, we'll highlight that and look into it.

Special events is also quite a bit over budget, but then planned to be higher again next year. Anyway, just on that. Oh, and I also saw the damage up at the Jesse Lee. That's just tragic. And why would someone do that?

Beautiful brand new lawn. Exactly. That's it. Councilmember Barnwell. Not much.

I That's nice. I can't believe what you guys do. In fact, by the way, that dog park, I think a lot of that was recycled and cobbled together by your staff. So you didn't spend much on that one either. We spent altogether around $10,000.

That was within our budget, but it was all built in-house during the winter when they're not out, you know, removing snow and stuff. And so that really saved on cost because you look at buying brand new dog park equipment and the shipping costs, it would have been a $50,000 or more dog park. But just ordering the lumber from Spinard, and we did have some lumber on hand, and the fencing, and just—. It seems to be getting well used. Yeah, every time I drive by, there's quite a few people still there.

So, and the other one is the Two Lakes. I didn't know— I didn't even know you guys were doing that. And that, that's a really— that's a huge improvement in that trail system. It, it has been, but we want to continue improvement on that, that beautiful trail. So yeah, we, we've been picking away at it.

So, uh, so the question I had was, um, I just— have we tried to figure out maybe and Mel doesn't want this, but like, have we tried to break her— their department down a little bit more? So it seems unwieldy that they're doing 50 things, but I don't know where— I don't know, say parking might be taken away, or can't— you know what I mean? I just don't know if that's even usable, or if you guys thought about that, or if it's not right. There's like—. There's a conversation that exists in the ether in my comparing to other communities, especially ones with camping and parking as large as ours are, where that's its own department entirely.

We haven't gotten to that point yet. I think we're exploring it, the early stages of it, with this change of switching that to an enterprise fund. And I think there's, there's overlap that exists within the people who do those positions too, so it would be, it would be It would be an untanglement, untanglement. But yeah, I think there's a good case for that when we see what the middle school community center space looks like and how much of a lift or an easy into the day-to-day that becomes. So yeah.

I just, last thing I want to say is Maggie did a great job with gardening this year. Oh, she did, didn't she? She's so great at that.

Any other comments or questions? Anybody? No? Great. Well, thank you, Mel.

Wonderful. Thank you, Mel. Then we will switch over into the enterprise funds for the City of Seward's assets in the Seward Mountain Haven and the Seward Hospital as run by Providence. And so, hey, Chris, did you, do you have that other sheet like handy, but I don't need it yet? Yeah.

It's handy. It's handy, great. So the healthcare in Seward, Seward owns the assets for the Seward, or what used to be the Seward General Hospital. And we have a few funds, but the two, we have two major funds, the Seward Mountain Haven Fund and the healthcare funds. And the Seward Mountain Haven Fund accumulates resources to pay the $27 million in revenue bonds issued in 2008 to construct, equip, and furnish a new long-term care facility.

The revenue is limited to bond premium and amortization. Debt service and depreciation are the main costs in this fund, and it hasn't recorded revenue since 2024 when the fund met its obligation to pay for the bond. It has 9— we have about $9 million of principal outstanding at an average interest rate of 3.10%. And we budgeted for this year receiving interest on that $9+ million in our account as revenue for the city. So we're not recommending to pay that off since we can utilize the interest off that large sum of money in our fund balance— or in our reserves to bring in interest for overall revenue for the city of Seward.

This is a breakdown of that fund. You'll see that large— that drop down over time. And so we're not really seeing much in and out, just some depreciation and the bond payment. And a really cool thing Sully added this year to our budget document, if you look at the very last two pages, she did a breakdown of the budgeted schedule of outstanding debt for all of our funds. Funds for FY '27 and '28.

And so a lot of times it's interesting because you'll see these budget conversations and we'll have these budget conversations, but there's never really a, a mention of the actual payments going out to our bonds and that debt that we're paying annually. And so that's all written out there on page 70 and 71, and that's the primary, uh, purpose for this account. Well, there is a little, little pointer. Sorry. There is also the healthcare fund, which accounts for operating capital costs of Providence Seward Medical Center, including, which includes the hospital and the emergency room.

I'll highlight here that there's often a level of confusion because Seward Community Health Center takes in the space at the hospital, but they are not a part of this overall fund. They are a separate entity that rents that space space and shares it with the hospital. We have a lease agreement with them. And this is a good example— or this is a pass-through payment account and also accumulates over time for expenditures coming through to the hospital and capital as well. And so previously we had allocated about $700,000 in 2024, $400,000— the past few years and were recommending a return to the levels that we had allocated in the past of about $700,000 or of $750,000.

And we returned to those levels after hearing some conversations and looking at the survey results that we sent out this summer of which— what the community told us, which is, which of the following best reflects your view of the the city's financial role in supporting the hospital over time. And we had about just under 50% said strong financial support with an additional 38 saying focus on essential needs, limited support, but support in general. What I am going to ask, like Chris do now, is pull up the sheet that I asked to have ready. I put this together earlier today. And it's kind of just a breakdown of where the hospital money goes and what that looks like in our accounts.

And so we have $1.1 million that we are allocating to the Healthcare Enterprise Fund this year. And I'm going to also— and so $750,000 of that is a pass-through payment to Providence for capital and related needs. And so you may remember we had a work session with Ben earlier this year, about a month ago, where he talked through that capital and those capital needs and the request that he put forth. And per the contract, that's actually a requirement of the contract where every year he says— they say, these are some of the things that we would like to do, and we give a nod of approval or not and allocate funds accordingly. What I would also like to point out though is that the remainder balance and previous balances go into a healthcare enterprise fund account, which now has a balance of $6.7 million as of, uh, today-ish.

And so when we look at the capital request that we received from Providence this year, that's broken down there by FY27 and FY28 for what Ben presented to us earlier. This year of different battery backups, nurse stations, nurse— nurses' stations, conference room, video conferencing, lab analyzer, a construction for the specialty clinic that they received funding for, above-ground fuel tank replacement, retaining wall, nursing station redesign, manual transfer switches, and removal of solid surfaces. And so as we're looking through what projects have been requested, I think there's a realization in actuality that we will pass— we're proposing passing through that $750,000, but we do also have additional funds in the account to fund more of those projects if council would like to move in that direction. So that's kind of the overarching information from this sheet, which is a pretty simple fund but has a lot of repercussions and input and impact that comes from the allocation of it.

And I think that's all I have to say about that. Do you have— did I miss anything, Julie? James, did I miss anything? Okay. Okay.

Questions or comments from Councilmember Warner? Thank you, Vice Mayor Osenga. Some of these items that are on the Providence— on their capital request. I'm wondering, has there been any conversations about, uh, capitalizing on the RHTP, uh, the funds that have been coming down from the Big Beautiful Bill to be able to cover some of these? Yeah, so the Providence with us, um, we applied for, I believe, maybe 7 RHTP applications.

Um, one of the capital requests is a construction for a specialty clinic, which I believe— and I'm I'm eyeing Kyle, who is from Providence, and if I say anything that's incorrect, stop me. But I believe that's in response to receiving the funding to be able to bring that specialty clinic here, but no construction is allowed through that funding. And so the answer is yes, but based off of what's been funded, these are still the needs and requests of Providence at this time. Thank you. Councilmember Barnwell.

Thanks. I think that— I guess I want to keep reiterating that I can't get my head around healthcare in Seward. We have Seward Prevention Coalition, for instance. We have Sea View. We have Providence.

And we have clinic. And we have Chigachik now. But we don't seem to talk together, and I don't really understand what each has, what their purview, what they're tasked to do. For instance, I know that Providence, who we fund heavily through our infrastructure, is tasked with emergency care and long-term care. And the long-term care doesn't necessarily benefit benefit citizens of Seward.

Many of those people I think are not from here. So then we have emergency care. But I guess as I'm getting older, I realize that primary care, which is your doctor— I've always— I've lived in Seward forever, and before that I was in Dutch Harbor for 10 years, and I never even realized the concept of having a primary care doctor that knew me. I'm really lucky because I have Dr. Flynn now, but many people don't primary care doctor. And that concept of having a primary care doctor, when you talk about quality of healthcare, it's really essential that a doctor knows and has a personal relationship and people trust them.

And I don't see that necessarily Providence's model. And I, and I, and I know that clinic— the clinic is tasked with that to some degree.

And I know that the clinic gets federal dollars and it's a different form of income that Providence doesn't necessarily have. I think I said that right.

Probably not. But I guess what I would like to see is more communication amongst all players and some of this money distributed. You know, I was talking to Katie Cornwell about that. It's just looking at the data. I'm going, okay, where where are our needs, and distributing these funds more based on needs that we can analyze from data, and we're collectively talking about a vision that goes forward 10 or 20 years.

I think that's a great—. I know it's—. So the— my— I don't want to say argument, because it's not an argument against that, because I think that's a great idea and something that I know I attended a few meetings when the RHTP first came out with all the players and the different conversations that were gonna, that were had then about how everybody could work together in putting together a well-rounded package for those grant monies. But what I will say too is all of the organizations in our community are doing a great job of bringing our community healthcare, different services, et cetera. We own the hospital.

So I don't want to go talk to other people about what car they're going to buy if our car is broken, which is a bad analogy, but that's my sentiment there of why the funds into this organization and this capital that we own and operate, or we franchise out the operation of, but creating and expanding the healthcare available in that building doesn't happen unless we we say it can, because we are the owners of it. So we're looking at this and saying, hey, construction for a specialty clinic, if you say no, let's not do that, let's spread it out, and that doesn't happen in our own asset. Does that make sense? Kyle? Can I invite Kyle up too if he wants to add?

You don't have to. I'll reply to that. I just, I guess, I have nothing against Providence. Oh yeah, of course not. I think Providence is doing a wonderful job, and I think it's managed very well.

We're really lucky. So I don't have a problem there. I just think we are biased because we own that infrastructure. We have a huge investment there. But I'm not sure— I think we're biased and we're not necessarily looking at it very objectively in terms of what are the actual needs in the city, or actually the whole community.

And if we're biased towards the infrastructure we own, And Providence also has its own bias because it needs to make some money. So I understand that. What I want to do is be able to open conversation more amongst all players to make sure we as a city, we're putting a lot of money in. The taxpayers are putting a lot of money into this. Agreed.

You know, I mean, we just pretty much doubled how much we're putting in, right? So we're talking about Yes, I would say though that historically the trend was going towards that direction, and we brought it down this— these past two years, shying away from the 1% fund and then getting back to a more traditional number in there that's not allocated to the 1% because of sales— the seasonal sales tax proposal. But I do think there's a broader conversation that could be had about collaboration between all of the groups and all of the organizations organizations. But I would go back to, yes, we're biased because it's our asset, but I'll use the car again. I like my car better than everybody else's, or I want to maintain my car better than anybody else's.

Sorry, Kat and I can go on. We can go on and we can go on this for hours. I just want to argue that I'm 67, so I have a different perspective than you as a younger person, and that I think primary care, we have different needs as we get older, and I really I really like the concept of primary care where in a province you can move to them. I don't know if that would help, but we want stable doctors here that know us. I agree, but I can also agree with that at 34, so I won't bring in the age into that, which—.

That was ageism. Yeah, I went a little too far, but you know, like Bob said, him and I have gone back and forth on this for hours at a time, and we could continue to do the same So I will maybe ask Kyle if there is anything he does want to add. I know you are the representative from Providence today and kind of a department head, but also in a different role than Helena would be. So you are welcome to if you would like. Yeah, go for it.

Thank you, Councilmembers, members of the City and the public. My name is Kyle Haskins. I am filling in for Helena. Good morning, Alaina and Ben. I am— my official role is the emergency preparedness coordinator at the hospital, so I'm kind of in charge of the disaster preparedness and our ability to respond in those times of need.

But some of the concepts that you brought on, I don't want to speak too broadly at what Providence has as a care model, but like you brought up the rural health transformation funds. One of those projects is kind of a maternal fetal health project that goes into the specialty clinic that Kat was talking about to afford some of that more local care for expectant mothers and stuff in the community so they're not having to make trips to Anchorage for things like that. And, you know, I understand what you're saying with that. I also lived in Dutch Harbor and understand that. And having that availability and Helena and the team wanting to move to more of that model is, you know, You know, that is something that is on Helena and Ben's framework.

It takes, it takes time, it takes space, is kind of, that's a big thing that we run into with where we're at is the ability to expand. For example, we are, in order to accommodate the rural health transformation, that specialty clinic, we are relocating our entire admin area. They are kind of getting broken up so that admin space can get reallocated into space for a specialty clinic. So that's kind of, you know, the sacrifices that are being made in that aspect to be able to afford that.

Is your dad principal at Haskell? He was, yeah. I was on hiring team. I hired him. 1999.

Yeah. So I think to finish up the Bob conversation here, I think that's a broader non-budgetary conversation that we can adjust and bring in all the players into this room and have that conversation. But with the proposal that we're bringing forth today, it's support the programs and the infrastructure that we've talked at the hospital about requesting so that they can expand on these things that we have consistently heard the community wants in that building that we own.

Okay, Councilmember Warner. Thank you, Vice Mayor Osenga. Um, I have a couple of friends that do actually work for Providence, and I see the nursing station on here, and I'm just kind of curious why that was on the '28, um, plan and not the '27, as I think that is a pretty important piece. That was one of —was given to the city. Do you have any insight why 28 and not 27?

I just think it comes from the prioritization of the things that, you know, it all costs a lot of money, and the focus is on the ability for us to provide direct care. And the nurses, the changing of the nurses station is kind of more along the lines of security upgrades and efficiency of workstation and less so direct patient care. So it's just a triaging of what's important. I do also notice that it's maybe sort of put in there twice, so I'll double-check and confirm if there is a difference between those or if it's a step 1 and a step 2. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from— The dice?

Okay, thank you. Great. And thank you so much, Kyle. Yeah. And oh, this isn't my slideshow.

Sorry, I've been so used to it. I don't— Chris, do we have the— and sorry, I didn't think about this ahead of time— the full packet, the reports I believe so. Let me check.

Pull that up and that'll be for capital infrastructure, which— yeah, that one. Could you go to the two pages 60 and— or not 60, pages 63 on there?

Oh, beautiful. It's a little small, but Could you zoom in?

Is it possible to zoom in from here? Right where? Could you zoom in? This is the sheet. Is it possible to zoom in on the left-hand side?

I apologize, everybody at the dais. I made so many wonderful slideshows, but I did not make one for this.

Okay, so if you could just exit back out and then stay here and scroll down, that would be great. Or just, yeah. And I can just talk through it as well. So, and I do notice that for some it's printed out a little backwards. So I can, I'll update this and present it in a more effective way on November 9th when we have our first public hearing and everything, but just for a quick rundown— actually, cancel that, go back to the slideshow, and I think that's the best place to go.

I'm sorry, thank you, Chris and Jodi. No, no, you're good.

I apologize for that. So we'll start with capital. We're gonna start right here, which is in the general fund balance outlook. And so our general fund balance, like I said in our previous meetings, is our unrestricted funds that we utilize for projects, things throughout the city, and it is by policy that we have to keep it at 3 to 6 months. Historically, it's been very— it's been significantly over that 3 to 6 month policy band, Currently, with the budget we're present— uh, whoa, sorry.

FY25 was at 6.61 months, which is still above that policy band. And so with the budget we presented to you for FY27 and 28, we are recommending transfers from the general fund to the capital acquisition fund, which is the fund that we use for capital and different projects. And that will bring our general fund unassigned reserves from $5.17 to $4.76 at the end of FY28. And this is in order to fund many different projects around the city that are necessary and are laid out in the, um, packet. And I do apologize again, I'll present this in a much better way on the 9th, but the $900,000 transfer in FY '27, um, and FY— and then we have a $472,000 transfer in FY '28, and those help bring the capital acquisition fund up.

And then we have a breakdown of about $3.7 million in projects. Um, those projects, some of them are in the general fund, so they've already been budgeted for if it's less than $20,000, it's in the general fund. If it's over $20,000, it's in capital acquisition. And I'll go through the capital acquisition ones as we go down here. You heard about the Engine 2 supplies hose from Chief McCoy.

You also heard about the phone system upgrade from Dustin in IT. That's to upgrade and modernize all our phone, and that comes in at about $110,000. There's also the website redesign for ADA compliance compliance, which is a requirement, and the city data servers replacement as well. The library is requesting an RFID catalog system upgrade, which is the modern technology for libraries at this time, and some equipment upgrade in the furniture and children's room play area since those are feeling worn and dated. Parks and Recreation has put in a request to cover the roofs at the— at an outdoor basketball basketball court so people can play basketball even when it's raining, which it never does here.

And then a Williams restroom roof addition as well to address deterioration, prevent water damage, etc. Parks and Recreation also has some requests for the Jesse Lee Park, including a volleyball court and outdoor weight equipment and activities. And then this one is my favorite because a pet peeve of mine is that the police officers' vehicles are running all the time outside. And so this would be to install outdoor 110 electrical outlets so that they can plug in instead. Because if you turn the police officer's car off, all of the equipment shuts off.

And so if they need to respond to something quickly, when they ran in, they need to then start it up, log all in, da da da. It takes time. Takes time. Not very efficient. But rather than having them running all day to counteract that, this will— allow them to plug in.

And then a roof reseal and repair on the annex building, some new locks on the Res Bay building. Now that— oh, now that the seafood company moved out of that building on Lowell Point Road, we want to redo the locks over there and just make sure the security is up to date. A backup boiler repair at the city and leaking roof repair at the the city as well. And that's a good one too because it's split with the State of Alaska lease there. And then we have a, um, a bunch of exterior and upgrades for the Third Avenue Center, um, for the exterior electric upgrade on the first floor as we're moving a new tenant into there and different plumbing and HVAC system upgrades across the whole building.

An elevator upgrade for there as well, since that's becoming very, very necessary. And then this one is a fun one, and I think something that we've heard from Council a lot as being important is we want to do engineering and design services for paving projects throughout the town. There's a lot of roads that are— we've heard complaints and feedback on needing to be paved. We created a priorities list But I think having some experts come in and weigh in on what those priorities are, engineering and designing those roads and what they would look like when paved is very important so that we can move into the next stage of that and get some of those roads paved. And the last one is my— the bane of my existence.

And that's adding $750,000 to the street and sidewalk sidewalk fund to repair the sidewalks, specifically downtown and then throughout the rest of the city of Seward. I think we've been putting money into that account now for a bit, so it has some money in there, and this is a good amount to go in, rip the Band-Aid off, and start getting that work done. And so that's a long list in— I'm sorry, that's a long list for 2027, comes in at about $1.6 million. And then in the next year, we have a much smaller list with some IT data center batteries, library museum, an additional shush booth because the current one is always full, some Trail Lakes and Kawabe Park rehab, and then turning the jail cells into storage rooms downstairs in the jail, engineering of the culvert replace— at Second Avenue, and then the replacement of that culvert, and then engineering for a new guardrail on Nash. And so that is pretty much an overview of everything on that page.

Did I miss anything?

I'm now thinking too that we deleted a bunch of stuff off of it, and so I don't think that 3.7 is accurate. So in addition to making this more legible in the final document, I'll have that updated as well. But that's exciting because it's another thing we found in draft, and that's why we do this.

Questions, thoughts, concerns? Councilmember Calhoon. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yeah, one thing that's been brought up to me that I would like to add for consideration, which will change some of these numbers a little bit, is, uh, is taking $75,000 from that 4. 7.6, Is that correct?

Is that what I'm looking at? Um, to start a project to add some handicap and elderly access to fishing spots along the beach, because if you go down there in the summertime— and it's not my bailiwick, but we do have somebody here that can speak to this a little bit later when when we open it up. But a lot of people in wheelchairs or a little older, a little more handicapped, don't have easy access to get down to where they're snagging salmon and to get down to where they can fish along the beaches. And so what I would like to see is a project get started to create, you know, 4 or 5 spots from the car park culvert down towards Branson Pavilion at different areas where people can easily access over the rocks and get down there. Because my understanding is that we are one of very few, if maybe the only community that has fishing like this that does not have handicap access at this time.

And it could become an issue for us with litigation at some point if we don't maybe get a little bit ahead of that. And I heard Mel talk about some access over at Fourth of July Creek that you guys are looking at. Is that correct already? Yes. Yeah, so that's—.

Yes. Yeah, so that'd be great over on that side, but I think if we could get started on this side and move some money into that to get it going, then that's something that could be locally sourced. We have the expertise here to build, uh, that. And I did send the city manager a couple of pictures that were sent to me of some options. And so that's just some discussion that I would like to get going, if anybody else is open to that.

Okay, any other comments? Councilmember? Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. This fund, the 3 to 6 months, how long did it take for us to get above that 6-month threshold? Do we think that's healthy enough?

I know it's a policy, but what is the reality? So the reality is that for many years we lived at very high above the 3 to 6 months because we brought in excess revenue annually that went into that. Um, it was, it was built more after the pandemic. Yeah, where the city was growing up more than the UNASign. Um, the 3 to 6 months represent the actual, um, expenditure for the general fund, but that does not mean that is 100% Corwin, those months.

So I think to answer the question, based off my, my personal feeling as city manager, I wouldn't go below 4.5, just because I feel like anywhere in the 3s is living a little too dangerously. But I think we are in a good position where we can get to that 4.5 and stay at that 4.5. But that's probably where I would like to to stay, because I think on the flip side of it, keeping and accumulating money in that fund isn't utilizing taxpayer dollars in the most efficient way. You know, it's hard to see that fund to be at a high level and then have sidewalks be so drastically bad in some areas. And how does that fund grow?

Is it through interest and/or through excess, or how does that fund— how is it maintained? That, that is in excess of revenue and expenditure for the general fund. And technically it kept within the— our checking account that is linked to our investment. So it's currently at the market value and that's how it's maintained. Okay.

So we had, say, a banner year. And revenues came in significantly higher than expenses, it would go— it would be in the unassigned. Okay, I guess I'm just asking because I just want to know, like, if we take money from this, how fast is it replenished? How fast does it top out? Like, is this a reliable thing to pull from, or is this a one-off ask?

So like, if we pull out of this fund, is this something that we're going to talk about next year, or is this Is this something that is a few years of accumulation that is kind of a bigger sort of ask? More so the second, I would say. You know, and it's definitely something that we've heard input on multiple times of the fund balance being significantly higher, especially looking back to FY25. And so I think it's not something we would make a habit of, but I do just really want it. I really want the sidewalks to be fixed.

And so I said, I made this— Sully Jusino and I put together this plan to put some money in that and get to that level that we would feel comfortable, which is about 4.5, 4.75. And the money that you wish to pull out for sidewalks, does that cover most of what you've identified as problematic? We've also been putting money aside previously as well. So this is— we've done this in the past. The fund, the sidewalk fund, has around half a million right now that has not been used.

So this will be in addition to that half a million.

Yeah, I think I'm there. So this is something that like maybe every 5-ish years we sort of look at and let it grow. So all the asks coming from this is, you know, and the biggest, the As far as I understand it, that's it. I would say the biggest ask is the sidewalks. It's $750,000 of the total for FY '27.

And so annually, we do smaller capital projects like the electric install or a roof at Williams. But to bring that within the policy band and still in a realm that we're comfortable with, but while addressing the sidewalk issues downtown, which I do think going back to what Council Member Calhoon was saying, could become a liability for us sooner rather than later. So it's something that we feel is worth the investment. One last question that I completely just forgot as I said one last question is that I forgot. Great.

Yeah, so phenomenal. Oh, yeah. The 3 to 6 months, I might have missed it. Is that based off of last year's actuals, an average, or projection for the year after? No, it depends on the actuals.

Okay, gotcha. Great. Okay, this is Councilman Barnwell. Don't sidewalks have— I mean, can't you get grants for sidewalks, or is that something we've been waiting to kind of latch on a grant?

We could wait forever. Eventually, at some point, I feel like it's worthwhile to invest in making sure that the sidewalks are OK. We haven't seen any grants that have come through that would fit with those. And I think as we look at the grant landscape, it's changed a little bit. And so yes, but that's always a TBD. Keeps putting it off.

So we're considering spending $1.2 million on sidewalks.

Mm-hmm. Questions? Council Member Lori Draper. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My question was on the design for the paving projects, and I've been talking with Jason about— and you were talking about getting with Doug Schoessler and getting a priority list.

Would this take the place of that, of you and Doug getting together? Together. We did get together and we kind of put this priority list, but it's not like— you can't really number that like 1 to 10 necessarily. Um, we have things that we put in for grants for and that type of thing, but, um, I think engineering-wise will make a lot more sense too on areas that we need to have like repaved because we have things that are not paved. We have things that maybe shouldn't ever be paved, possibly.

I don't want to also make it just this generalization that we have to pave everything in town. And so there's a— I do think having some type of engineering information would be helpful to help us understand, like, places in town that we can repave, some of that redoing stuff, but also just kind of give us a scope and idea of, like, how much these things are going cost. Like, when we did the bid for our, um, bid for the grant for the, that North Harbor area, we're looking at like, uh, Alameda, uh, Lear, uh, Northwestern Circle and T-Dock Street for the drainage and, uh, to put in, put in drainage improvements, uh, along the port, uh, just so it doesn't ice and build that kind of stuff and drains a lot better. And having that painting was $5.5 $5 million. And so it's, uh, it is not cheap because that's the engineer.

You have to have the ground— it's not— you can just throw pavement down. You have to make sure that you have the right drainage, and so you're not going to create other problems later with ice and that kind of thing. So I do think having a study out there would probably be helpful to understand like what the costs are going to be, so that way we know what to save for. And, uh, probably get some consensus on— maybe there's areas that we shouldn't— that should not be on the list, that we— because we kind of just made this whole complete list of every area that's unpaved. And so, um, I think there's— we have a pretty good idea of like what, what kind of blocks we're looking at, but we just need to have some more conversations and get some professional help on some of that.

Okay, thanks. And one more question also for Jason. I thought I remembered when we were talking about the new harbormaster building that there was some funds for handicapped fishing. Am I misremembering? Uh, we were going to look at doing that, but also too, the things from the harbormaster building have— because the cost of the facility and the foundation have moved up.

But that was actually going to be probably more of a Parks and Recreation— that was kind of looking at some overall planning in there, but, uh, that was more of a Parks and Rec Looking down at like the culvert area. So on the designs that we initially received, there was designs for step-down like bleacher seating that is in an area separate than what it's referred to, than what Council Member Calhoon referred to. It was part of like the broader boardwalk aspect. And so as we've pared that down, that stadium, like that cool stadium diagram is It's still in the long-term plan, but we pared that down to focus on the building and not do the boardwalk and the buildings there. Okay.

Yeah. Any other questions, comments?

Seeing none. Great. That's all I have for you tonight. That's all you have? Yeah.

Well, I guess that means we go to public. Anybody want to—. Well, excuse me.

Hey, good evening again.

Just two things I had for you today. So first of all, I wanted to thank Kat for the creativity, as you said, Councilman Bronwyn, for putting the— oh, the camping and the parking proposal together, so that worked. So that was good. And I also thank administration and Kat for the city newsletter. It gets a lot of information out.

I think city manager's newsletter, I think that gets a lot of good advertisement and puts a lot of information out. So thanks for doing that. And thanks to the Folly for putting a lot of information out to the community. So when I was I was thinking about that and then that merger of the campground. I was thinking of these media outlets and the information that we are able to get out.

So I was uncertain as to what we needed to get out there. And then I looked at the camping and the— what we were trying to achieve. And so with respects to that, I was going to come tonight and just mention possible second option. I looked at the 2025 budget. We made $270,000 from parking— excuse me, from parking net.

And over on the Parks and Rec side of the fence, we don't have a surplus of funds in the Parks and Rec. Matter of fact, based on the math that I was looking at, some of the roll-ups, we basically are funding through the general fund about $800,000 to $1 million for Parks and Rec out of the general fund. So it doesn't really pay its way. It used to do that about 5 or 6 years ago. So with that in mind, and what little we're generating from an enterprise fund, I thought, might it be worthwhile considering folding, dissolving the enterprise fund of parking, and rolling that into to the general fund as a 5th department under Parks and Rec, and leave the campground alone.

And it affords maybe some easier facilitation of allocation of expenses for the Parks and Rec Director. It affords Council the ability to ask for a roll-up for Parks and Rec for the 5 departments, because right now you've got Parks and Rec, and then you've got to come over and grab information from the parking, which is managed by Parks and Rec. So I was just offering up that friendly option to see if that's worth consideration. So I'll leave that to Kat and Mr. Barnwell to work out.

Next topic.

About 5 years ago, when we did have surpluses in the hospital fund, there was a point where we were struggling just to make the bond payments, and that since has healed up. And so prior to a couple years ago, we didn't have the surpluses in the hospital that we have, that we enjoy today. And it's because the bond proceeds have basically been funded for Mount Maven, and we recently in the last couple years paid off the hospital bond. So that's, you know, that basically brought in a largeness of cash, which we haven't had an immediate use for. So it hasn't been that long that we've enjoyed that.

But 5 years ago, what brought me back to working on understanding the city's finances and Providence's finances is that as a community, we are financially responsible for these hospitals. Other side of the peninsula has an assessment in their property taxes for Central Hospital. We don't have that. We're paying for that here. And thank goodness we have tourism.

You know, that 1% that we brought in, they pay a big chunk of that 1% that comes in that we use for our healthcare facilities. So my ambition at the time, 5 years ago, was seeing that the bonds were going to get paid off and that we would have now surpluses of cash flow from the 1%. I was interested in seeing us look at the possibility of selling, selling our hospital assets to Providence at that time because we have this huge financial liability or risk hanging on the taxpayers' shoulders. But since then, Providence has sold off all their long-term care facilities across the state and that option is no longer on the table. So we are probably going to own the hospital forever.

So. So with that in mind, and the fact that I'm not sure what the status of our $185 million Low Canyon Tunnel project that was— administration has been working on for 10 years, that is now, I understand we were told, is gonna go to $400 million and we don't have a funding source. So with the uncertainty of that second tunnel, the hospital, Our hospital complex has always been identified as being at risk in the event of a Low Canyon breach. So that concerns me. And I think I've heard in the room today, we do a lot of risk assessment and risk management.

If we had a flood event on a major flood, when we needed that hospital the most, it may not be there. That concerns me. So with that flood And a risk that's there, I'm sure there are studies out there and, you know, we need to ask administration and others to take a look, is that really a threat? Because I hear it is, but then I hear it's not.

So, with all that in mind and with that risk, we also are apparently, and I should disclose to you, I am an advisor on the Providence board. What I'm here to share with you now has nothing having in any way been discussed with the Providence Management Group. This is strictly my own assessment and my own opinion. So with that risk in mind and the fact that there seems to be more and more pressure through visitors, and I've heard City Manager say we staff to the highest level that we need for the biggest day of the year, it appears to me that our hospital may not be adequately sized to meet our demand for the highest peak demand in a year. That's something that we probably need to look into.

And with the risk of flood possibilities, it occurred to me that, you know, with the surplus of funds that we have there that we're generating, it dawned on me that with that surplus that we were generating annually, you know, is it time time for us to take a look at having a discussion regarding the building and construction of a new hospital for our community. It, it, I don't make that ask lightly because it's a significant financial liability. Gosh only knows what that might be. We're seeing some pretty big numbers on HarborMaster buildings and Public Works buildings, so it could be significant, but it's necessary for our community. So if we're going to have discussions, I'd like to ask to put $50 million in the capital budget as a placemarker for a new hospital and then commence the discussions between Council and Administration and the community regarding the need for that.

So, thank you for your time. Thanks, Skip. Jeff.

Thank you, Vice Mayor and City Council. Uh, I know you guys are having fun with the budget, then they're done that. Um, a couple things I want to speak on. First off, on the hospital thing, I live up there, and when they were rebuilding it, we addressed the possibility of a flood from a low point. They weren't worried about it because there's drains running under the road.

Okay, I was there for those meetings because that neighborhood was upset with getting a helipad. Um, the Handicap accessing. Um, everybody knows Seward was originally a small fishing town. There's tons of old fishermen and fisherwomen here that commercial and sport fish that cannot access the beach. The ADA Act of 1973, Section 504, is what you really need to look at.

It's what covers this. I've been trying when I was on council to get this started and I'm glad to see it's moving forward. Um, there's 4 spots that I would love to see that would take care of most of this. There's like either an aluminum walkway or a concrete walkway right there down the beach between the culvert and the pump house, set of stairs and ramp, parking block 1120, 916, and 570 in each one of the campgrounds. Is a perfect spot to put the same thing.

And then right behind Branson Pavilion, as you walk out the back there where that seat is looking out on the water, set of stairs going down to that would definitely meet all the ADA requirements that we've not followed since '73.

Um, uh, I, I talked to many of the elders here that— I mean, I watched the man get carried, a one-legged man get carried from the parking lot to the culvert down by his friends over the 1964 rubble that lines our beachfront. You know, there's concrete blocks, there's chunks of asphalt laying there that I'm 59, I'm even worried about crawling over that stuff now. But if we do the stairs like the Kenai River has and many oceanfront areas have, these aluminum stairs that go down, they're fully adjustable once you lock them in. You anchor them to the rock there, and they can be permanent. You don't have to pull them.

I agree with Councilmember Calhoon, we have Catalyst, we have Badland Fabricators. Those guys are great. You don't want to order it from out of state, pay the shipping, and then have them— oh, they aren't up to our specs. But I think it would bring a lot more tourists I've spent a lot of time fishing. I mean, I did this summer 46 trips this summer talking to fishermen on the beach there, the whole nine yards.

And a lot of the elder are like, man, I wish I could go down there and catch a salmon again. They just can't get through these areas. You know, some of them are very disabled vets. Some are— there are people that have children in town in wheelchairs that, you know, it's a struggle to take their their child down to the waterfront. We need to make that accessible for people with their children in wheelchairs, the elderly that have prosthetics or getting old or in a wheelchair.

We don't have that. We're not within Section 504 of the ADA Act. And that's what I've been trying to get going. I'm glad to see there's talk about it. And I really hope this gets moving.

As far as the police department's budget, a few things I want to add. 22 Staff, that's a lot of money for weapons qualification. They're yearly, okay? And their batteries or radios, they last 2 to 3 years and die, okay? Plus, when one of the officers have to go to court, somebody has to fill his position.

That's overtime. So there's a lot that I fully agree with his budget for the police department. It's nice to see that— I mean, I'll put it this way, I know for a fact he's the reason we're getting staff, that man right there. I agree. All right, I know that from the officers coming in.

It's that man. Okay, he's motivated, he's got morals. You know, like I said, I love seeing a working police chief. Okay, everybody loves seeing a working police chief.

On the city sales tax thing, I love it. I talked about that. But please, not 6%. Let's walk into this slowly. We shocked the public when we were trying to do it slow in the electric and we went to the 6 cents and everybody was upset about it.

That's a 50% increase on what we're paying, doubling what the borough sales tax is. If you're going to do it, do it slow. Do it at 5%. Ease into this, please. Because I pay more for fuel a month than what I spend on food at the grocery store.

And if I can get the heating fuel tax lifted, that saves— I don't know how many elderly on fixed income. But the gas and heating fuel tax should be exempt also. Because these— last winter was hard. Everybody knows how cold it was. There's elderly that were giving up food to pay for their heating bill.

I gave a lot, I personally gave a lot of food I caught in the summer to elderly to help them out. Okay, so please, if we could, if you got it, if you can't do 4%, don't go above 5%. You're just going to hurt the, we're the backbone. The locals are the backbone and this is what this is for, to help. Help the these locals that are paying high gas prices, that have been paying them for 3 years now.

Okay, if you're going to do it, only do it 5%, please. Okay, and thank you guys for what you're doing, but, and I'm more than willing to help discuss about the beachfront ADA access. That's one of my big pet peeves. I mean, sooner or later I'm going to be in that boat. Like I say, go down there and you see these old guys that, you know, grew up fishing and they're 75, 80 years old.

I had one that I just wish I could snag one more salmon, but I can't get down. That's like, from a fisherman's standpoint, that's torment. Okay, so thank you guys. Thank you, Kevin. Any other comments?

Hi, Rhonda.

Well, thank you all, and I appreciate this budget process you're going through. I'm sure you're all getting square eyes and looking at a lot of numbers. It's a lot of work. And I also appreciate admin's coming to suggest some ways to ease some of our tax burden, and there's some give and take here. Chair, and I appreciate that very much.

I'll start kind of from the bottom up. On the healthcare enterprise fund, it's impressive that we do have a surplus there. And when we did the rural transformation fund analysis, when that all came out, honestly, it was like putting bait in a shark tank, because you had all these providers coming here trying to figure out ways they could— use this money and get grants and this and that. And they came up with some pretty good ideas, some ideas I didn't really agree with. But it made me realize that there's a lot of providers out there and I'm finding that the healthcare enterprise fund has been very Providence-centric and it does make me question how are we entertaining other providers or bringing them, how do they get access to some of this.

And, you know, I— when we did the Rural Transformation Fund convo too, we also kind of learned what the community might value, and that's also reflected in the comprehensive plan. And Providence did come up with the idea of prenatal care and that kind of thing. That's really been something that they that we needed in our community. So I would just encourage that we do— I agree with Bob in bringing these other providers together and really kind of doing a deeper dive on our healthcare needs in Seward. So on the Parks and Rec, this is really quick.

I think there's a candidate for a capital improvement fund. You know that building out there by the cemetery, it's really ugly, right? We probably want to get rid of that thing. So I don't know what the plan is for that, but I would really like to see that maybe on the capital improvement fund and do something with that. I was also wondering too, and I could ask Mel this privately or how this works, but there's just a lot of volunteer opportunities with Parks and Rec, and I wasn't sure if there was a volunteer coordinator type position that was, or if that was baked into some of their employee identifications or job descriptions, because I know that there's people that may want to— would be willing to pitch in if there's certain improvements that might need to be needed in some of the equipment and what have you.

I—. We volunteered a lot at the— when they put in the kids' park down on— that we built in 6 days. So that was— that just indicated to me that there's a lot of people that would like to maybe possibly participate. And then on the harbor, I, I want to go back to this because I do believe that given that I'm in mariner industry of sort, I would like to see more revenue be allocated to the harbor somehow. And it was brought up, I think, the parking lots that are originally part of the harbor Harbor property and used and available for Harbor activity specifically, it would be— I think it's proper that they receive some of that parking income if it's at all possible.

Just something to look at. Uh, the— on the property tax, I do want to agree with or express support of a letter that the laydown that Councilmember Warner had put and that we do consider, she noted, some exemptions rather than just doing the straight property tax or the mill rate reduction, that we use, we incorporate exemptions to incentivize the long-term housing and support year-round residents and encourage homeownership. As a P&Z commissioner, we worked a lot in encouraging housing development and we did a lot of provided a lot of infill opportunities for more housing. One other thought too that maybe we could think about is a vacancy tax and look into that at some point. I don't think we could do it now, but it would take a little research, but that might be something to consider down the road.

And then on the sales tax, whether you go seasonal or whatever, I just wanted you to know that when you put that, slide up there, I think it was page 12 or whatever, I think I have it here. They, um, you noted that, that in the borough sales tax, the 4% that they're— they exempt non-prepared food items, and they exempt it for all the months except for June, July, and August. So it's not specifically Q3 or Q2 and Q3 altogether. So I would like to suggest that we mirror that exemption in whatever sales tax portfolio we decide to incorporate, and that we maybe even consider an exemption also for heating and utilities, echoing what the previous speaker said. So that's all I have for now.

I was just catching up, I've been out of town, and yeah, more to say later maybe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rhonda. Anybody else out in the audience want to make comments or anything?

Okay. Thank you. Back to the dais. Anybody, closing comments or questions? Administration?

No? Council Member Calhoon? Just one comment to respond to Rhonda about the parks and rec building out there by the cemeteries. One of the plans for that Actually, when Chigashimi bought the property out there and stuff, was eventually to transition out of that building and just tear it down. And one of the thoughts at the time was to turn it into parking for the cemeteries because there isn't any.

If you go to a funeral, people are parking up in the little streets all the time, and there's not a nice place for people to park to get to some of the things that happen out there. So that was just back then when that discussion first started, that was one of the thoughts that people had was maybe just turning that into cemetery parking at some point because the building was in such bad shape. We wanted to get Parks and Rec people out of there. Um, we had to. It was a health hazard, I think.

But, um, so that's just a thought on, uh, on that. Okay, anybody else?

Thank you, Vice Mayor Osenga. Um, I just want to say thank you to all the department heads and to administration and to the finance, uh, team with Sully and James for putting together such a comprehensive presentation of the city budget. And so thank you for that. But I also have one suggestion. Maybe in the future, condensing everything into 4 days is kind of hard and a lot, and maybe having a little bit of a spread out in some of it so we can have a little more time to digest would be helpful.

But still, great job. So thank you. I agree. I think it'll be interesting the next time we go through this too. The—.

There's a fine balance between what we're required to do by code, what works best with elections, and not having a council member potentially switch halfway through the budget discussion. And what was my third point there? Oh, And the World Series. Yeah, that's my third point. But I will also add, this is not the last time we're going to talk about this.

We have 3 council meetings remaining in the year, and this is on each and every one of them. And so we'll take a lot of the input we received here, make some adjustments, present the final version in the next packet. We'll have 2 public hearings. Traditionally, we always have 3, just because we might as well, since there's a weird rule that You can't approve the budget until 10 days after the second public hearing. So I hear you and wholeheartedly agree after I realize I don't think I've been outside in 4 days.

But there's also some weird nuances to it. And the reminder that we have 3 more opportunities over the course of the next month and a half to discuss the final product. But thank you. Okay. Any other thoughts?

Any thoughts, comments? Council Member? Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just want to— I'll kind of echo thanking the administration, all the department heads. I also want to thank the community members that actually took the time to come out and give us feedback.

As it is with our elections, there's always a small number of people that seem to be very interested, and I am not— You know, saying there's not 1,000 people watching on YouTube right now, I doubt that there is. But Thursday Night Football, you know what that does. But I just wanted to thank everybody and also my fellow council members for their— everybody's input. I think it was—. It's been a good 4 days.

Okay. Anything else? I think I'll just echo the thank you to the community members also coming in and giving us their input. I think it's important. Thank you, administration, for— I actually thought that this wasn't too bad for the 4 days.

I actually think I remember in the past we crammed a little bit more in one day than we did in these last 4 days. So I actually was all right with what we had here. So I do believe that is it then. Unless administration, do you have anything else? I'm taking tomorrow off.

You're taking tomorrow off? Okay.