Worksession re General Government Cont’d, Enterprise & Utilities Operating & Capital Budgets-Part 2

Okay, everyone, we are going to get started again. It's a little after 2. So just a quick update on timing, because we have about 2 hours left. My intent is not to hold this past 4, because I know it's going to be a long day for everybody. So we are going to switch the order briefly, and we're going to take up the utilities and enterprise items in the order that's listed.

We'll get through those. Then we will move into alcohol tax, get a briefing on that. And then I am going to have a hard stop if we, if we need it to 3:15 for the alcohol tax discussion, because we need to save time for other things. And I imagine it's going to get into things that could be dealt with in other venues. And so then we'll move into the capital budget and then you'll see there's a number of departments that we have not gotten to.

Many of them, the directors were not going to come anyway. And so if we have extra time, Ms. Brouse will run through those budgets, but the understanding is there's not a lot of changes there. And then lastly, I'll say we will take up the Assembly budget at our normal— our work sessions on amendments. We will also do a briefing on the branch budget because it's important for members to understand that it includes the Clerk's Office, Elections, Ombudsman, many other functions. So we want to make sure that we have time for that.

And so with that, I'm going to turn back to Ms. Brouse, and it looks like we are starting with— it's hydropower. Yeah. And if you could mention what slide we're on. Yes, thank you, Chair Brawley. So back in the slide deck, we are on slide Slide 61 with Anchorage Hydropower.

The operating budget changes from '25 to '26. If we run through the revised budget appropriation level at $6.4 million, you get down into the one-time moves and the removal of a $700,000 dividend to general government from 2025. Couple other changes within IGCs and transfers to other funds and a small adjustment for office and travel, and we end at an appropriation total of $5.8 million, um, with 2 full-time employees, including, um, the position for the general manager and an executive assistant. But I think we are at least mostly familiar with the idea that the general manager position is being split between, uh, uh, Director Stafford and one of our engineers, and he can go into more explanation around that. But this is the operating reconciliation and then the ongoing Fish and Wildlife capital commitment of $325,000 for Anchorage Hydro Power's 2026 budget.

And any questions, Mark Stafford is here and can answer them related to hydro. Any questions?

I mean, just, just, can I chime in? Sorry, through the chair, Deputy Meeting Manager Mark Stafford, Anchorage Hydro Utility General Manager/Director. Yeah, so I mean, primarily getting transitioned over from, you know, from Corsatino. I started like kind of officially when you guys approved me in June of this year, and so a lot of it has been you know, trying to juggle the relationships and get caught up to speed on some of the politics as well as like the technical pieces of it. And so I've been, you know, working pretty closely with not only the Assembly but also the utilities to, you know, to foster better communications and more openness throughout, you know, the Fish and Wildlife process, which is basically the pump storage hydro and, you know, the Portal Valley, Okloogna stuff.

When we say Fish and Wildlife, that's pretty much what that means. But you know me, Rolling Stone. I'm also looking at ways for next year that we can also kind of like do more with the hydropower utility. Look at, you know, there are other energy efforts, stuff around the utility or around the municipality that we could look at that we could, you know, incorporate into AHU. And so that's kind of like one of the master planning higher-level things that we're going to be working on next year as well is, you know, like what is this utility going to do?

Is it just going to be on the hydro at Eklutna or is it going to be you know, a bunch of different energy endeavors. So we're currently looking at, looking at doing that for next year as well. So, well, that's some of the things that are rolling around in my head anyway. Okay. Mr. Perez-Rodilla.

Yeah, just generally give me high level of like, how are you in terms of staffing? And generally, you know, you mentioned a few things, but what are some things that we're sort of need to kind of keep our eye open for? The next year? I think the main is the pump storage hydro and the AWOO water agreements are like another big one. As far as staffing is concerned, it's like, you know, obviously I've got a couple hats, and so, you know, I do this part-time.

I have an engineer, engineering director, who's like probably about half-time on this project that helps out. And then we also hired an executive assistant earlier this year as well. So, yeah. So it was myself, an engineering director, half-time, and an executive assistant. Okay, guys.

Yeah, thanks. And I'm looking at my, my budget book here, and I see transfers to other funds around $4.2 million, which is most of the budget. Yes. Yeah, what is that? So it depends, which line are you looking at specifically so that I can—.

It's about halfway down. On our operating expenses. Great, but which page? Bottom page? Oh, page 20.

Page 20, yep. Transfers from other funds. Yes, so this is the, the PPA payments for Chugach Electric related to ML&P coming in and out of Anchorage Hydro. So it— Mark, forgive me if I have this inverted in some way— it is paid to the municipality and goes to Hydro, but then is pushed back into the trust. Yeah.

So it's an in and out of the Chugach Electric MLNP annual payment that has to be dedicated to the Municipal Trust as a result of the MLNP sale. So ultimately that money ends up in the trust? For the most part, yes. Okay. It's also a transfer of funds.

You Public Finance takes a piece of it because they are doing the work of the transferring of the funds, et cetera, et cetera. So, for the most part, it goes— it's the intent.

I have myself in the queue. On the dividend question, I understand that's a one-time. I'm wondering, is this one of the utilities that makes a regular dividend payment? Is that something that we would expect to see in 1Q if we're not seeing it here? Like, is this— is that a normal thing, or was it really a one-time?

Truly a one-time. I think it, it should follow the same standard process that the other dividends do because Hydro is a relatively newly established utility and its actual operations haven't been really sort of solidified or formalized until the last year. I think we can expect to see some of that movement back and forth, but because it is such a limited utility, we don't quite know what the impact would be over the long run, and figuring that out is part of You know, our staff's job. Yeah. So, yeah, so I forgot to— that was another, like, big piece is, like, you know, there's a— we have a meeting every month with— it's called the Includin' Operating Committee, where we talk about operations of the plan.

It's, like, more of, like, a day-to-day thing, and they— you go over, like, capital improvement projects there and approve different, you know, activities that are associated with the actual operations and maintenance of the facility itself. So, okay. And so, a quick follow-up. I know there's the— MISA and MUSA, maybe when we get there you can explain in more detail what that is, but is this— is that an obligation of every utility that we have and that's why hydro contributes, or is it more of a discretionary? MISA and MUSA is the municipal equivalent of property taxes.

So for our operating— or for our entities, our organizations, they as government organizations would not be subject to property taxes, but because of the nature of the business, they are assigned either a MUSA or MISA, which is based on a formulaic representation of, you know, approximately PILT. And so they have to pay into that. Okay, so it's not if they're going to do it, it's a matter of how much. Yes. Okay, thanks.

Okay, I don't— oh, Mr. Johnson. Thanks. Do I want further paid-to-see investment income? Is that the dividend from the trust? It's a good question.

I think that that might be the spin-off of The money that is required to be— there's a $3 million required set aside as part of the ML&P sale, so we have to keep $3 million in reserves. And so if that's churning money, then it would be accruing that investment income. We can find out specifically what it's applied to and how it comes in. Thank you.

I don't see any other questions, so I think we're good. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, now we move on to AWU.

And we have General Manager here and Casey West, and we can run through, I think we could, we maybe do water and wastewater together. Uh, no. Okay. Okay. Well, then we'll take them up one at a time.

I mean, I would love to have one budget, but we have two.

Oh yeah, it is, it scrolls through Anchorage Water and then the wastewater is next. So, and you tell me, do you guys want to run through these pages or do you want me to do it? You can go.

Um, we can answer specific questions. So the water operating side, you see relatively, in terms of the size of the organization, very small changes in terms of '25 to '26. And we start the 2025 revised budget appropriation total at $54.0 million. Um, we go through some small adjustments. This to what Chair Brawley was just speaking of, we're reversing our, um, a one-time dividend increase that was incorporated in first quarter of 2025.

This is not the total dividend amount that, uh, AWU, uh, gives. This is the reversal of the, um, 1Q changes. And then we go through the transfers by and to other departments. You see the MUSA there, dividend to general government, debt service changes, and then some position changes that were incorporated that are part of a move from water to wastewater. And so some of these things, um, may look like decreases, but they're actual adjustments between water and wastewater as opposed to actually net declines.

So we land with a headcount of 244 as opposed to 249 at the beginning of the year. And then this is the reconciliation page of those changes. You can see all of the sort of Small-dollar changes on personnel, and let's see, what's the largest change on this?

$377,000 For security and alarm services. That sounds right. Security and alarm services, contractual requirements increase. Everything is getting more expensive. You'll see a lot of those kinds of increases on the utilities and enterprises, but also within the municipal budget.

And then we land at the 2026 proposed appropriation at $54.9 million.

So that is the water operating, and then we have water capital, which includes this project list, mostly funded via equity. But for the most part, this is the water side of capital work for 2026.

We want to take questions on water or go straight into wastewater.

Uh, let's go ahead into wastewater. Okay. Wastewater 2025 revised appropriation is $52.7 million, and then the same sort of in and out for continuation and changes. And you'll see that position increase here. The position decrease was included on the other page, and we land at $54.1 million for the continuation level with an additional 4 positions incorporated into their budget.

This is the breakdown of their proposed budget changes. What's the most expensive one on this page? Other professional services. Nope. Utilities.

Hey, another winner. Utilities going up in cost for the utility. That is also something you will see across the board in general government and our utilities is the significant increases in the costs associated with providing our services just to keep lights, power, and water going. Um, so then we get down to 2026 proposed total appropriation of $56.6 million. This is the wastewater capital list, and you see that a lot of this is funded out of debt, not equity, the inverse of our water side, but for the most part, got a lot of activity on both sides.

So, water and wastewater, AWU.

Do you have anything exciting and fantastic you want to show us, or—. The only— yeah, a couple of things I'll bring up. On the operating side, on the water, you saw a fairly large increase for security services. That is for 24-hour security, armed security at the Clinton Water Treatment Facility. That is our primary drinking water facility that supplies the Municipality of Anchorage on both Well over a third of the state's population, very critical facility.

And so earlier this year and in our first quarter budget, we amended it to allow us to implement full-time security there. And that's a fairly large increase on that. On the capital side, on both the water and the wastewater side, what you don't see on here are the grant-funded projects that we have coming. We didn't put those in there because we were still finalizing the grant applications and those will be coming. For the Assembly to appropriate and accept the grants, appropriate the project, and put it into the CIB as they come in.

In fact, in mid-November, we anticipate a couple of those coming before the Assembly. So, great questions from Mr. Johnson. Yeah, thanks. Looking at the, the capital project list, utilities and C&F mostly, or debt, equity as well, but And in terms of the amount of debt that's going into this year's budget, is it fairly consistent with past years? Do we feel like we're on a sustainable path there, or are there any, you know, I'm going to ask my financial expert, Casey West, to answer that question.

It's pretty consistent. Okay.

I have myself in the queue on the capital projects as well. I'm curious. I'm curious kind of generally how those are decided, because I don't believe they're part of the CIP, and I imagine a lot of them are really kind of technical operational or necessities. But can you just speak briefly to how we get to this list? Because I've never seen an assembly member amend those, and I'm not suggesting that we will, but I'm just curious kind of since we don't talk about that.

Yeah. So, as a regulated unit, requirements to have a water master plan and a wastewater master plan that generally drives our horizontal— that's the pipes and the pump stations, the reservoirs, things like that. And then on each of our treatment plants, we also have a facility plan. And those are in-depth plans that look through our entire system. They look at, you know, growth.

They look at condition of the system, the condition of the infrastructure in the ground. That ties in with condition assessment work that we do, and all that feeds into basically, you know, we identify areas where we have problems that we know we need to fix through those plans, and then we program those. And as part of those plans, there's essentially a list of projects that need to be done, and then our internal group with our engineering, our finance, general manager operations, and treatment divisions. We— the leadership group goes through those and prioritizes that. We have a matrix that we use to basically prioritize those so that we're making sure we're keeping up with infrastructure needs as they come up.

Okay, so it's really— it is an intentional kind of design process. It's just not part of the CIP itself. Okay, thank you. Okay, any other questions?

I don't see any. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Donyan Kordovalaska.

Okay. Yeah.

So we move on now to the Don Young Port of Alaska. We have acting— are you general manager or director? Acting port director. Acting port director Mike Abbott and our finance guru Cheryl Beckham. 2025 Revised budget appropriation was $22.1 million, and again, just a little bit of debt movement.

And the small salary change, we did make some adjustments within their positions and added a new superintendent position in order to do some additional required work. And Mr. Abbott and Ms. Beckham can speak to that a little bit more, but you'll see here also the security and alarm services increase on the port, port budget lands us at an appropriation total for 2026 of 28.3, which is maybe one of the more significant budget movements in all of 2026, and it's attributed primarily to that debt associated with the port work. So that $5 million change that was approved by this, I think, earlier this year. So that's the operating side. And then these are the capital changes that are projected for 2026.

And they're all funded out of equity. So if there are any questions about port operations, we have Mr. Abbott and Ms. Beckham here.

I don't see any member questions at the moment. I guess I will throw one in there. For the— I see the Ship Creek boat launch dredging. The body has been briefed on that many times, and we heard from our former port director essentially a recommendation that that should come off of your rolls eventually, and I know that that's been an ongoing discussion. I'm just—.

It's really not an ongoing discussion. Okay. The Port owns it. We're—. It's not a huge amount of capital dollars for us.

There's not a great natural fit within the muni for this responsibility. It's entirely appropriate that it be the Port's for the foreseeable future. A little easy for me to say because I'm going to have the job for another few weeks, saddling up successor, but you can never change that. You should leave that with the board. Okay, thanks.

So just, yeah, closing a loop on something that we've heard, uh, so, so it looks like is that what's in the budget for next year is really just.

The annual kind of maintenance required? Yeah, the dredging piece is, uh, um, it, it has typically come in under that in terms of cost. We continue to budget for it in the $150,000 range. I think we paid less than half of that, uh, in the 2025 year. And it's about as low-tech a dredging program.

When we say dredging, we mean like a bulldozer goes down there at low tide once or twice a year and shoves the silt back out in the inlet, and we call it good. Great. The pictures are gnarly. Yeah. Okay.

Moving sand. Great. Any other questions? I'm just checking online. And just a reminder for folks online, you can either use Teams or phone.

Okay. Madam Chair, the only thing I would add while you've got the capital budget slide up there is I anticipate that you will likely see a capital budget amendment, probably in January or so. That was built several months ago, doesn't reflect, I think, what our current maintenance priorities would be. So the dollar amount, probably the total dollar amount won't change, but I think you should expect to see more of that money skewed to the last of the projects listed up there, the Wharf Pile Enhancements, Fenders, basically the marine infrastructure. Of the port, the docks, if you will.

We're probably going to end up spending quite a bit more than $2.5 on that and then quite a bit less on several other elements of that. And more to follow on that in a subsequent conversation with the VOW Committee and others going forward. And I will take this opportunity to say, to that end, right, the budget process starts now, but we actually close it and lock it in quotes, in April when we set mill levies. For the utilities and enterprises, this is a sort of moving budget in terms of we build what we know with the information we have when we propose this in October, and then as that information is refined over the next few months, the adjustments are either onboarded within the business and changed at the budget in first quarter revisions, or proposed as part of the first quarter revisions before any action is taken, depending on the timeline of the need.

Okay, great. Well, I don't see any other questions at this time, so thank you for being here. And I know—. Thank you, Madam Chair—. Plenty of other things to talk about at the Port, so those often happen at the Enterprise— Enterprise Infrastructure, Enterprise Utilities Oversight Committee, the EWOC.

Yes, the EWOC. The vowel. Yeah, so stay tuned in the future meeting. Okay, who do we have next? Who do we have next?

Waste Services? We have Municipal Airport. Sorry, yes. The confusingly named municipal airports. Let the record reflect there's a lot of enthusiasm.

Not to the exclusion of the other utilities. And where's the air horn?

So, the municipal airports, we have. Our home office, and Amy Garcia here to answer questions. But our 2025 revised budget appropriation was $1.2 million. We have a grant loss. There's a roll-off in terms of an expiring CARES grant that the airport is managing, and you'll see some changes within their budget over the next few months between now and first quarter budget revisions that involve strategic planning and what what that accommodation and/or structure will look like after they have done their strategic plan.

The 2026 proposed budget changes include an additional maintenance tech and some changes within their maintenance services and contractual services. Overall, the appropriation total, because of that expiring grant, rolls up to $2.9 million, which is not what we would necessarily expect to see spent in the years going forward, but that's all part of their strategic planning process that they're engaged with right now. So their 2026 headcount is 12 with that additional maintenance tech, and the capital plan for Merrill Field includes mostly federal funding, and I believe usually 10% match from us or somewhere 5% match, um, and these are the projects that they have currently slated for 2026.

Questions from members?

Yes, I will throw in one in to start. I was just checking. So on our extremely long agenda from Tuesday, among those that we approved was AO-2025-118. That was the changes to the mandatory airport charges and fees. I'm guessing that's not reflected in the the budget that was published before that item passed, but I'm wondering kind of what will the budget impact of that be and, and how will that get reflected in this budget?

For 2026, we're expecting approximately $300,000, uh, uh, increase in revenue, and that'll— with the expenses, forecasted expenses, basically just catches us up. It's been a, um, previous years the airport's operated, been able to operate in the black because of CARES grant. Those end this year. So we've increased the— basically a 10% increase across the board fees and leases and tie-down permits. And that's brought us up to the— back into the black.

And just a quick follow-up. So I'm sure it's documented in the item. When was the last time that those fees were increased? Chair, about 5 years ago. It was pre-COVID, and it was— everything was kind of paused at that point.

So we've gone through the Infrastructure Enterprise Committee and have gone through them twice, I guess, and shared that information as well. Okay. And just a quick follow-up to OMB Director. I don't know if the administration is— or I guess, is there a change that would need to be made in the budget to reflect the fact that that ordinance passed? Um, to the Chair, not in advance of first quarter budget revisions.

One, I— at least not that I'm aware of. We can talk to them and find out if that's accurate, but I think the intention is to work them through their strategic planning process and onboard the recommendations of that strategic plan and any operational changes that may be required as part of the first quarter budget revision process. And so any adjustments associated with those fee changes would be incorporated there. Okay. Other questions?

Okay, well, thank you so much for being here.

Okay, solid waste services. Lauren Carpenter in the room. Yeah, it's getting live in here. It's getting live in here. If you want to know, we value all of our departments.

I was just going to say, we need the, you know, the assembly, no noises, no clapping. Right. No, peanut gallery engagement. Um, is Kelly online? Okay, great.

Yes, I am. Fantastic. We have, uh, Kelly Toth online and Oren Carpenter in the room, as well as Mark Spafford. And the solid waste services budget is also split into two realities, disposal and refuse. And, uh, let's cover them together and then we'll take— Yes, so we will start with the disposal side and the 2025 revised budget appropriation The changes for continuation, small adjustments for outcharges and salaries, some contractual services decreases.

New positions were included for disposal journeymen and general laborers, as well as some additional contracting for safety and supplies. Look at that, supplies replacement blades. Warren's gonna have to explain that one.

And bottom line, 2026 proposed budget appropriation of $31.3 million. So the personnel change is reflected there on the bottom, but that's their operating adjustment. This is the— sorry, lost my page— the capital list for 2026 on the disposal side. So you see the The regional landfill gas collection, but also Merrill Field leachate condition improvements. Some of you are familiar with some challenges this year around some of these things that need help.

Uh, the refuse budget, 2025 revised budget appropriation at $16.3 million. Again, very small adjustments, and the bottom line appropriation for 2026 $16.9 million with an additional— oh nope, same headcount, so no changes on personnel there, and a very short capital list of replacements to the equipment. So questions on solid waste operations and capital?

Sorry, I'm very busy.

Yeah, go ahead and say, Mr. Questions, you can just talk about staffing generally. How are your vacancies? Where is that at right now?

Kelly, would you like to answer this one? Yeah, through the Chair, Member Balland, I would say that we have really come a long way. We are very close to being fully staffed. We're working with HR, which has been extremely helpful for us getting our mechanic positions filled, for example, and a couple of our journeymen positions. We also still, we've done a really aggressive effort to do hiring from within.

So a lot of our account representatives who came on early on have now been hired up through from Account Rep 2s to Account Rep 3s. We're almost fully staffed in Account Rep 3s, and so we're working to recruit those part-time Account Rep 2s. But overall, I'd say we're in a much better position than we were just a few years ago. Thanks. I have myself in the queue.

So looking back, something we also recently passed that I know has not been fully operationalized. It was AO 2025-101S, and it was allowing for a surcharge on— I believe it was the disposal— when you go tipping fees for cleanup of public spaces and really managing waste. So I'm wondering, is that reflected in this budget, or kind of when— from the department or the utility, when are you thinking that might happen? What is the timeline? And I can start with that.

Yeah, oh, go ahead, go ahead, Ona. Okay, so, uh, to the Chair, um, the, the, again, the timing of this, uh, puts us in a proposed budget, uh, work through the implementation and then bring in the revised budget what the actual implementation, um, transition looks like. Um, the, uh, the counterpart to that surcharge existing in solid waste services is the funding that is right now in the alcohol tax for healthy spaces. That still exists in the alcohol tax. The funding associated with the revenue of that assembly action is not incorporated in this budget or the general government budget at this time while we work through the program changes associated with the new revenue, but also what Parks and Rec and SWS would be doing as part of the enhanced community cleanup program.

That will all come before the body as part of budget revisions in April. I know that SWS is working with callers and notifying them to the impact of the rate change starting at the beginning, I believe, of the year, or whenever the implementation is supposed to occur. And so it's an ongoing process. I think we were actually scheduled to have a meeting about this specifically today, but the budget work sessions and emergencies made that go away for the day. So it is something we are looking at and working on specifically, and Kelly can say anything more or into the work that SWS is doing on that side.

Nope, well said. Thank you, Ona.

Okay, yeah, thank you. And I think that was something I believe we can also run through committee, so I think people will be interested in updates on that. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, any other questions?

I don't see any, so I think we can move on. So thank you so much for being here. Solid Waste Services. ACDA. ACDA, you're up next.

ACDA does—. Hey, Mike. Does budgets very differently. It's not nearly as And then I'll just know this is the last of our enterprise utilities. I guess it's its own thing.

And then we'll move back to— [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Corporation.

Okay, ACD, we have the operating budget in front of us here, and you see the changes between revenue and the operating expense.

Their bottom line transition on the amount to be appropriated between '25 and '26 is about a $200,000 decrease. So we had $7.8 million in 2025 and $7.9 million in 2025 and $7.7 million in 2026, as well as the capital proposals for these 6 projects and the total roll-up of $3.1 million. Any specific details on either of these pages can be directed at Mike Robbins, and we can get answers. You guys want to say anything or just go into questions? Questions.

Questions. Simple as presented. So, if there's any questions. Okay. Questions from members.

Mr. Presser, do you have— Yeah. What are—. What are— Contract services? Is that contract second? Yeah, contract services are architects, attorneys, engineers, project manager people for the projects.

Yep. Um, same question I'm asking everybody, but can you talk to me about staffing vacancies? Where are you guys at with that? Staffing is— we're, we're at 100%. Fully staffed right now.

We haven't had much trouble filling positions at all. We've been lucky and we instituted a little referral program that seems to keep lots of people flowing in the door with staff. Okay, great. Can you move to the next slide, Mike? Mm-hmm.

I don't have these in front of me. Okay. And so the— why I have the slides, that's right. Another question about the— can you remind me the timeline for the RV resort? Yes, so the RV resort, actually, the RFP is coming out.

They're working on it now. It should be second week in November. We hope to have the— depending on the response, of course, the number of respondents we get, but we hope to have that selection done awarded by the first of the year and possibly breaking ground next year, depending on the developer and the schedule. Once we choose the developer, we have to finish the design work because we're allowing the developer to inform a lot of the finished product, of course, since it's their money. So this is— this next year is really sort of only planning and development, only for our expenses?

Yeah, it's planning and development. Then we'll have Uh, we may— I don't think we'll have our AWU expenses. We have— there's $500,000 in AWU expense, but I don't think that'll hit next year. I think that'll hit the year after. But okay, thanks.

Okay, other questions? Mr. Johnson. It's probably intuitive, but just to make sure it's clear for the record, it says at the top of the page these amounts are in thousands, but these are the actual dollar amounts? Yeah, yeah, $100 million. Yeah, we're not spending—.

We didn't submit it in thousands. I added Sorry, I wish we had the go—. That would be nice, man. We doing some projects, $3 million capital money. Yeah, why not?

Well, that's maybe aspirational. So, um, we're heading there, we're working for it. Um, I do have, uh, one question on the same page. Can you, uh, remind us what the Neighborhood Redevelopment Initiative is? And then under other property acquisition, is that a specific project or is that more kind of a budget for future acquisitions.

So, excuse me, the Anchorage Neighborhood Redevelopment Initiative is, uh, our pursuit of vacant and abandoned properties, okay? Uh, buying the lots, tearing down the buildings, and then reselling them to developers. Um, board appropriated some of our capital to start that project, even though we didn't get the federal funding that we were hoping for. The board thought it was important enough to invest A little bit of cash we have. The other property acquisition, I believe that's JCPenney.

That's for the JCPenney purchase. I see. We anticipate closing by the end of the year, but not expending the funds until the first, like, January. Okay. And just one quick follow-up on the redevelopment.

So what's in here, is that what the board is appropriated for next year, or? Okay, so it's not much. There isn't a separate pot of money now. It's this, correct? Yeah, this is in addition to some money we have in the CIB from 2025.

Okay. Yes. Okay, any other questions?

Okay, I'm not seeing any, so thanks for being here. Thanks. Okay, thanks. Yeah, and I think So, yeah, now we are transitioning to our next topic, which is alcohol tax, and then I'm going to find the page so we can all navigate there.

Yeah, and so, um, the,.

OMB director has stepped out temporarily to go get staff on the other side of this floor.

So, just one moment, folks. And I did find the page, so we will be looking at page 57. And then I know we also have a couple of presentations that Mr. Freenas pulling up and is also in your email on just a briefing on the city's crisis response and how it relates to alcohol tax investment. I'm going to start with the budget. Yeah, we're going to start with the budget and I'll do my technical part and then Theo does the pragmatic part.

Thank you. Yeah, so just to restate, as we're pulling it up, we'll go through the budget first, the proposed changes. And then we will do the additional presentation kind of on the policy side. So, so go ahead to page 57. Thank you, Chair Brawley.

We've also been joined by Ms. Agnew Bevlin from the mayor's office. Okay. Okay, the alcohol tax budget. Let's see right here. Reflected is the Transition between '25 and '26 funding.

This is not— this is ace fund. We want that one. This one.

And I'm going to go through the technical changes and some other adjustments I want to talk about, and then Thea can go through the programmatic outcomes-driven portion of the alcohol tax. In the '25 to '26 transition, looking at slide 57, Um, you see the continuation change. I just want to stop in and say bye. Oh yeah, you guys got off easy, Mark. Everybody, all the utilities did, man.

I was like, you should have heard this shit like this morning. No, I don't doubt it, dude.

We can be heard now. Yes. Okay. Okay. Folks, sorry, we had a technical issue for a second.

We are back. Yes, we did.

Okay, so while we're— yeah, well, we're getting back onto it. So the changes between '25 and '26, you'll see a $500,000 reduction on line 2 for the evidence-based grants to providers from $2 million to $1.5 million. One-time funding rolled out between '25 and '26 for the Eklutna After School Program and Best Beginnings to the tune of $225,000. The adjustment that was part of the conversation with the Assembly associated with the MCT, we have used the funding from the alcohol tax as establishment and ongoing operations of MCT in various ways over the last few years, but this last year was the expansion to 24/7 operations, and through additional budget alignment and more work that we're doing with the Fire Department, the actuals that are consumed under this line for 2025 were lower than we had projected them to originally be, so the costs have been absorbed into the general government operating budget. I believe, uh, Member Voland had sort of discussed the fact that we wanted to get this into the operating column as quickly as possible so that it was maintained.

So MCT has been moved into the operating budget. We have the ongoing program operations with the municipal attorney and the police department that include I believe it's a crime tech and some additional DVSA coordination between those two entities, and a new line item specifically for the Hope Multidisciplinary Outreach Team to be positioned in the Third Ave Resource and Navigation Center for $500,000. The Homelessness pillar includes an adjustment of $400,000 for the Christian Health Association for overnight shelter and a reduction of the Coalition to End Homelessness line item of $280,000. I believe previously those were programmed slightly differently and now being transitioned into data collection and monitoring, and so the fund reduction was appropriate there. The non-congregate winter shelter, you see the one-time rollout and about the same dollar amount roll in.

It's just the nature of the one-time funding, but it is the same kind of service. The congregate shelter annual operations contract, this is the dollar amount associated specifically with surge capacity and cold weather sheltering because the operations costs of the two congregate shelters are included in the municipal budget on the general government side, not on the alcohol tax side. Also, the Healthy Spaces Camp abatement that we spoke about earlier with the solid waste services surcharge revenue, so we'll see that line item probably change as part of first quarter budget revisions. Whether or not the funding is entirely resolved and replaced with surcharge revenue. We are still working through the design and what that would look like.

As— and then next is the alcohol tax enforcement and collection, but the education and outreach appropriation was not included in the 2026 proposal. So overall, it's a $15.9 million spend with a very small projected fund balance of less than $100,000. By the time we get to year end, And I think there will be some additional fund balance available from projects or line items that were not fully spent in 2025, but we won't have visibility into that until our actuals are complete in January and February. So this is—. These are the changes.

And at the last work session, I had discussed the premise of sort of revising the titling and the visibility on this budget so that it is less specific to named recipients and more about the work or outcomes of the funding and what should be, um, uh, more representational to the community to understand what that money is doing as opposed to who it is going to. And I would like to bring that to the body for consideration, or at least visibility, as part of the amendment work session so you could see what that would look like before we would incorporate it into the approved budget book. It wouldn't change any of the dollar amounts here, it would just change the sort explanation of what they are doing and accomplishing and what the funding is to be used for. So, expect to see that in a couple of weeks at the amendment work session. So, I'm going to suggest, because I know we're going to want to get into, um, Ms. Bemis' presentation, um, so if we have questions on kind of other pieces of the budget, to get those out of the way, and then we'll move to the presentation and get into the meat.

I just want to get clarification what you just said. You're planning on bringing a revised version of this without the names of the organizations in it? Not without the names, but with— so instead of it saying Covenant House, it would say overnight shelter services for youth Covenant House, so that, so that it's clear what the goal of the funding is, but that it is also a recipient within the community and not the municipality, because the other sort of curiosity about the alcohol tax that I think confuses both the public and our municipal services is that about 80% of the alcohol tax over time has gone outside of the municipality. We have only received 20%, and about 20% is locked into positions that the municipality funds on a recurring basis. So the, the requirement that all municipal services be over and above the 2021 funding level, or the 2020 funding level, means that any any items that the municipality funds out of this has to be additive to the service level of 2021 when this fund was established.

Would you also consider changing the header on it? Absolutely. Because it is, it is, this is shelter.

This is housing and this is camp cleanup. That's what this is. I mean, that's it. And it doesn't have anything. I mean, so I would consider— I understand it might be built in, but I think that's— if you're looking at changing some of the titling, you might think about that as well.

And through the chair to Member Presverdia, I think it is sort of programmatically designed by the Assembly and the pillars of the fund and contemplating that, I would want to bring something either to the body for discussion to contemplate what that would look like, but I'm happy to bring forward options. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know, my understanding of these categories is it's really the, um, what was in the original ballot measure, what was called Proposition 13 at that time. Um, so next I have Mr. Gold in the queue. Uh, thank you.

Well, it sounds like maybe we're going to hear a presentation. Yeah. Um, and then also discuss this in more detail at our amendments work session. But yeah, I think from me, just the one thing I was curious about was the increase to Christian Health Association, because I think a lot of those other entities in that bucket are staying at the same level. So yeah, that's just my only curiosity.

Okay, Sam, we can come back to that question. I have a couple questions that are not related to that topic. I'm just checking if there's anything else. So yeah, folks, get in the queue if you would like to. One is the We talked earlier during the marijuana tax about the evidence-based grants to providers.

So that is only being reduced by $500,000. So I'm wondering kind of what is— is that truly additive? Are we putting $3.5 million toward ASD Pre-K, or is that now going to be something else? This is—. My understanding is that this is not ASD Pre-K to begin with, is it?

No. No, this is to other providers. So this is child abuse and neglect prevention. Grants. Okay, right, so that's the— I don't want to say diaper pantry, I can't remember the names of—.

There's a whole— oh yeah, there's a whole—. That's the community grants. Yes, yes, thank you. Okay, yeah, so it's a $500,000 reduction to the community grants, and I think we're keeping an eye on it in terms of use and what the need is there because the rollover funding of the few years previous has put a time lag on when that funding is getting out into those entities, and so we have a pocket of time between now and revised budget to actually figure out whether whether or not these impacts are going to be, like, operationally challenging, or if it's a timeline challenge and we can reinvigorate the fund in April with any fund balance available based on all of that sort of thought process. Okay, thank you.

And then my other quick question is on education and outreach. I know that is essentially what has become the Cheers Anchorage campaign. I was talking to a constituent who was interested in, you know, why are we hearing that about the alcohol tax and not the marijuana tax? And that's, that's not the way this has been funded. But I'm curious from OMB or Mayor's Office, kind of what is the— obviously the intent is to discontinue that, I guess, if it's not being funded, or is there another way that we're going to be communicating to the public about those funds?

To the Chair, I think the intent is for that debate to occur in terms of whether or not that should be funded and where it should be funded from. There's $90,000 in fund balance available on the projected budget, and so part of that can move into that category if it's supposed to remain, or if the assembly wants to maintain it. I think the discussion of whether or not it lives in the assembly bucket or the mayor's office bucket, since it's gone back and forth between the two, is the determination to make on that one. Okay, thank you. Well, then I will preview that.

I'm going to continue looking at that. So, great. Okay, any other questions? Just, are there— for those that are possible, are there breakout budgets for these, or the line items? What do you break out budgets in terms of, like, the whole multidisciplinary outreach team?

Is there a breakout budget of seeing what staff, what utilities, what's like— I don't need to see it right now. I'm just wondering if that's something at some point we can see some of those. I think, I think that that's, yeah, that'll be part of the next piece of the alcohol tax conversation. And then, but we can follow up if there's additional conversation that we need after that. Do we need to switch to your slide deck?

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So this is a good point to move over and I imagine there'll be questions on that topic.

So we are switching over to the other slide deck that was emailed out earlier today. So, it's going to— the middle one.

Okay, sorry.

Yeah, see that?

Maybe just go to, go to We just share the whole screen, I guess. Set a window.

Um, is your Great. Everybody see that? Yeah, you can see that.

Ready? Sure. Okay. Um, I'm Thea Agnew-Bemben, one of the special assistants to the mayor. And so this presentation is doing something that I think is a little bit different than how we normally present about the budget.

And really what I want to share with you is really an overview of the investments that support the strategy priorities that we have related to both the Safe Anchorage strategy and the Homelessness and Health strategy. And as we get into— right now, what we're working on is kind of a combined document that we'll present to you and get your input on over the next few months that will really lay out our strategy for 2026. But so what I want to share with you today is You've already kind of heard about a lot of the priorities over the last year because they haven't changed too much. We're still moving ahead on the same strategy, but this is really to help you match the investments with the strategy. So all of the things I'm going to talk about are in your budget book, you know, either listed under the alcohol tax and Appendix R, or they're under the respective department.

But this really kind of pulls them together in a way that helps you see where the investments are. That are helping us implement the priorities that we have around community safety. So I just wanted to kind of set it up so it's not confusing what I'm sharing with you. Oops, wrong computer. Other mouse.

Other mouse. Okay, there we go. Okay, so I think over the last year you've seen us present both the Safe Anchorage Strategy and the Homelessness and Health Strategy. Good news on the Homelessness and Health is that we really set that out as, um, starting last October as a strategy that would be completed by the end of this year, but really most of the things on there we've kind of done, which is great. So we're right now in the process of really kind of thinking about what are our next priorities for, for that, as well as maintaining the work that's been set up.

And then under Safe Anchorage, we are also really rolling with a lot of those priorities and have been providing updates through the Public Health and Safety Committee. But what I wanted to just kind of compile here for you are really what success looks like for both of those strategies. So having a robust public safety workforce is, of course, super critical, and we think of that as both Health Department, Fire Department, Police Department, and then to a lesser extent also Parks and Rec and all the other, the Prosecutor's Office, so the many different departments that really support our public safety priorities. Overall, we're driving towards reducing crime and increasing accountability, We want to have greater access to crisis care. So that's— you've heard this year us talk about expanding outreach so that those services are available to people who aren't always picking up the phone to call us.

Uh, overall, we really want to have way fewer people sleeping outside. So that's one of our top priorities, and that really requires us developing and maintaining a year-round safety net system. So you'll see a lot of those investments. Described today. We can't really reduce homelessness and all the things that come with it without having more housing.

So we know that's a priority across many different strategies that we're implementing, and it's a huge one here.

Overall, we want to see roads, parks, and trails being safe for everybody, and to do that we need more robust partnerships to be really leveraging our funds so that we're getting maximum impact, and then compiling and sharing data in a way that helps you and other stakeholders understand if we're, we're meeting the mark or not. So that's what success looks like for this overall approach.

So I printed this out so that you can see it, and we can make this, um, available in other formats if you'd like. But this is really kind of, again, what I said at the beginning. It's a summary budget that goes through these— the different parts of this overall approach towards community safety and helps you see kind of which investments are we leveraging to, to reach those goals. So on that first kind of top band, this is where we are driving towards safe streets, parks, and neighborhoods, and we're doing through that through— we're doing that through a lot more outreach and crisis response. So in that first line, and I'm just going to walk through these to give a little bit more information because I think some of the questions you had earlier speak to this, the HOPE team has been trying to formalize and create kind of a home base for all the different organizations that they work with.

So when they're going out into the field all day long, every day, and encountering folks, the people that they're working with often need, you know, they want to get on housing lists, they need some food, they need all these different things. So what we've been trying to do is figure out where's a physical location that we can bring those providers together and have those resources available in one space. So, of course, we already have the 3rd Avenue Resource and Navigation Center down by Brother Francis, and then we also have Bean's Cafe, which is just like a block up from there. Bean's serves food and has a lot of people coming to it each day. 3Rd Avenue Navigation has showers, coffee, lots of different providers coming in, space to meet, offices.

So what we'll be doing with that $500,000 is developing memorandum of agreements with both organizations. That's actually in the, in the works right now. And then we'll be having an agreement with Third Avenue Navigation to have physical space leased there that's gonna be dedicated to the HOPE team and the partners that they're bringing together. And so what that's gonna allow us to do is have some increased access to that facility is what we're hoping, 'cause sometimes the hours of operation are a little bit limiting, and just have more of the partners in one place so that people can access them easily. And this will also really make the HOPE team more efficient 'cause right now, They spend a lot of time doing a lot of case management that they could probably hand off to their partners if they were kind of more easily accessible.

So that's what that investment is. The next ones I think are all fairly familiar to you. Program operations at the police department that help operate our mobile intervention team. The program operations there I think is mostly for our prosecutor's office. Parks, our healthy spaces team, you've talked about that.

With the coalition, so we are, so the last couple of years they've had a grant that's more in $670,000 range. We are reducing that. The coalition right now is in the process of kind of re-envisioning its role in the system and in the community. The things that we've found to be super helpful with the coalition is they're very good at kind of complex navigation. So they do quite a bit of outreach, but what they're really also good at is understanding the system and helping connect people to it.

And then we actually are maybe gonna reduce their role a little bit in terms of the data presentation, because what we're realizing is that the Health Department, through some of its CDBG funds, is funding the entity that supports the Homelessness Management Information System. And what we're learning, we've been meeting with them over the last few months, is that we can get a lot of the reports that we need directly from them. And so right now I'm working with the I-team and the Health Department to put together a data dashboard for you, and a lot of that's going to come straight from HMIS. So we don't really need the Coalition to be playing that role as much as they have been, and we're going to focus their attention more on the complex navigation and outreach work. And then I do have a line in there for MCT and CORE team because that's in the other column.

They have successfully, after some negotiation, succeeded in getting a state grant that's gonna support some of that work over the next year. So that's $175,000 there. In the next bucket, this is really around prevention and diversion from homelessness. We know that that's hugely important. So the first line there with the, at the Health Department is again in the other column, that's $167,000 that we get from the federal government to do eviction prevention.

It goes out through our Aging and Disability Resource Center. We just talked about the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Grants. The DBSA core services, there's some in general government that I think has been there for quite a time. And then the 675 you see there in the alcohol tax column is $225,000 for 3 organizations. And again, those are kind of repeat grants that do pretty core services.

So one of them supports the police department whenever they have somebody who's a victim of domestic violence, one of those organizations sends an advocate who stays with them throughout the whole exam process. And then we have some program operations there for the Health Department that also supports some of our domestic violence, sexual assault work. It's actually supporting a position in the Municipal Attorney's Office that focuses on DV. In the next bucket, this is where our low barrier emergency shelter is. We have some program operations there for the Health Department to support the team that does all the shelter licensing, oversees the shelters that we contract directly, does all the kind of quality inspections, basically sort of does all the coordination of the system.

And that's where you'll see many of the ones that are line items in, in Appendix R, and they're also listed on the diagram that I sent out, or I just handed around to you. And then in the next line, we have— oh, I'm sorry, I skipped ahead. Sorry, that's our team. And then we have shelter transportation. What we're hoping to do with some of our CDBG money that we have actually from our previous year is invest that in better transportation, especially in the off hours, because what we find is often we need more of that to be able to move, get people from camp to shelter and between shelters.

Then we have our two lines that fund our either the shelters we operate directly or the ones that we fund in the community, and those are the ones you just heard listed in Appendix R. And then there's also $150,000 that goes to Awake that comes from a state funding source. It's called the Human Services Community Matching Grant, and so that's what that $150,000 is in the other column. In our more housing, this is where you see all of our investments that come to us mostly from HUD, our CDBG money, our HOME money. We also have some previous years' money that we brought to you recently to go to the land trust to get between 2 and 5 exits from shelters straight into housing each, each month. And then you see our micro units money, that's from opioid settlement funds.

And then some funding that we've identified that we'll be bringing forward to you for a housing rehabilitation fund that would potentially match the $1.3 million that you wanted to reappropriate. And then in that final line under data monitoring and share results, that's where you see that $100,000 that supports HMIS coming from the CDBG money. And then you see the title for, or the totals for those columns. Jared, do you want me to pause there or go through the rest and come back for questions? Um, let's see if there are questions.

Mr. Johnson. So, help me. I think I'm just having trouble finding the right spots in the budget. I'm looking at this up here and under alcohol tax, MOA funded low barrier shelter, looking at is about $9.3 million. And I'm coming over to my alcohol tax budget and I see non-congregate shelter, $4.5 million.

What am I missing here in the aid tax budget that makes up that difference? So that is all of the— sorry, I just looked at the budget myself so I can make sure I'm answering you correctly.

It's all the unified funding proposal. Yeah, so that's all of our, um, the shelter providers that we don't contract with but we fund. So Covenant House, Brother Francis, they're all on that diagram there. Okay, gotcha. I can switch the diagram so you can see.

Yeah, so it's, I mean, I think, and Thea, correct me if this is wrong, but it's essentially the homelessness category on the alcohol tax minus the healthy spaces and the other municipal operations In the other category above it, so it's, it's the $9 million from this total $11.3 on, on the ATAX page. And it's, it's on your diagram. It's these guys right here. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Also, no, I know we said we were going to stop at 3:15. Obviously we've still got time, so I'm going to say hard stop at 3:25 if we need to move to the Yeah, okay, I think the rest of it is.

Yeah, let's keep going. A lot of repeat info for you. So, okay, sorry. Okay, so just— oh, yeah, go ahead. This just so I'm clear on the multidisciplinary outreach.

This is not a salary of the HOPE team. No, this is actually probably— we haven't negotiated yet, but a big portion of this is going to go to 3rd Avenue Navigation Center. Or like the space and all the things that are there. I wanna make sure that this is not, we're not duplicating. No, no, no, no, this is a new thing.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, go on. Okay, so just to kind of go through a little bit about these specific priorities. So let's talk first about crisis care, fewer people sleeping outside and the year-round safety net. I think you've heard us talk quite a bit about Anchorage's crisis continuum.

I did give you a more detailed sheet that tells you kind of all the activities that we're working on and what the metrics are. We've presented the first pass at our data dashboard. We'll be bringing back a completed version in the next month, it sounds like. I just met with them the other day. And then one of the things we're really excited about in 2026 is, and that we're already working towards, is in June, South Central Foundation will open their crisis stabilization center, and then we Recently got word that Providence is going to open theirs in the fall, so that's going to be a tremendous game changer for our community and for our EMS teams.

The other things I wanted to just report to you is that we did get the opportunity to apply to the Rural Health Transformation Projects, which is a big federal initiative, and Alaska is going to get quite a bit of money. And so if we're successful with what we propose, that's really going to help us with our information sharing between our teams because right now MCT could be working with someone, MIT could be working with them, and we wouldn't have a way to, to know that. And it will also really help us coordinate both with other partners in the community and outside of Anchorage. So we're really excited about that. That's also a really important first step towards us billing for the clinical services that we're providing.

So that's going to be a big priority in If we're funded, that's gonna really help us move forward on that. I'm happy to talk more about that, but I'll keep going for now. This is the diagram that we've developed to help you see what we're investing in in terms of our safety net systems. So, you know, we have outreach and diversion at the top, we have our shelter in the middle, and then moving into our transitional and low-income housing that we support at the bottom there. And happy to talk more about those, but I have done that quite a bit, so I won't go into it too much here.

I did wanna just point out a little bit of data. I know you've seen this, and we will be getting a new point-in-time count. It happens in January, so we usually get the data by kind of late spring. But just pointing out that like between 2024 and 2025, we basically just stayed at the same level for the number of people who are unsheltered in our community, and I am doing my absolute damnedest to drive that number down this year. So, That's what we want to see.

We want to have fewer people sleeping outside. We've done a lot of work to abate camps and to keep doing really targeted outreach and engagement, getting people into shelter, and we're going to keep doing that, and I really am hoping to see that number go down in 2026. And sorry, may I ask just one quick clarifying question? So the lightest blue up there, the biggest number, is that—. That's our shelter Essentially shelter beds.

Yes, so the light blue is people who are in emergency shelter, and you see that number went up in 2023 when we had a lot of, you know, extra beds, and then it's come down a tiny bit, '24 and '25. We're still kind of keeping up, like when you look at the comparison of our beds to number of people experiencing homelessness, we're doing okay. And then in that middle, sort of middle, medium blue, that's transitional housing. Thank you. Oops.

So this again has got a lot of numbers on here, but I just wanted to point— so what I've been trying to do here is just really track, like, how many beds, how many units are we investing in? So at the beginning of this year, because we were doing seasonal beds at the beginning, we did have about 932 shelter beds. In December this year, we're going to be at 700, so there's going to be a bit of a decrease. However, we have really increased our proportion of beds that are in the housing and in transitional housing area. Those don't turn over as quickly, so this is like a new thing that we're doing and we're going to have to fine-tune it as we go.

I did also just want to call your attention to the ERA money and HOME money that we put out to move a lot of people into housing and to maintain housing starting in May. I just got the final number today, we helped 718 people. It's pretty damn good, and what the providers have been reporting is that about 65% of those are staying housed, so that's that number you see in that column or in that row there, and we did also bring some other funding to support one of the providers who had helped the most vulnerable people get into housing to have some additional funds to kind of keep supplementing rent after the September 30th cutoff.

And then on the more housing front, which of course is super key, wanted to just highlight with our CDBG and HOME funds, the Health Department's done an amazing job. You can see in their section of the budget, that they really have spent the money. So there was this terrible problem of not spending the money. We now have the money allocated and out the door. So that's a huge victory.

And we're just really gonna continue to be creative about how we use that money, leverage it to do the things that we all wanna do, and really kind of increase the value of it. Micro-units are going great. We just got some national philanthropic dollars that are allowing us to add 8 more units. So we're up to 36 units under construction. Thanks to everybody at the Muni who's been helping with getting the site— we're under construction at the site, and as we have inevitable little challenges, people are working together to fix them, which is great.

And then we've also been really successful at bringing faith communities together, and I think we've got a few interested in replicating that. And then our operator for the micro units— the RFP is closed. We'll be bringing that to you hopefully Hopefully by late November, we'll be bringing that forward to you.

Um, we also are still working on the concept for the housing rehabilitation fund using the $1.3 million that you wanted to reappropriate, as well as, like I said, we've identified some CDBG and HOME money. So we'll be bringing that to you as well in the next few weeks. So overall, we have about, in this sort of strategy budget, about 80% municipal money, 20% other sources. And working on a bunch of other things, including the Good Neighbor Fund, which will be kicking off later this month, and we'll be inviting you all to that. And that's it.

Okay. Questions from members?

Great. Yeah, I guess. Okay, keep going. Just a thought. Yeah.

So, yeah, I guess I just continue. I think it's really interesting and a good thing, the enthusiasm in the community around the concept of micro-tribes. But I do continue to wonder about the efficiency and the economics of those. You know, they're—. They don't have shared walls.

I think heating them is going to be really expensive. And so I guess I'm just wondering how we can have an analysis going forward in the future of, you know, how that model compares to, like, the hotel conversions that we did with Inkridge Affordable Housing and Land Trust, and just, I don't know, I just want to make sure that we're getting folks housed and sheltered, but doing so in ways that we're getting value. Yeah, totally. Good news on that is that we're part of an evaluation that is being done by a PhD candidate, and there's, I think, 8 sites around the state. And so it's looking at lots of different factors like that.

So we should have some information about that. I think one thing to know about the micro units, I mean, part of why they're so cheap and quick to create is they are real tiny and very basic. So they are not really meant to replace a hotel conversion in any way, which is normally for really more permanent or at least longer-term transitional housing. They're really meant to be a kind of first step into something that is more, um, stabilizing than being in congregate shelter, at least the ones we're building. I think there's opportunity to do them in different ways that could be more permanent, but the ones that we're working on right now are real, real minimal.

And if I may, through the Chair to Member Voland, I will say that what, you know, one of the things that we are looking at is sort of the diversification of these strategies, right, is understanding what the cost-benefit analysis of this is, but also what the sort of benefits of the continuum is. And I think one of the challenges that we have had in the past that we are digging ourselves out of is that we refer to the safety net of services as a continuum of care, but it's not really a continuum when you have one option and one.

Thing that you can do. And so diversifying what our options are mean that there are opportunities across the board for people who may be resistant to one solution or another. And piloting some of these projects, I think we have to both be willing to risk and fail depending on what those pilots are. And while we're trying to determine what the solutions are for Anchorage, and not just Anchorage but the whole world and the whole country. It's what works, and so the opportunity to have these pilot projects and do that analysis and then have some information at the end of it to say, oh, well, this works, but only if, or this didn't work.

So I think we're all interested in seeing what that looks like as we get through the pilot. Yeah. Thanks. And Mr. Mosby? Yeah, I was just going to add to that really briefly that I'm— one of the things I'm excited about is the replication of this by private, you know, churches, organizations.

I think there's been a real desire for people to say, what can we do? And this feels a little like the presentation that was done a few weeks back at the church on the hill, wherever they— St. Mary's. Yeah, was just this idea that I think there's some possibility of that being replicated. I think that's an interesting way for the community and local faith organizations and businesses to get involved.

Okay, I don't see anybody else in the queue, so, and we're right at 3:25, so thank you, Kristi. Thank you so much. Where's the applause? Oh, we don't get any? No, come on.

Yeah.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] And so as those folks are coming up and we're making that transition, I wonder if I could ask Ms. Braus briefly to just list off the departments. We're not going to get back to these other departments, but if you could list which ones we are not covering, they're in our presentation. Yes. And if there's any changes other than continuation.

Oh, well, then I need to pull those slides out. So we are, in the interest of time and lack of humans present, we are going to sidestep the actual presentations on information technology, finance, purchasing, The Chief Administrative Officer, Management and Budget, Municipal Attorney, the Municipal Manager, the Mayor, Equity and Inclusion, the Equal Rights Commission, Internal Audit, and the Assembly. That sounds like a very long list. Public works. Oh, no, you already did yours.

Um, uh, the bulk of these departments all have little to no substantive budget changes outside of continuation, meaning that they are continuing their current operating process into the 26-year costs. There are some, you know, interesting points of information about some of the subdivisions in there, and I'm more than happy to go through them on a case-by-case basis or individually, or we can even program some time at the next work session. But for the most part, I would highlight that there are some positive net changes within the Municipal Manager's Department in the safety column, and we can talk about those at some point. The Chief Administrative Officer has established the grant development officer, and that position has already seen some success in applying for and acquiring grants, and it's being done at a lower cost than was originally budgeted because, you know, for some reason we had it work out that way. But for the most part, the municipal attorney's office is flat, management budget is flat, information technology is flat.

All of these department budgets are flat from from the operating baseline of 2025 into 2026 continuation. Okay, thank you. Yeah, just wanted to make sure that was on the record. So if there is interest in us discussing those departments, we will not have time today, but we can just let Matthew Farina know and then we will work out what is feasible, or you're welcome to have a one-on-one conversation. And with that, we will move to the capital budget, AKA the bond project preview.

And we will turn it over to Ms. Sprouse and whoever else is going to be speaking. Yeah, so, and for a note, we are on page 81. Yes, page 81 of the slide deck. And I will say, we, um, the departments that we went through at the work session on the 10th, um, held quite a bit of the capital budget, um, content.

And with the intent for this conversation is to do a quick recap of some of that, but then to open the opportunity for the members to ask questions of our capital budget departments So we have Kent Colhays from Public Works here and Shea Troup from M&O. I believe Shanna Gamble from Parks and Rec is in the back hiding, but she will come up if we need. And Brad Koy from Traffic Engineering, as well as Melinda Kohlhaas and Lance Wilbur. So they are all present and ready for questions, but we can scroll through a little bit of information just to, to Sort of wrap it up. Nope, we don't need to know that.

Um, so the, um, this is the, um, capital summary from your capital book. So this is all of the bond projects in 2026 proposed totaling $49 million. And you see the federal column with the federal match and the other column with, um, any combination of private sector funding or set-aside funding, but they are not being requested as part of the bond. Federal funding. So the reason— so the next slide is the same information but from the 120-day memo.

And the reason I am bringing this up is because this number, this page in front of you, is what is in your 2026 proposed book. But the 120-day memo has all of the projects that were put forward by the departments for consideration for 2026. So if you were interested in looking to see what is not on the bond proposal list but what would be ready for prime time based on the department's perspective, you can look at the 120-day memo, which we have copies of on the corner over there if you want to take them with you or take a look at. So, so any of the projects proposed in 120 memo that are not included in the budget proposal would theoretically be eligible for inclusion from members or for additional questions or consideration if they happen to be within your district. I think we've heard a lot of, um, uh, discussion around the fact that our, our road bond in particular is smaller than it has been in the past, and it's because it is limited to annual program funds and does not include a lot of singular street— their individual street projects, unless it would impact a match fund requirement either through AMATS or other federal funding.

So, so looking at these lists, if you want to know what is available, it's harder to look in your capital budget book because all of those projects have been pushed back to 2027. So for visibility into it, you can make the comparison between the two of those things. Again, to clarify that in the past we have included total dollar amounts that, uh, that are part of the premise that the state of Alaska would fund our capital needs, but because that is not the case these days and moving forward we don't expect any funding to come from them, that state column is zeroed out in your capital budget book. In the past, it has represented hundreds of millions. What is that from?

This is from the 2025 budget book, and so this is the direct comparison between 2025 and what our 2026 number looks like. Um, and so you should see in our capital budgets going forward, the roll-up numbers are going to look significantly different over time because everything has been moved out of the state column that used to fund $1 billion in this 6-year program to zero. And so it got pushed out into bonds or nothing, right? Um, so that, that'll reflect our reality going forward better. Um, so, uh, we have our bond project map here.

There's a larger one behind me, but if there are— this is the same slides from the previous work session that just include all of the departmental lists in the bond or in the capital budget. And so, um, we're available for questions on projects and capital budget related.

I just want to start high level. I'm curious about the overall strategy on the size here. I would love to hear some thoughts about what the discussion was like and why you chose to.

Go with the general size you did? So in conversations when we were building the budget, you know, we look back at the bond packages of the past, but we also look at the proposals from the departments, what was requested. And in the situation that we're in with the revenues across the board, we had to look at what are we actually designing and asking of our property taxpayers right now, specifically because they are the approvers and funders of the bonds. So we, um, when we analyze all of these departments, we look at them individually based on what their specific need is for their operations, but then we also roll it up into the whole package. And I think the bond packages over the last 20 years have been anywhere between maybe $40 million and upwards of $60+ million, and In going through the rest of these departmental requests, the road projects are the highest cost and tend to be the highest need in terms of number, etc.

When we're looking at the ranked list that PM&E provided to us, which I believe is in the 120 memo— if it's not, we can show you what that looks like— the top category of PM&E's list, which I think the total request list was about $75 million, from ARDSA and PM&E, and the top half of the request is all annual programs. It is the needs associated with drainage, glaciation, streetlight replacement, because we do not have maintenance funding anywhere in our budget on the operating side. So our maintenance— well, not anywhere, and for the most part, um, but our capital budget is what funds our maintenance programs for streets, buildings, everything. And making sure that we were not sort of cutting off any specific thing based only on a funding level. I think there is this idea that we go in and say, okay, how— what gets us to $50 million?

This does. Fund that. I think that's slightly more arbitrary than we wanted to be in this circumstance, which was, what are we actually funding? Where does that need stop? What does that leave on the table?

And for the most part, we made sure that we incorporated anything that leveraged dollars in other areas and the items that we needed to maintain on an annual basis, aka annual maintenance, and that would maintain our operational levels with our personnel. And outside of that, we know that there are other projects that are going to be needed that districts are going to find very, um, sort of important, or that they have been waiting for for a certain amount of time. That's what we wanted to open this conversation for, is to say If we are constraining the way we put these proposals forward, what is the real need and where are those decisions going to be made and how do we incorporate the needs of the community and the sort of direction of the community instead of just putting a number on a funding level and going from there? I would just say that, I mean, I think that the, uh, the physicalness of things, right? So the roads, right?

I mean, I just, that's the every day, like, my road sucks, right? Or my road has this or drainage and all these things. And so I would just continue to say that that seems like there's just massive deferred maintenance in this city on our roads. And so just thinking about that in terms of balancing it with all the things you're talking about. So I'm just always curious about that, knowing how much just overall deferred maintenance as a city we have and how much need there is to fix things.

And how those things seem to be in front of people. Obviously, the cost of living is hard right now, and the cost of things is hard, and we have to balance all those things. But that seems to be, you know, aside from, you know, visible, you know, whether it's folks sleeping outside or whether it's crime or whether it's these kinds of things, the actual state of our roads and our buildings and our city feels like one of the most important things right now to folks I'm talking to. And if I may, through the chair to Member Presverdia, when you tally up those flooding, glaciation, and drainage requirements on an annual maintenance level, but also on just the street fixes required because those things have never been dealt with up until or as part of previous behavior, it's, I mean, I think it's well over $50 million on an annual basis. And when you pull all of the titles of projects that are associated with what would be a stormwater utility.

That is one of the reasons we are interrogating that question moving forward, is what is that fiscal trade-off, and when— what are the impacts borne on either side of when it is only property taxpayers and bonding that we are asking these questions through, or is there a mechanism that is, you know, more sort of current and appropriate for the needs that we have, and what does that look like?

Yeah, how much, uh, bond debt is being paid off? Oh, you would ask the question. I don't know off the top of my head. Um, through the chair to Member Gerker, let me figure that out. I think it's in our book, and I will answer that question.

Um, while we're looking, could, could you repeat that question, uh, from Member Gerker? I didn't, I didn't quite hear it. Yep, how much bond debt is being paid off in 2026? Thank you.

I guess while Ms. Price is looking, a follow-on to that is, um, are we waiting on me? Oh, well, I think in historically, I know the school district in recent years has said essentially they're not— they're attempting to have the same or less new bond debt than is being retired. And I don't know, I don't know historically if that's been the posture of the road and drainage bonds, but I think that would be, if we're following up to, that would be some interesting information. It's kind of what that's looked like. To the Chair, without actually researching it for finite accuracy, I would say that we do not stick to that by any necessary stretch of the imagination, partially just because of the nature of inflation and how dollars don't mean the same thing in a year-over-year basis.

Um, but, uh, Mr. Kohlheiss looks like he has—. If I may, Madam Chair, we do not— we have not used that model. We, we have historically had needs every year, and there's several reasons for that. One is that in the road design paradigm, there's some sequencing that has to happen, so we always strive to have roads that are in the early design phase, roads that are in the late design phase, roads that are in the right-of-way acquisition phase where we might be purchasing right-of-way or acquiring property, and then into construction so that we have a continual workflow both for the citizens but also to make sure that we can keep our, our staff fully functioning and working on projects every year. A little different than a large capital project, you know, that the school district might have in the $80 to $100 million range.

Yeah, so, okay, are these the— it's gonna sound so silly, um, but are these like the actual bonds here, or how are they going to be grouped? Because I know that there's like, for instance, I think this time around the CASA projects are on the roads bond rather than doing a separate standalone. So this isn't to the chair— to the chair, to member Vohland. That's a very good question, because this is not the bond question list. These are the departments of the municipality that are on the bond.

And so the actual ballot language and the packaging of the bonds has not come before the body yet. That's still in its process, right? No, you'll— you should get those, uh, I think in November. I don't remember exactly. Yeah, but you get them in order to act on them for January, for the— for the— yeah.

And so, um, right now they're being conceived of— there is a separate class of bonds in and of itself. It's included in PM&E in this because that is the department responsible for doing that work. And so, um, right now I think it's packaged as the sort of traditional ones of area-wide life safety transportation, which would include ambulances and traffic engineering, um, and facilities maintenance. And then we would have the fire service area, the police service area, the ARDSA road bond, um, the CASA bond. So the one of the reasons I'm asking is because we're going to have our on our, at our assembly amendments work session.

Is it premature then to bring amendments to bonds? Oh, and in fact, I'll just speak. I was going to mention this earlier, um, or later. Um, generally there's two bites at the apple on bonds, but it is better to amend the capital improvement budget, the CIB, in November because that's what flows into the bonds list. So, not that it can't be changed later, but that would involve working with bond counsel, updating the numbers.

So, yeah, less complicated if you get it in the list during the budget process. So I would recommend it. I would hope that members are bringing amendments to change these bonds depending on what they would like to see for the CIP. And to offer some additional clarity, I think when we're looking at this, the best way.

The best way to look at this is that that is bond revenue. That is not the bond. Yes. And so the lineup at the top, right, you see the department on the left and the top line is the revenue source for those capital projects to be funded. So the capital budget does not include the bond packages.

It includes the bond projects. Got it. And so bringing forward an amendment to the capital budget would then give it consideration to be packaged into the bond. And then I guess my, my one other follow-up would be, could we get a list, Brad, of the most up-to-date traffic calming list? What projects are in the queue for those?

Yeah, great.

And to the Chair, Member Gerker, the MOA bond debt being retired in 2025 is $38.32 million.

In 2026, check 2026. I don't know what we're retiring in 2026.

What's that? Yeah, she should be on schedule, right? Yeah. Okay, so as proposed, then.

So I don't see other members in the queue right now. I do have some questions. A couple of them are on The road bonds, or the— sorry, the road CIB. And then I also have some questions for Parks, but I'll do the roads first. So this is more thinking process and guidance for members.

We do have 4 members who have not gone through this process before, and in fact started, you know, after these bonds had already been voted on earlier this year. So if somebody is contemplating changing the capital improvement budget, obviously it's an amendment they should talk to the Sofrina, but in general, how should we understand kind of where money could or should go into those annual programs that you mentioned? And maybe you could explain kind of what those are, you know, in a little more detail versus a named project where it's a specific piece of road that's, you know, it's in this area, the road name, and kind of, and how you think about what is the threshold for those, right? So if it's a minor repair versus a major. That's helpful to understand.

Through the Chair, I will try to give it a shot, and if I don't answer sufficiently, let me know. So I would say I'd start by saying that, you know, as a director, we support what the administration puts forward, and we plan to implement what the administration puts forward. So, and I say that because the package as presented at $24 million and change is, as Ms. Braus described, it's really what we need to do two things. One is to garner match funds, 90 cents on the dollar, and to, to be able to do our annual program of work that is repaving roads. Mr. Krupp could provide a list of the roads that street maintenance repaved that don't rise to the level of standalone named projects.

So there's valuable work that we're doing every year with those. And in addition, those program funds, all of them, or many of them anyway, contribute to fully funding the street maintenance crews who do capital work in the summer. We, we don't do routine maintenance with capital funds, but we do heavy maintenance and deferred maintenance with capital funds. So those funds go to, to the street maintenance crews as well as contract crews who do that work. So if, uh, and then I think to your follow-up question, if you or any member has questions about a specific project that is on the 120-day memo that did not make the did not end up above the funding line, or other projects you've heard about from constituents.

I think that myself and largely Melinda Kohlhaas would be the ones who could provide— probably more Melinda could provide specific information on those projects. And we could also provide information on, you know, if it's a project we're not aware of, how that might be broken into design funding and then the next increments of construction funding. Not sure if that answered your questions, Madam Chair. Yeah, I think I'm just trying to give folks general kind of guidance or where to start looking depending on what they want to do. A follow-up is, let's say hypothetically some of the annual programs were increased by 20%, you know, as an example, like it was $2 million, whatever that was.

Now I'm doing performance math. Anyway, so if, if those were increased, what is the impact to that? Is it just that it would clear more of a queue of projects, or could it be directed to specific projects, or kind of what would that It was my general answer. It would be more that it would, it would allow us to do more of those unnamed projects that we have that Paul and other folks, Paul Van Laningham and other folks are aware of repaving streets that are in poor condition. I know many members have contacted us about short sections of street that are not on the named project list.

More funding in those programmatic areas would allow us to do several things, including address projects like that. Including address maybe more, more areas where the curb ramps do not meet ADA accessibility, things like that. It would be— I think I would say it would be a challenge to aggregate an increased amount of program funding from those various arts or projects, or programs rather, and do a named project that exists further down on the list, because those are generally more significant and more expensive projects.

Um, and then one more, um, well, I guess I'll just give an example, and this is a question for Mr. Koy, really. So, um, in prior years, it was myself and Member Voland, and maybe Ms. Zalatel as well, um, increased the amount in the annual program for traffic calming. And I know that has its own process, and so I'm just wondering, just checking in on that particular item, was that funding further increased in this bond? Because I think we had gone from $500,000 to $1 million. That was a couple of years ago, and I'm just wondering where it is now.

Yeah, last year was $2 million for 2025, and it's proposed at $2.2 million. And so that is helping us to catch up on our backlogs, make good progress. And so, so it is a very healthy amount that we're using for the traffic calming. And as the new qualified streets list comes out, you'll see which treats more moving from the qualified without projects into the design starts that are kind of starting the ball rolling and things that will be happening. Oh, I want to—.

Yep, sure. I've asked for it a couple of times. Can we get some guidance on bonds? What can go on them? Planning versus design?

Just so folks bringing stuff forward, we know that it's legit, can actually go on the bond. Yes, I think Stephen has an answer to that. I didn't have an answer to that. Sorry, I actually expand including, uh, lease facilities. Um, so I'll take a stab at it.

So in the— I'll touch on lease facilities in a minute. In the roads arena, which I think most— many people are interested in, um, we can bond for design and construction. We can't bond for studies. So we can't— we can't— we couldn't bond to say what is the next street in Anchorage that we should improve, for example. We couldn't bond to say what is the next, you know, where should we implement broadly protected bike lanes or traffic calming.

We can't bond for studies like that. We can bond, and I had clarification from Mr. Falzy about this just in the past week, We can bond for a, what we call a design study report, which would say we want to build a parking lot or a facility to serve this purpose in this location. And we have 3 options for that. It can be located here, here, and here. We can study that issue because that leads to a design, but we can't look at, for example, in the cost of world, we can't look at the Front Range of the 2-gauge and fund a study with bond funds to decide where and how we should implement improvements.

And those, those answers come generally from Bond Counsel, which is our firm in Seattle that provides us that guidance. And if we ever have questions, we, we route those questions right to them. But that's, that's a general response. And with respect to leased facilities, um, I don't— we don't, we don't bond and do bonded improvements on leased facilities in the, in the vertical facilities world. We do have the legal right in some cases to do horizontal construction roads in some limited circumstances, particularly in the CASA world.

We now have the ability through Senate Bill 47 to enter into an agreement with Chugach State Park and do work there. But generally, we need an ownership interest, or in the bond world, we need an interest for the design life of a facility, which is generally 20 years for a road. So hopefully that helps, and if not, we— I would defer it to the attorneys to get a better answer. Great. Okay, um, Ms. Baldwin-Day, did you have a question?

Uh, actually, my question was asked and answered, so thank you. Okay, okay, um, okay, and then I don't have others in the queue right now. I did have one, wanted to touch very briefly on parks, if we could go to that slide, because one, as I understand it, the state decision was not made in there to remove the main park projects. But also just curious, because we know the park bond was larger this year, it was— it was an average of $4 million. Looks like it's less this year, but just wondering if we could get a brief overview of kind of what's proposed.

I just think highlighting.

Wow, okay. I was going to say, from the OMB perspective, the parks— so it's interesting if you compare the parks list on the 120 memo to what is actually proposed in the bond, it is almost all of it. It's pretty close. There's a few things that are not on there. And part of that has to do with the nature of the distribution of all of these park projects and that they are, you know, throughout the municipality.

Some of these are categorical improvements like athletic fields, etc. But I think we did remove or reduce a couple of projects out, and we went through and contemplated what each one of these things was doing and whether or not the total dollar request and the interruption to the improvements in those— into those projects, or what those projects were going to be doing, was, was not significant enough in terms of the difference between a $50 to $70 million road project or road bond, or a $7 or $6 million parks bond, and it continues the sort of improvements of our public spaces and activating more space for positive community activity, etc. So I think Ms. Gamble can elaborate more from parks perspective, but that was the sort of administration conversation when the, when the projects were being deliberated. Yeah, so I think mostly what you see on the list are projects that we're trying to finish. You know, we've had money, they've been in the process for quite some time.

So that was our goal was really to just streamline it a little bit to focus and finish these projects that have been going on for years. So East Chester, you know, it's been going on for multiple years and that will be like the final amount. Athletic fields. The facility safety and the multi-use trails are just ongoing programs. Multi-use trail and the access is really a lot of failing bridges that are— some we can't get trackless over to do snow removal.

And so that's kind of the focus on that. We did include Mountain View Community Center because we just recently took that over in June. So that's on there. But yeah, it's really just trying to close out some projects that have been going on for a while. I also brought, because I know Chris Constant made a comment about Town Square, so here's some updated documents if you kind of want to see where we're at.

Um, we're at 65% design, um, and we're hoping to go in January, you know, out for an ITB for construction at about 95%. So I have some—. Okay, I will say she has paper copies, and then we'll get that posted on the work session after the fact and sent My only question is, can you briefly describe the other column versus the bonds? And I think I know the answer because I know where those projects are, but just to be clear. Yeah, so the others are all Eagle River Chugiak projects, so they come from their mill rate.

Okay, thank you. Questions from members? Just got a few.

Okay, and I'm not seeing any online, so I think that's good. So just a reminder to take a look at the parks bond in addition to the roads bonds if there's any changes there. District priorities, et cetera. But you'll see there's already a number of named projects. Okay, well, I think in the last couple minutes we have, we'll just see if there's any other wrap-up, and then I'll say a few things.

No, from my perspective, I think, you know, we have a couple of open departments that we didn't review. So if there are any questions on any of those budget book details, I'm happy to answer them, or if we want to schedule some additional time, we can bring them before the body for any conversation as well. But for the most part, the, the, uh, I, I wouldn't consider them particularly, uh, hot topics in terms of their budget transitions. Um, and the, uh, amendment work session, if you have amendments that you, um, want more information on or need to work on over the next couple of weeks, let me know and we can get that information. And, um, I'm happy to assist as we go through the process, but open to conversations as necessary.

Okay, well, I'll just close it out really briefly. Maybe we can go to the slide that has the upcoming work sessions just so that's the last thing on screen. And then I will just remind folks that our last work session scheduled is Friday, November 7th. That is our work session to talk about amendments. Again, we will also get a brief on the Assembly branch budget, which includes the clerks, ombudsman, et cetera, not just the 12 of us and our staff.

And so we can save conversation about that another time. The deadline for amendments for members is the end of day Wednesday the 5th, and that is so that Matthew can put them in a packet so we can all look at them and talk about them. And I know Chair Constantine has said in the past, the earlier you get things out to members, especially in the budget amendment world, the more we have time to digest them and the more successful you are likely to be. So, so we will look for that. And then I'll just remind folks also, we just talked about CIB amendments.

That's the budget. So you would be amending this, the 1-year budget and the 6-year program.

But please get with Mr. Farina. He can help you draft those, speak with OMB. And then lastly, I'll say if you have any burning desire to hear from those departments, we would need to figure out when that needs to be scheduled. So tell Matthew and Ona as soon as possible, and we'll figure out where the venue would be for that. Or if it's just one-on-one conversation, please feel free to follow up.

And I think that is all we needed to say. Oh, I was— if I may, through the chair, I have two other updates just for the body's consideration. The first is that the Budget Advisory Commission is also, I think, intending on submitting a resolution of, of, um, uh, I support— I don't know, I don't know quite how the language will land, but they are working on a resolution specifically about the 2026 proposed budget. And so I would expect to see that coming before you as an AIM as part of this process. But also the Planning and Zoning Commission will hear the capital budget on November 3rd, it's the Monday before the next Tuesday meeting.

And based on their action, we would also expect any resolution that comes from the Planning and Zoning Commission to be added for Assembly awareness and consideration as part of the budget process. And all of that is regularly standard, but that will also be coming your way. Okay. Uh, well, with that, I think we can be done for the day. Thanks, everybody.

I know it's a long day and we're going through a lot of information. Um, so, Again, just talk to our budget analyst and OMB director on all of your hopes, dreams, and ideas. Not all of them. And we will be done for the week. And I'm sure we have some other things on the calendar next week, but I don't know what they are.

So everybody have a good week, and we will be adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. I do have hopes for you.