Juneau: Assembly Committee of the Whole Worksession

We will bring the Assembly Committee of Whole to order for November 2nd, 2026. Um, Ms. Atqasuk, would you say the land acknowledgement, please? Thank you, Madam Mayor. We would like to acknowledge the city and borough of Juneau is on Tlingit land and wish to honor the indigenous people of this land. For more than 10,000 years, Alaska Native people have been and continue to be integral to the well-being of our community.

We are grateful to be in this place, a part of this community, and to honor the culture, traditions, and resilience of the Tlingit people. Gunash chish.

Thank you, Miss Atkason. Madam Clerk, will you call roll of the assembly and then roll of the airport board? Thank you, Madam Mayor. Deputy Mayor Smith? Here.

Mr. Kelly? Here. Miss Atkason? Here. Mr. Steininger.

Here. Miss Hall. Here. Mr. Brooks. Here.

Miss Cosgrove. Here. Miss Niven. Here. Madam Mayor.

Here.

Miss Soutier. Here. Mr. Epstein. Here. Ms. Rodell?

Ms. Rodell?

Mr. Williams? Here. Mr. Newell? Here. Mr. Kessler?

Here. Mr. Godkin? Present.

And I am looking one more time for Miss Rodell.

We have Miss Rodell in attendance. I'm just going to bring her over. We have quorum for both boards. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Um, seeing no changes to the agenda, we will consider the agenda approved.

Um, approval of minutes. Mr. Kelly.

I move that we approve the minutes for the September 21st, 2026 Committee of the Whole and ask unanimous consent. Any objections? Seeing none, that motion is approved. Next, we will go to our agenda topics, and we'll start with the joint meeting with the Juneau International Airport Board, and we'll start for— with introductions. So, um, Do you want to start?

My name is Yvette Soutier, or Yvette Soutier. Madam Mayor, sorry, sorry, apologize.

We have a special order.

Miss Hall.

Thank you, and I would like to invite Linda Krueger from the Juneau chapter of AARP up. For this. Can I get you to hold this? Absolutely. Okay.

We have a proclamation for National Family Caregiver Month, which is November 2026. Whereas the City and Borough of Juneau recognizes the many family caregivers across our community who are helping older parents, spouses, and other loved ones live independently in their homes and in their communities, and whereas millions of Americans, including countless individuals and families in our community, provide unpaid care and assistance to loved ones each year, giving significant, significant time, effort, and personal resources to meet their needs. And whereas the contributions of family caregivers help sustain families, strengthen our communities, and alleviate demands on the long-term care system, providing substantial benefits to our state and its taxpayers. And whereas caregiving responsibilities often place significant financial, emotional, and physical demands on individuals who may assist loved ones with daily activities, medication management, transportation, and medical tasks, frequently with little or no formal training. And whereas many family caregivers incur out of— substantial out-of-pocket expenses to meet their loved ones' needs, while others must reduce their work hours or leave the workforce entirely to provide care.

And whereas family caregivers deserve our gratitude, recognition, and support that help ease the financial and personal burdens of caregiving. And whereas caregiving touches families throughout our community, whether through providing care, supporting a caregiver, or relying on a caregiver ourselves in the future. Now, therefore, I, on behalf of Mayor Beth Weldon, Mayor of the City and Borough of Juneau, on behalf of the City and Borough Juneau Assembly, do hereby proclaim November 2026 as National Caregiver— Family Caregivers Month. And with that, I will ask—. I got it.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much. I'm pleased to accept this proclamation on behalf of Juneau AARP Community Action Team and the Juneau Commission on Aging. And caregivers across the city. The caregivers in Juneau are caring for parents, spouses, partners, special needs children, and grandchildren.

Thank you again. Thank you, Ms. Hall. That was quite a proclamation to be read, and this was practice. She'll read it again Wednesday morning to open our AARP Caregivers Partners Summit and Resource Fair at Centennial Hall. And so anyone who's interested will be down there all day with a number of different speakers and caregivers from across— caregivers and seniors from across the city, the community.

I'd like to, while I have the floor, I'd also like to take a minute to thank Mr. Kelly and Ms. Hall for their leadership as Assembly liaisons to the community, the Committee on Aging. They were wonderful participants in our meetings, and also Mr. Brooks for attending some of our Commission meetings, and Ms. Niven for coming to an AARP meeting. So they've shown an interest in seniors in our community, and we really appreciate that a lot. We look forward to working with the Assembly on topics of interest and concern to Juneau's older residents, especially housing, transportation, and recreation. And so I thank you again for serving Juneau and thinking of seniors and especially caregivers this month.

Thanks so much.

Thanks so much, and I will be seeing you on Wednesday. Thank you. Thank you. Make her do the gauntlet.

No, we won't make her do the gauntlet. Thank you for that. And remember, your keynote speaker, I believe, is at 1:30 or 1 o'clock. Yeah. So Good speaker.

Yep, Clare Richardson, good speaker. So if you have an opportunity to go down and say hello or just visit them anytime during the day. So thank you. We'll get back to our agenda. So we'll start with introductions and what we're looking for is just your name and how long you've been on what either body.

So Chair Soutier. Eve Soutier, I'm the Airport Board Chair and I've been on for, oh gosh, like 5 years or something. Sure, we'll just go down.

I'm David Epstein. I served a full 3 terms plus on the airport board in the 2010s and was brought up out of retirement by Mayor Weldon last year, and glad to be back on the board. We're glad to have you. Miss Hall. Assemblymember Hall, and I'm in my third year of my first term.

Hi, Michael Newell, brand new to the airport board this summer, just started, and glad to be on it.

I'm Nano Brooks. I'm an assembly member in my second year of my first term.

I am Charlie Williams, and I'm either in my third or fourth year on the airport board.

Neil Steininger on the Juneau Assembly, and I just started year 3 of my first term.

Jerry Godkin. I've done one, uh, 9 years, so 9 years on the first term, then I had to take a year off, back again, and then I timed out or I went off after 2 years, and then I was asked by the Assembly with some vacancies if I would consider returning, and I have. So I thank for inviting me back. Nice to feel welcome. Assemblymember Cosgrove, and I am one week in and already chaired a meeting.

I'm Jordan Kessler on the Airport Board, and I'm 4 months into my first term.

I'm Ella Adkison on the Assembly, and I'm starting my 4th year. Thank you. Uh, Mr. Kelly.

Paul Kelly. I am just starting my 2nd week of my 2nd term, and I also wanted to take the opportunity to thank the Airport Board members who've come back out of retirement. Thank you for your service. Mr. Smith.

Thank you. Greg Smith, in my 8th year of the assembly.

Thank you. Uh, Ms. Rodell.

Uh, this is Angela Rodell, and I was on the airport board for 6 years and then reappointed, um, last year to another 3-year term. Thank you, Ms. Niven.

Joyce Niven on the assembly for one week.

You haven't quite chaired yet. Mila's ahead of you. Or excuse me, Ms. Cosgrove's ahead of me. Um, so I'm Beth Weldon, if you don't know it, and I'm on my third year of my third term.

Um, so with that, we will go to, uh, Item B. Madam Chair. Okay, I'm gonna be as the aircraft rescue and firefighting replacement planning. Let's turn the microphone on. Okay. And I'll probably be leaning on Mr. Delgado pretty heavily on this, but as you may know, we needed to upgrade badly.

We lost our index for a short period of time. The reason the public didn't see it was because of the heroic efforts of Mr. Delgado and his staff to coordinate with Alaska Airlines to ensure that those planes could come in. I think you got the 737-700s in, was that right, instead of the 800s and 900s? That is correct, yes. So what we're hoping to do is plan for future replacements so we don't end up in this situation again.

Our trucks are essentially timing out. They get so expensive that we cannot maintain them, you can't find parts for them, etc. Mr. Delgado can speak a little bit more on this, but just getting what we did for lending, we worked with the state, he did, worked with the state to get a truck from Gustavus to maintain through the summer, and now we're at full strength. Mr. Delgado, would you care to take any questions or explain any further? Um, thank you, Madam Chair.

Yes, absolutely. Um, so our trucks as of last year had, uh, as Ms. Soutier said, uh, timed out. They were older. We just could not find parts for them. We had to— every time something went wrong with a truck, it was a nationwide search.

Um, parts ran out eventually, so, um, it got to the point where, uh, one of the trucks suffered a catastrophic failure to the transmission. They don't make that transmission, so we had to put it out of service, uh, permanently. Through a lot of coordination, thank goodness for Chief Bagwell over at CCFR, we were able to get a truck from Palmer for the low, low price of $500 a month or quarter, and the other one through Gustavus, and they were very, very gracious to, to lend us that truck while they had no need for it. We have now gotten a delivery of both trucks, so we are now back at full strength and anticipate no further issues for at least 10 years until it's time to look at replacement trucks again. So I'll field any questions as well.

And I think just to add on to that, just the, the fact that we know that we're going to be looking in 10 years, that's what we want to talk to the Assembly about, how to get forward-thinking in that funding. So when 10 years elapses, we're not in the same position we were this summer.

Does any member of the board want to add on to what Mr. Delgado said before we get to questions?

Or go ahead, Mr. Grodkin.

Yeah, it was alarming to me coming from the fire service that we got into that situation. Um, we owe a lot of thanks to this— the city staff for helping us work through a very trying period. But what was alarming to me was, uh, we have a new chief now, and all we can do is look forward. And I have told or asked our manager to be more involved with fire service to have a better understanding of what, what's happening with this equipment. It was— I felt blindsided as a board member, and all of a sudden we've got a crisis, and we couldn't get out of that crisis without a lot of help from downtown and the airport staff.

And, you know, so they had to work through stuff. So I have asked our airport manager to work with the current fire chief and maybe Miss Kester, who supervises him, so that we've got a, uh, a good knowledge base of what's happening with it. I'm alarmed that, uh, 10 years is the, is the number now because I came from an environment where it was 20 years, and I would encourage people that write specs that unless they take an exception to a spec that they have to provide, you know, you try to build these trucks and they're not just built with somebody's one-time-made transmission. I mean, they're made by Allison, they're made by people that are reputable, and you should be able to get parts. And I think that should be part of the spec.

So 10 years really seems like a big thing to chew off. At what the expense is for these apparatus. So it's going to be good to be having this discussion. The unfortunate thing is we had to buy two in a row. So now if you're saying 10 years, it'd be nice to have had staggered so that you just don't get this big boom at 10 years from now that everybody's trying to figure out.

So we need to try to figure out how to, to get some spacing in there.

If at all possible, so that you can better plan down the road. So anyway, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Well, the last time we sat here updating the assembly, um, we were in crisis mode, and I think we need to acknowledge and thank the assembly and, and city staff for stepping up and helping us through that. Um, without some emergency funding, we couldn't have responded as well as we needed to.

And we did shorten the, you know, through the efforts we shortened the length greatly to be able to maintain our index. So I do want to acknowledge and thank the assembly and the city for their help. Anything further from the board? Seeing nothing, any questions from the assembly?

Mrs. Hall. Yeah, thank you. Is it just 2 ARFF vehicles that the airport needs, or do you have more? Thank you. We have 3 ARFF trucks.

2 Of them are brand new. The 3rd one, which until recently was our newest one, has now been placed in reserve status, and so it'll only deploy when absolutely needed.

So, yeah. Go ahead. Um, Mr. Delgado, can you explain the situation where it would be needed, just so people understand? Absolutely. So, uh, these trucks are designed and equipped to respond to the most catastrophic of, uh, scenarios that we would encounter at the airport, which hopefully never happens.

Um, the FAA requires us to, uh, keep and maintain and operate these pieces of equipment that are equipped specifically to combat fuel fires and fires involving hazmat and large quantities of fuel. So—. And how many do we need to be running at any given time? At a bare minimum, 2. However, we do have 3 because we cannot rely on anyone else in as quickly as one would hope.

All right, seeing— oh, now they all come. Uh, Mr. Brooks and then Mr. Epstein. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, and this is kind of to Mr. Godkin's, uh, comments earlier. Uh, knowing how heavy equipment can be, there is some very reliable and serviceable heavy equipment.

I know that the more bells and whistles you put on something, the, the harder that can be, but like If the most indestructible, highest-cost ARFF truck was purchased that has, let's say, a service life of 50 years, would the FAA still require it be replaced in 10?

It's not so much a requirement to be replaced in 10 years. That's the typical life expectancy across other airports, many other airports. 10 Years keeps us just below that point in time where the trucks begin to have issues. At some point, and mind you, the transmission issue was just an example, but the pumps fail frequently, the seals fail frequently, gears fail frequently, and those parts are more hard to come by because it's not as common an item as a transmission would be. These are specialty items that are more difficult to source.

Once the manufacturers stop manufacturing a truck and move on to the next generation, They stopped manufacturing that part. And so with everyone else that's running a 2016 truck, they're buying up all the parts as fast as they can get them. And that's, that's where we begin to run into the issues because the trucks may be reliable for quite a long time. And then come year 16, we run into that issue where that part is no longer available. We can't find it.

And that's when we run into the real issues. The trucks that we had replaced were well over 30 years old at this point. So we're very fortunate and very lucky that the trucks had run for this long, but we do want to avoid getting into this kind of situation again.

Thank you, Mr. Epstein. And then Mr. Steininger. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, Mr. Delgado, we, we also got another piece of equipment that it might interest the assembly to hear about. Could you explain that, please?

Absolutely. That would be the Marshmaster, the wetland rescue vehicle. And this one came about because the FAA required it. For any airport that's near a body of water, we are required to have a water rescue plan. We are— we have a lot of water.

We also have a lot of mud and wetlands. Our situation is a little unique because these wetlands are very much tidal. We needed something that could respond both in the mud and on the water. And, uh, I invite any assembly member to come visit us at the airport, and I'd be more than happy to show it to you. It's, it's very unique.

It looks very much like a tank, but it floats. It'll go on the mud, it'll go on the ice, it'll wade through just about any kind of water. So, um, again, hopefully we never have to use it, but if we ever do, I'll be glad that we have it. Mr. Steininger. Thank you.

And I know there's some mention in the memo about trying to avoid the use of emergency funding in 10 years, or maybe hopefully 15, or however long you can make these trucks last. I know one technique we use for city fleet is a replacement fund that we pay into. Has there been consideration by the airport board of establishing a replacement fund for these trucks so it doesn't become a— an emergency funding request and take some of that, you know, stress off of that decision in 15, 10, 15 years, or whenever these get replaced? Mr. Steininger, you've jumped the gun. We were just going to talk about that.

I'll set it to the Madam Chair first, and then, um, yes, we've actually been discussing that. Um, we've, uh, been working out with the Finance Committee, and Angela, um, Rodell is on from the Finance Committee, as is, uh, Mr. Williams. I don't know if they've been working on it because I haven't been able to to a Finance Committee meeting. But Mr. Delgado, um, I don't know if you have more information as well, but I'm going to punt it to one of the Finance Committee members or Mr. Delgado.

Mr. Williams, you're on the spot. I can start off. Um, so we're in the process of updating, um, our, our contract agreements with the, um, Part 135 operators right now. And as we all know, you can't have a budget without money, so we have to figure out the money part of it first. But that we've had discussions about creating, you know, funds that will allow us to forward fund and be prepared to replace these.

But we have to kind of work ourself through the process, which is one of our agenda items here on the leases, Part D. So we have talked about it, but it's a little premature because until we have money, we can't create a budget for it. All right, Mr. Delgado, do you have anything to add to that? Uh, absolutely. Um, we had historically relied on FAA funding, uh, specifically the Airport Improvement Program. That comes— those grants come with a lot of strings attached.

Um, for example, we can't— had we not requested any help from the city or the assembly in this case, our next available— our next window of opportunity to acquire a truck would have been in 2031. The failure of these trucks forced our hand, essentially.

The AIP, the Airport Improvement Program grants, are very, very much, very much tie our hands. And so a more flexible way to fund these, these pieces of equipment are through PFCs, Passenger Facility Charges. That's the $4.50 that you see tacked onto your, to your tickets. And is considered a source of revenue for projects. At least historically it's been for projects, but ARFF trucks are eligible for this, for this source of revenue as well.

So there's no time restrictions, there's no restriction, essentially no restrictions to the type of equipment we can get, or sorry, the bells and whistles that we can get on this truck, and that means that the airport has the flexibility to acquire these trucks on the dot every 10 years, or as needed. Mr. Williams, I'd just like to add that through the PFC 10, which is the next cycle for collecting those funds, that's how we're going to get— Mr. Williams, can I interrupt you? Can you say what PFC is since we have members?

What is that acronym? I only just know it as PFC. Sorry, yes, the passenger facility charge. Okay, yes, so, um, that is how we're planning to repay the, um, the money that was loaned to us from the city to, to get this truck that, that we needed quickly. So, okay, perfect.

Did that answer your question, Mr. Steininger? Okay, any further comment or question on this item?

All right, our next item is the sale of the Hertz building, and I just know about this because I went to one of your guys' meetings. Because I knew your liaison was not going to be there. Ms. Cosgrove is your new liaison, and we have asked the body this time that if someone is going to miss a meeting, that they ask somebody else to fill in. So hold us to the fire on that, and if someone doesn't show up, let me know and we'll take care of it. So with that, one of the reasons I wanted this brought up is I don't know that the assembly members realizes the airport property extends past the fenced-in area, so that's why I brought it up, Madam Chair.

Um, and again, I'll probably be punting a little bit to Mr. Delgado, but first off, um, so we own this, this piece of property. It's that, that Hertz Wash Bay. Um, I don't know if you guys have seen it. It's over by Alaska Airlines cargo. Um, Hertz decided to, to leave their lease, and so we're trying to decide, do we lease the building or do we put the building up for sale and lease the property?

Meaning they can buy it, build to suit, etc. I think part of one— well, one of the reasons why it was more of a discussion than it should have been was because we're an enterprise fund. I think we're unsure about whether or not if we do sell the building, if we're going to be able to keep those funds, because there's been some, some things going on with the Assembly and other enterprise other enterprise boards. But needless to say, we've got to figure out what to do with that property. I think what we're going to be doing is voting on it next, next assembly, or next board meeting, which is in a week.

If you have any questions about the building itself, I'm not in a position to answer very well, but Mr. Delgado can answer.

Any questions for Mr. Delgado?

Do you have anything? Oh, Mr. Williams, go ahead. Not a question, just a comment. One of our concerns that we discussed at our last board meeting— or was it the board? Yes, it was the board meeting— is the disposition of funds if we were to decide to sell it.

Given the age of the building, it doesn't seem like it would be very feasible for us to upgrade the building and, you know, bring it up to spec. And so the path best, and given our constrained budget, the path we, or at least the feedback that we had discussed at the board meeting, is to sell the building. But one of our concerns is, will we as the airport board receive the funds for that? And, you know, given our tight budget, especially in the capital improvement and in the What's, what's the fund that only has $59,000 in it? And the capital reserve, the capital reserve, given our constraints there, we're hoping to convince the Assembly to help us bolster that fund through that, through the proceeds of that sale.

So, and if I can add, I think the biggest thing for the board is when CVJ policy is going to affect airport property leases, revenue, etc., I think the board would really welcome being brought in early, very early, so we can tell the assembly how that would affect the airport.

Go ahead, Mr. Steininger. Thank you. And maybe just clarifying question so I can make sure I understand, uh, what you said, Ms. Sutray. Um, so the Hertz is ending their lease with civilians. So no, so currently it's not occupied, or it's correct?

Okay, so if held, like, is there another potential lessee that might be interested in leasing the building, you know, if you held that as an airport asset? There are. Um, the decision we have to make is, do we kind of sell the surface, the building itself, and then just lease the actual land, or do we maintain that building, which is old and would cost us money, and lease that building as is? So I guess to follow up, so there might be an interested party in the building as is, or probably not in the building as is? There might, there might, but I think— and Mr. Delgado can speak more on this— I think the concern that the airport board has at least a couple of the members have, is becoming a landlord to a building that's going to need a lot of work and will cost us a lot.

I apologize for the noise, but welcome to City Hall. That is our air handling unit going because it's not hot enough in here, so it thinks it needs to pump heat in.

So, um, Uh, Madam Manager, uh, can correct me if I'm wrong, but typically this gets determined by documentations of whose building it was a long time ago, or who put money in the building. And from my understanding, there has not been able to find that documentation. So according to our finance director, the funds would likely revert to the airport fund. So, Ms. Koester, do you want to say anything to that? Or— I think you, you gave a great summary, much, much like, uh, capital projects when the original source of funding is general fund.

If there's any funding left over, that reverts back to its original funding source. We would apply the same logic here. However, staff hasn't been able to find any documentation on kind of who paid for that original asset, and ultimately that'd be an assembly decision.

And Mr. Delgado has kindly sent out the process in his memo, so thank you for that. So hopefully that answers your question. Mr. Godkin, thank you to the chairs. Um, I just wanted to go backwards just a little bit.

It's, it's been a dilemma for the airport board over the years that when property came available on or around our proper of the airport, uh, that Let's talk about the property from Fred— across from Fred Meyers when all of that acreage came up. That's the Bicknell property. The airport really thought that they should move on that, but the airport is not in a position to go out and buy land. And that's where I think we're in a new era with the assembly. I believe we didn't have as much interaction.

I don't believe that previous assemblies really cared, if that's the word, really what went on. They trusted us to run the airport. They did their thing downtown. They approved things that we needed. But I think it's important as we move forward that when properties in or around the airport that can be utilize for the airport as revenue-generating properties that are on there like that would have been.

And it— there was discussion about that being in the flyway and, and that the airport should have it anyway, and we weren't in the position to do it. Next thing we know, we turned around and it was gone. So I, I thank the current and some of the previous assembly for, for taking more interest in the airport, because it's not something that we have just alone as our enterprise board. It's the whole city, you know, the assembly shares in this as well. So the more informed you are through, through us and through your liaison I think we can start to develop and work through these things like the ARFF truck land and not be in adversarial positions about these things.

Just we're working together. So anyway, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Godkin. Anything else on this topic? It's somewhat related to the— I'm sorry, somewhat related to this topic.

I think that I would urge all the assembly members to be looking at the statewide transportation improvement program as well. Um, we're in an interesting position that the state does not own or manage the airport, and I don't know that the state remembers that we're an important airport. We're important for freight, we're important as a hub for all the outlying villages, and I think that the assembly should weigh in on the STIP as soon as possible because they're trying to finalize it.

Yep, I'm just trying to— we just sent something on the STIP. Was it this meeting or next meeting? Thank you, Madam Mayor. The Public Works and Facilities Committee reviewed a CVGA comments to the State DOT on the STIP, and our comments are focused on the fact that STIP construction funding was excluded this year for Juneau Douglas North Crossing, which is a high assembly priority. They have been included in previous years.

Madam Chair, did you have something else that you wanted us to comment on? Um, I know Mr. Epstein does too, but I think that the assembly should also remember the flyway and coordinate with Juneau Douglas Crossing with the airport, because that could affect just service. Thank you, Mr. Epstein. And then Ms. Rodell. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, along with, um, the assembly, there's another player involved when we talk about possibly disposing of property that's on airport property, and that's FAA. So I would expect it if we go forward doing something with the Hertz building that we make sure that we're in compliance with our grant assurances. We'll leave that up to you guys.

Ms. Rodell, and then Mr. Kelly.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just wanted to tack on to something that Chair Soutier said about the STIP. It's not just the STIP, but we also have— I believe the comment period may still be open on the Southeast Alaska Transportation Plan for DOT. And I think it's really important to recognize that Juneau Airport is the small hub for Southeast Alaska, and so it is the hub that allows places like Yakutat and Petersburg and Sitka to have essential air service and for that to work for Alaska Airlines, and they need that, um, they need that Juneau airport to be a viable option. And when the state stopped matching grants for us right around the time of COVID um, it set, it set the state into a different direction.

And when I think about the Hertz building, when I think about our funding, and I think about this transportation plan, I think one of the things that I would love to come away from this meeting is a sense that we're, as Mr. Godkin said, we are adjoined and we are together and we are aligned as to the importance of the airport, and that funding the airport is not optional. It is the primary infrastructure that allows Juneau to flourish. And I don't know if you all saw it, I was on the Columbia ferry last week. I was fortunate, I got, I got on the ferry, I got off the ferry. That ferry is hung up in Ketchikan now for we don't know how long.

And It has become very apparent that the airport is going to be the key piece of infrastructure to maintaining a transportation network for Southeast Alaska. And so the— whether it's being reassured that we get the funding from this if we sell the Hertz building, that we don't have to sit on pins and needles that the assembly may choose to do something else with that funding. Or that we have grant funding matched, things like that. It would just— I think it's just really important to recognize just how key this piece of infrastructure is to Southeast Alaska. Thank you.

Thank you. And we will have Ms. Kestner check, or Manager Kestner check on the Southeast Alaska Transportation Plan and see if we can still comment on that. Mr. Kelly, thank you. I, I guess I was kind of following up both on the comments about the STIP and now also about the transportation plan.

Are there specific projects that you would like the Assembly to focus on in our comments, or is there something maybe you can, you can forward a list to staff? Thank you. Thank you for that, but we're probably getting ahead of ourselves because that we are going to talk about projects here on item E. Anything further on this topic? Seeing none, we'll go to leases. And again, this is just, just talking to some of you guys.

We had heard that our previous manager may not have codified some of the leases that we probably needed to have, so we just wanted to check and make sure that was happening. Yes, so Mr. Delgado has been working very hard to get these done and finalized. I do want to basically turn that over to him because he's got the most up-to-date information. I know he's been talking to them at length. Mr. Delgado.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, so the last time that a use and lease agreement was— or an operating agreement was negotiated with Alaska Airlines was back in 2003. 2022. These leases, these operating agreements do not necessarily expire. We simply convert to a month-to-month agreement thereafter, and we have been with Alaska Airlines since 2007.

Similarly, with Delta Airlines, we have been month-to-month since 2019 when the last agreement kind of rolled over. These agreements were negotiated and use not-so-modern terms, business terms. The airport has evolved over time.

Essentially, it's time to renegotiate, really.

The current airport financial model has been— is closely tied to these operating agreements and has been structured the same way since about 2001, if not longer.

Renegotiating these contracts means also changing or updating the airport financial model. Over time, the airport has grown more complex. There have been revenue streams that we haven't seized upon.

So there has been some foregone revenue. To what amount, I don't know.

But the time to negotiate is now. And this was all— this has all come about thanks to Alaska Airlines wanting to— they had reached out and wanted to renegotiate. So we're more than happy to do so. We have since gone out for a financial consultant to help us both negotiate with the airlines and work on the financial model. The reason they are doing both of these items is because of how closely tied they are, and we're able to work on the financial model as the terms are being negotiated.

Um, uh, the solicitation period has closed, and we now have had only one respondent to it, and that is, uh, one that's familiar to us, and that contract is yet to be executed. We expect that to happen— I was hoping for today, but perhaps tomorrow would be a better day for this. So as soon as contract is executed, we will work very, very quickly to provide them all the information they need, and we will begin to have all of our finance committee meetings and negotiations with the airlines. So I'm very much looking forward to that. Perfect.

Any comment, Mr. Neussel? You sat up. Do you have something to say on this one?

Uh, no, Madam Mayor, other than I think it's long overdue, as you can tell from the dates on the negotiated agreements that exist. When we don't know the history of how we're collecting fees and revenues, it's time to get that written and established and on paper. Certainly. Any other comments or questions on this topic? All right.

That brings us to Item E, Project Updates. You want to start with this, Madam Chair? I can. I'll just kind of do a quick overview. I think bigger picture, sorry, the big picture that, that we've been looking at through the board is through the airport master plan, looking at growth and visitors.

I know that there's, there's, there are ways, and Ms. Rodell can speak on this, that the assembly can assist growth at the airport through small cruise ships, that kind of thing.

And then also, sorry, it's been a long day.

You can phone a friend. Yeah.

I'll go ahead and just turn that over to Mr. Delgado, and I'll figure out what my thought was. Sorry. No worries. Mr. Delgado. Thank you.

So I have here our FY27 Airport Capital Projects. I had intended to also add FY28 and FY29, but that's way too far out. We have a meeting with the FAA. They're coming to town to talk airport CIPs on Wednesday. So this list may change.

It depends what they have to say and whether I've got good ideas or bad ideas here.

Our capital program is very much limited in terms of money, and that's not airport money, it's FAA grant money. We have our yearly entitlements on the AIP side, the Airport Improvement Program side, which amount to just over $3 million per year. And then there's our Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act money, or otherwise previously known as BIL money, which is set to expire in FY '29. And that's roughly $3.2 million a year until FY '29. So it's a race to the finish to spend— finish spending that IIJA money and get some projects on the list.

And I, again, I would have liked to add more, but the further out I get on these projects, the hazier it becomes. We do have a fairly solid idea of what the next few years of CIP projects or CIP planning looks like. But with changing priorities and, um, in conversations with the FAA, those, those projects may change from year to year. So I figured it wasn't worth our time here today. Um, I welcome any questions.

I can go into anything here. So, all right, any questions other than, um, we'll kind of go back to Mr. Kelly's. Is there any of these projects that we can help you on, either with the STIP or the Alaska or Southeast Alaska Transportation Plan? Is there any advocacy you need from us with this? I think, I think that's, that's part of— sorry, I think that's part of what I was intending to say was just to ensure that, that this hub remains a hub, but also The CBJ can assist with transit planning to and from the airport for both visitors and legislators, people who come.

The taxi service is, as you all probably know, is not great, especially in the winter trying to get out there.

Air service is economic development. That's something Ms. Rodell has said and would say. And then potentially with the Visitor Industry Tax— for task force working there, I know Mr. Delgado and the board have all been kicking around ideas. Mr. Delgado has ideas to bring revenue into the airport, and we're trying to also figure out how to couple with the assembly in order to, um, increase that revenue stream even wider. Any questions, comments?

Mr. Williams, just a question. You get called on. Just, just a comment. Um, so I want to thank the staff.

Um, Andre and his staff have recently gotten a very fast-paced grant to replace the roof on the tower, and, uh, long, long overdue. And, uh, without their, their great efforts on that, we wouldn't be having that done. So I just want to say thank you. Good job, Mr. Delgado. I was wondering about that.

Can we get a tour of the tower anymore, or is that absolutely—. Yes. Okay. And someone, was it you, Miss Cosgrove, that said you were gonna have a tour pretty soon? I believe it's next week.

All right. Are you going to invite two friends with you? If you're really nice to me, maybe. If anybody's interested, uh, get hold of Miss Cosgrove and see if that time slot works for you. So, Mr.— Ms. Hall.

Yeah, thank you. Um, I was just wondering, have there been pullbacks of federal funding in the last recent, uh, past? Only for the 2024 ARFF truck grant, but none since. Okay, there's, there's always the, the risk if we don't get things in on time. Okay, thank you.

Madam Chair, um, I just— Mr. Delgado was able to turn— what was that grant, correct, that you were able to kind of turn into a road grader snow removal? Yes, yes. So we didn't lose the grant completely. Yeah, yeah, I should, I should have clarified. We repurposed that grant to be able to acquire a vacuum truck and a motor grader.

Well, thank you for reminding me. Good job. You're clever. Since some of your projects have to do with PFCs, I'm going to go back to that. Can you explain to us a little bit of how that works other than we— it's kind of similar for marine passenger fees for us, but again, we have new members.

So if you would just kind of explain how that works when you're forward funding type. Absolutely. So we typically forward fund. So Let me backtrack some more. I'm already off track.

The federal grants from the FAA typically cover 93, almost 94% of the total project cost. We are therefore left to make up for the other 6.25% in local match, what we call airport fund balance or capital reserve, or ideally PFCs. We would like airport fund balance or capital reserve to be the last dollar in. That way we're able to leverage every cent we have. There's not very many other places where you can do that.

For every dollar that we put in, we get almost $10 back, really. So PFCs allow us to submit an application. We negotiate with the airlines. They approve the projects. They say, this looks great to us, and then they levy the $4.50 rate to passengers for outgoing legs up to, I believe, $18, um, depending on how many legs there are in their flights.

Um, the airport receives approximately $1 million per year in PFC revenue, uh, and then we apply that to projects. Um, now depending on the amount, the quantity of projects that we add to that application, if we add 10 projects that each demand a million dollars in in local match, then they would take us 10 years to recoup that money, and then we would do another PFC application after those 10 years have lapsed. Most PFC applications are roughly 4 to 5 to 6 years. Some airports out there have 30-year PFC applications, which is just ridiculous, but I digress.

So the— our ideal situation to be in would be to use PFC money first. Which is how we were able to recoup the money for the ARFF trucks, for example, along with other projects that we have sprinkled in there that would utilize that. I think that should answer your question, unless I'm missing something. Nope, that's good. Like I said, I just wanted to have the assembly understand that.

So I could go on all day. Mr. Godkin. And on to PFCs, because this dates back, but the PFC number that he threw out is a very outdated number, the $4.50. And I would hope with the support of the Assembly as well as us working with our legislative delegation in Washington and a few people meet with them, there's been a push nationwide year after year. It never gets enough traction.

But it's well overdue for a cost increase. So it— airports all over, it just— it hasn't gotten it. But those, you know, you guys are looking for ways of more funding to do what you need to do to provide services. And we're in the same thing. If we could get an increase in that PFC dollar, would help us a long way.

Anyway, thank you. So ironically, you must know that Ms. Koester and I are leaving on the 17th to Washington, D.C. So you get us a white paper on something like that, we can talk to the delegation about that. That'd be great. So, Ms. Koester, I'm giving you all kinds of assignments today.

I like seeing opposite, then you're right in my target. Any comments or questions before we adjourn this meeting? Madam Chair, just one brief one. I don't know if Ms. Rodell, she had forwarded a couple things to me, um, so she can chime in and raise her hand at any time if I get this wrong. But I think, um, and Mr. Delgado can also correct me, but I think the issue we have is that— well, it's not an issue, it's actually a good thing— that passenger numbers have increased.

And what was it, about 5% a year this last year? That is correct, yes. Okay. And so, I mean, we've got the regional outlook about how our population is declining, but visitorship is up. And so that's something that can help drive the financing of the airport.

And I think what the assembly should, should really take away from this is the difference between the shrinking regional market and a growing visitor market is opportunity. And so we need the assembly's help to make that opportunity happen.

All right, Ms. Rodell, did you have— did you want to add to that? I would just say that one of the things, you know, and we sent comments to the Visitors Industry Task Force as well, but just recognizing, as I said before, the airport as an asset and to include us as you think about different, different issues growing the visitor industry. How it works, um, you know, surveys taken where, where people are traveling to, where residents in Juneau when they come to the airport, are they good, are they truly getting off in Seattle as the data would suggest, or is it that they're just doing a 24-hour layover and then they're headed somewhere else? And how can we capture enough information about who's coming and where are they going to really help both Alaska Airlines, Delta Airlines, and any others who are interested in the airport think about route selection, think about plane selection and growth, because the airport really could benefit from having that partnership with CBJ, with the visitors industry, and as a, as a way to continue to grow our revenue and be a viable enterprise.

Oh, thank you. And, um, hopefully you guys know that the Visitor Industry Task Force is taking public testimony on Thursday. So if you guys want— one of you guys want to— at the Valley Library. Thank you. It's not here, it's at the Valley Library.

So I believe it's at 5 or 5:30. Which one? 5:30. 5:30. Thank you for that.

Miss Ellison is the chair. So, um, so that would be nice to hear that comment. Because others think we should reduce our visitors. I do know that they are looking at Seattle-Portland run instead of— I mean, not a Seattle, a Juneau-Portland run, but I don't know how much traction that will get from Alaska Airlines. That was a discussion at our last conference we had.

So any other comments or questions? We don't get to see each other often, so Mr. Kessler, I'm going to pick on you. Anything to add? No, I'm sure I'm gonna pick on him first and I'll come to you. Nothing to add.

It's, uh, been a pleasure, um, learning all, all the things, all things airport the past 4 months. Um, thank you to Andre for all of his work and really walking me through, um, everything that goes on at the airport. Uh, Mr. Newsell. Thank you, Madam Mayor. You mentioned the Juneau to Portland route.

I was fortunate enough to attend a meeting with Alaska Airlines representative Mr. Delgado and Ms. Rodell, and I was impressed with their comment to us that we were not on the wrong track pursuing that, that they were thinking along the same lines. That may be very beneficial. There's still work to be done, I think, to cement that and prove that that would be a viable option. But they didn't shoot it down, so I think it's a viable alternative.

Yep. Anybody haven't spoken that wants to speak? Okay, I just have one. Go ahead. Just, I invite the assembly and any of the members, with Mr. Delgado's permission, if you want more information about the airport, he has put together an incredible presentation, and I think he'd be willing to send it along.

Thank you, and welcome to Ms. Cosgrove for our liaison. Thank you. And remind us when your board meetings are. November 12th, the second Tuesday— second Thursday of the month. It'll be the nicest Thursday of the month without fail, at 6 o'clock at the airport.

But it is a— that, that room is lovely that you can see everywhere around. So, okay, seeing nothing further, uh, Ms. Hall, go ahead. Take a moment to say thank you. This is always valuable to come together and meet and hear, hear each other's concerns. And yeah, so thank you and appreciate your leadership.

It's a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Um, and thank you to the ones, uh, Mr. Godkin and Mr. Epstein and Ms. Rodell, that you did your time and then you came back.

So we appreciate that. So, um, all of you, we appreciate it. We know you're volunteers, so we appreciate all your time. So Um, like I said, but we're going to keep, uh, Ms. Cosgrove's toes to the fire, so she does not show up, let me know. I don't think that will be a problem though, or a jerk.

Just real quick.

We will bring the Assembly Committee of the Whole back to order. Thank you to the Airport Board. We had a nice meeting together.

With that, we will go to item number 2. Madam Clerk, or is that Madam Finance Director, or is that Madam— yeah, who wants to— who raised your hand? Whomever wants to be called on this one. Madam Mayor, I'm going to go ahead and kick us off and then quickly hand it over to the Finance Director while she pulls up, or while the city clerk pulls up the presentation. So you might all be wondering, um, why you have a budget item on the agenda tonight.

Tonight's item is a fiscal update on FY26. This is in preparation for your retreat. I unfortunately will not be here on Wednesday, and so I'm making all of you suffer through this presentation today because I wanted to make sure I was here for it to hear all of your feedback. Hopefully it will make your Wednesday meeting shorter. As I mentioned, this is an update on our year-end FY26.

This The information that you use to build the FY27 budget. We're in this, this circumstance of always having to play catch-up, right? Trying to build a budget 9 months, a year before we have any real data. So a budget is a crystal ball, and that means we will always be wrong. But this information, in addition to some '27 updates that we will bring to you at the retreat, will kind of be the basis for that discussion.

So really mostly wanted to just give you some information. Give you a couple weeks to, like, sit on that and chew on that, and then take some— a deeper dive, uh, on November 21st at our retreat. So I'll hand it over to the finance director. All right, finance director. And I'll warn you that stop at every slide so we could ask questions, because there's a lot of meat packed in these slides.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm happy to. And typically we would bring you the FY26 update and FY27, kind of where are we and then a forward look to FY28 all in one meeting later in November. But we're just going to spread this out a little bit. So tonight we're going to talk about FY26.

As the manager said, she wants to get you all thinking about some things we're talking at the retreat. When we get to the retreat, we will have like literally probably the Tuesday before the retreat, we'll have our first quarter of FY27 sales tax data in. So we'll be able to give you a better kind of this is— we know more now and what '27 is looking like. We will also have some very high-level FY28 data to talk about at the retreat. So tonight we're focusing on FY26, and so we'll start on a slide that's green at the top to help remind us that we're going to talk about revenue first.

And it's hard to see that it's green on that, but really is. So when we talk about the next couple of slides, they're all set up generally the same. So let me just walk through how the slide is set up. So, um, the first thing on this slide, we're talking about revenue, gives you your type of revenue. So we've got charges for services, federal dollars, state dollars, etc.

And then next you'll have the FY26 budget. The next column is the FY26 actuals, and the following column is the difference between those two, right? So, um, if the number is positive That means we brought in more revenue than we budgeted, so positive is a good thing. Now, um, back to what Ms. Kester said, we forecasted and prepped FY26 where we thought we were going to end back in February so that we could get ourselves positioned to talk about the FY27 budget. So when we talked about the FY27 budget, that next to the last column is the impact that we thought we would have from our FY26 revenue as we were looking into FY27.

So for example, on the federal line, um, we had a budget of $3.9 million in total for federal. We brought in $4.7 million. That's $729,000 of excess above our budget. Back in February, we thought we were going to have about $142,000 more in federal. We actually ended up with the $729,000, and so that means the very last column is the new impact to our revenue.

So in this case, we had, um, $586,000 more in federal revenue than we even thought we would back in February as we were planning for the FY, um, '27 budget. Does that make sense how those columns line up? Okay, so now that we've walked through the format, we can talk a little bit about the content here. I think the things I want to draw your attention to are in the state revenue. We did have a grant for child care through THRED, and that's the first line, the grants for $860,000.

Um, we actually, uh, received cash and ended up deferring that revenue because of how expenses came in, and so we had a slight budget adjustment, but that was not in, um, in our plan. So we ended up, um, thinking we would have $860,000 more, and actually the budget got adjusted, so we kind of wiped that extra $860,000 out of our predictions. That's why it's negative in the last column. Investments— I feel like we talk about investments every year. So in our investments world, our budget was, we'll call it, $6.7 million.

We actually earned $10 million. When we— so $3.3 million is our variance to the good. When we built our budget, we thought we would have $3.6 million to the good. So we actually are, are coming in a little bit under our expectation. And I just want to say a couple things about our investment earnings because I know it does cause a lot of questions year over year.

The way that our central treasury model works, all of our investments get pooled together. All of that investment earning, that yield comes into the general fund, and then we pull out of the general fund to provide interest earnings to enterprise funds, to special revenue funds. Um, with the enterprise funds, they all have little capital funds that go with them, and so we allocate interest earnings out, and so that basically leaves us with everything else being general fund revenue that you see represented here.

Sales tax— we talked a lot about sales tax at our last AFC meeting. Um, we did really, really good on estimating our lost revenue due to the election last year. We were within a couple hundred thousand dollars, but what we did not predict in early February was that we would have a conflict in the Middle East that was going to drive particularly fuel prices, but inflation everywhere, and really gave us skyrocketed last quarter numbers. So April, May, and June, as you recall, sales tax was phenomenally high. And so whereas we expected to have a shortage of revenue in sales tax by about $4 million.

I'm sorry, we expected about $9 million in lost revenue. We only had $4 million, and that difference is really what we saw in that last quarter of the fiscal year with the increased inflation. And then the last one we're going to talk about is in the other line, and I think, Mr. Barr, you want to talk about that one.

GHS, $1.7 million.

Thank you, Miss Flick. Um, thank you, Director Flick. So this, this represents the $1.7 million that you appropriated for Gastineau Human Services as part of the FY27 budget process to make them whole from an anticipated loss of state revenue that, as of my last communication with GHS, they have not yet realized, although they still anticipate realizing. And there we have an open question about whether or not that will be a one-time or an ongoing loss in state revenue, which we'll revisit. If not, if we don't have— if we have more information by the retreat, possibly then.

If not, then certainly as part of your FY28 assembly grants process.

And per your request, Madam Mayor, that covers the slide. Okay, who has questions on this slide? Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you, Miss Flick, for the presentation on the property tax. I know that last year when those discussions were happening, it was that, you know, the idea was that if the mill rate cap and the removal of this sales tax on utilities and groceries both passed, it would be something like $12 million potential loss, and I'm just wondering what that planned impact was for the property tax, because I see that we made $1 million more than last year, but that's what it's showing as the change from planned impact.

I thought we were factoring for that in some sort of impact. That's an excellent question, Mr. Brooks, and something that we're gonna help each other through. Is those impacts impacted FY27, not FY26. So the, the property tax mill rate impacted FY27, so we lowered— had the assessment stayed flat, we would have lowered our revenue by about $1 million, but with the increase in assessments, we didn't have to do that. That was all for FY27.

So in FY26, there wasn't an impact. The sales tax was the $9.2 million that we thought we would lose since that ballot initiative took effect basically 30 days after certification. Thank you for the clarification. Yep. Any further questions?

Ms. Hall, and if you're on Zoom, I can't see hands, so just pipe up. Yeah. I just am wondering if Deputy Manager Barr could restate what you had said about the GHS. Is that down on the other line? I'm a little confused if that's where you were having that discussion.

Yes, yes, Ms. Hall, you are. It is fair that you are confused because I was remembering a completely different GHS topic, and the GHS topic for this one was not actually part of your FY27 grantmaking process. It was part of a grant that you provided at GHS to construct what was going to be a housing project on GHS's property for individuals who are in recovery and needed substance use recovery housing while not utilizing substances, right? So permanent supportive housing for that population. That project did not come to fruition because of the loss of federal money, not state money.

And there have been— so there has been some movement in that sector to try to revitalize that project, if you will. Hasn't borne fruit yet, but that is still something that we and others are working on. Okay, follow-up. Sir, and so is our contribution just kind of on hold over there or going to be repurposed? It has been returned to you.

Okay.

All right, see nothing further. Go ahead. Excellent. So we'll go to the next slide, which is, um, blue at the top, um, to help remind me that we're going to talk about expenses. Um, so these are broken out into, um, just a couple of categories.

So salary, wages, and benefits. And again, it's laid out the same way. FY26 budget was about $66 million. Our actual was about $62 million. And our budget to actual was $3.7 million realized.

When we prepared the FY27 budget, we predicted about $3.5 million in personnel savings. So we were off about $151,000, which is really lucky, but fantastic. Very skilled. As the manager said, it's a crystal ball. I do want to just take take a moment to note that through this process in FY26, right before we got into kind of budget crisis mode, we had already started looking at, um, salary vacancy savings and starting to kind of ratchet in where we saw significant savings.

But as you remember, when you built our FY27 budget is where the Assembly directed the manager to really reduce the budget through vacancy factor salary savings. And so we would expect this number in a few months when we talk about FY28, our expectation to be very low. But we're pretty happy with how our prediction came out with reality with respect to salaries and wage savings. We are off about $2 million with the rest of commodity and services, which is a 5% off of $36, almost $37 million. So that's That is, um, pretty decent budgeting.

I feel like, um, that's— I'm really comfortable with that kind of level of forecasting. There's, um, we'll talk about it in just a second where we saw, um, some non-personnel kind of variances. You'll see our community and youth grants had a little bit of a variance, and our capital outlays, um, actually was— pardon me— was a little bit More oftentimes what we find is departments will budget under just regular commodities and services, but when the purchase happens, it really should be classified as capital outlay. So I wouldn't get too worried about that overage. It's a common thought process as you're budgeting, and then when accountants get involved and apply some strict definitions, things slide around between those categories.

So I'm happy to take any questions on this view. We are going to look at the non-personnel services in more detail. Thank you. Mr. Kelly and then Mr. Brooks. Thank you.

I was just maybe asking a little bit of clarification on the slide.

So the commodities and services, it looks like this is supposed to be inclusive of all the items in blue that are below it. And this one in the second to last column, the planned impact, we have $178,400, but we don't see that reflected anywhere in any other things that are in the blue that are below it. So I was just wondering where that came from.

Thank you, Mr. Kelly. That's a great question. When we prepared our budget, we didn't We did look at all of the detail to come up with $178,000. I didn't go back through all of those forecasting details to indicate which lines was which one, but it would be— you are correct, the commodity and services are made up of all of those lines in blue. Thank you, Mr. Burks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm just noticing The travel and training was down to a number very similar to what I was proposing as a reduction in that, um, in that fund. And I was just wondering if you guys can speak a little bit to where— was there opportunities enough to try and utilize that funding, or was it a staffing issue, or just why, uh, why so much wasn't utilized out of that? Yeah, I'll take that and then chime in if anyone has more detail. We generally come in under budget on travel and training because the way that we manage our travel and training is you have to have that, you know, you have to know the conference you want to go to, what the hotels are going to cost, how many days you're going to be there when we build a budget.

So each like named individual has that training budget. Inevitably, there's turnover, vacations, You can't go, go on those. So I think a lot of that lapse in travel training is due to that, which is, which is also why we still, you know, request that full amount. You'll see the same argument when we talk about commodities and services later. Like, it's important to have that full authority, even if we don't fully spend it, because it allows that employee to, you know, have that opportunity, or that employee to have, you know, the opportunity to like the department to have the opportunity to purchase something if it's a commodity, while maintaining our budget culture that's not like you have to spend every penny or you won't have the authority the next year.

Do you have more detail on that, Deputy Manager Barg? Yeah, thank you. I'll just add that it is very likely, and Director Flick can correct me if she thinks I'm wrong, that the lion's share of this variance is public safety related. You'll see on a later slide that a great deal of our personnel savings is public safety related. And when we budget travel training for public safety, in addition to doing it how the manager described it, we also budget for travel training for positions that we hope to hire because we will need to train them if we are successful in hiring them.

All right. Thank you. Next slide. Excellent. So we're going to just stay on personnel for a moment and look at a pie chart.

Of our personnel savings. So, um, on the previous slide we saw we had $3.7 million of personnel lapse, and we often get the question, well, how— where did that occur? Which departments? And so this slide is really intended to help you see that the lion's share, as Deputy Manager Barr just explained, is in Public Safety, with Police and Fire being, um, the biggest, um, Community Development and Parks and Rec, um, being the next two largest after that. And again, you know, our expectation, our forecast was really close to our actual personnel lapse, and I'll just say again, this was before we really ratcheted down on tightening the belt for '27.

So I would be surprised if we see a chart like this when we have this conversation in a year. Any questions on this one? There is more personal savings on the next slide that Um, go ahead. Okay, so we'll go to the next slide. Um, this is something that, um, we, we did a couple years ago and updated last year, and this is really kind of looking at the biggest, um, departments that had personnel lapse.

So, um, closest to the department name, you'll see the, the FY26, um, personnel savings and their— and that department's total personnel budget and kind of the percentage that there are lapses of the total. Um, but then in the next 3 columns, you'll see the '25 numbers. So what's interesting in this to me is, is somehow, um, is partially how the departments change from '25 to '26. But then overall, if you look at the, the percentage of lapse in '25 and compare it overall kind of to the departments in '26, you can start to see we were ramping down on our vacancy savings and building that into our budgeted numbers. But you'll also see that we are gaining some success in hiring.

So there's a combination of things in there. I do want to point out the Public Works and Engineering may be catching your eye, going from $3.3 million down to $237,000. There's a couple of things going on there, so don't get too excited. Our— we had a practice in FY25 and earlier where when project managers are working on a project, they charge their time to those projects. We would show that as laps, as savings, and we have cleaned that process up in FY26 so that there's not this huge apparent lapse when really, in fact, we're budgeting for those project managers to be allocating their time to projects.

And so we want to see that happen in our actuals as well. So that is the biggest driver in that engineering and public works variance. Happy to take other questions on this.

Mr. Steininger. Um, thank you. My eye is kind of caught by that community development percent.

2 Years in a row where it's like 1 in 7, 1 in 8 positions are vacant. I guess kind of how concerned— like, is that just a 2-year trend? Is that just a blip that's happening, or is that kind of a longer-term trend in that department? Kind of, should we be concerned about our ability to recruit and retain there?

Thank you for that question. It is difficult to recruit retain those entry-level planners. However, I am pleased to say that we are almost fully staffed at CDD. We have one senior planner position vacant, but they are actually bumping up against that vacancy rate ceiling that was established this year in the budget. So we are holding off on hiring for that, that final position, and that might be part of a mid-year adjustment that I bring to you.

So real hiring challenges at CDD. However, we've made some, some successes recently.

See nothing. Oh, Ms. Cosgrove, just a point of clarification. The percentages that we're talking about is a percentage of budget, not necessarily a percentage of staff, and there's a loose correlation but not an exact one. Is that a fair statement?

That's a fair statement, yes. Thanks.

See nothing further. Go ahead. Excellent. So we'll move out of the personnel realm into the nonpersonal lapse. The chart on this page is just the department or division where the nonpersonal lapse was $99,000 or more because there was just a great breaking point right there.

I was trying to get to $100,000, but that last CDD just felt like it belonged in the, on the chart. So we went with, you know, those departments that are over $99,000. Um, we're gonna just kind of walk through, um, a few of the items with respect to, um, each of these, um, not like beat them, um, beat them into, uh, submission. Uh, so we'll start with RecycleWorks. Um, there's a couple things going on there.

Um, they, they did have about $100,000 in invoices that they did not process timely in FY26, so those are going to roll into FY27. So that's administratively a little— that lapse looks bigger than actual expenses. But we also had about $162,000 in our junked vehicle program that wasn't expended. We will probably talk about junked vehicle program a bit because we are, as in other areas, seeing some pretty high escalation in costs cost there.

I'm just going to run through these, Manager Kester, unless you like give me the high sign that you want me to— that you want some of these. In transit, the biggest savings there compared to budget had to do with the paratransit contract negotiated less than the previous, and they also had a bit of savings in their bus maintenance parts. But they also saw higher than expected fuel costs. So a little bit of offsetting there. Um, and I think, Mr. Brooks, to, to your question earlier, when we talk about, um, the police department, one of their— a lot of their savings was just kind of sprinkled around, not super interesting, but one that jumped out at me was, um, their uniform allowance had a, a pretty, um, high lapse, about $43,000, um, which is just indicative of the number of officers that they have.

So that personnel savings kind of drives that. In the manager's office, there were a couple of things that drove that savings. One is the beautiful update to our audiovisual in this room came in under budget, and also our conflict attorneys were significantly less than budgeted. We did see some savings, about $50,000 related to our website redesign, and that's a one-time expense anyway, and it's really a timing. It's— it got pushed to '27 to continue and finish that work.

In our IT world, we saw some significant savings with just the subscription-based— everything in software is subscription-based, so in those maintenance fees and subscription fees But we're also seeing a significant spike in some of our data lines, so there was kind of a mixed bag of ups and downs. The fire department again had some sprinkling all over. General supplies and medical and health services were both down by $73,000 and almost $60,000, and again, looking back to their personal laps, almost $38,000 in training was unexpended. In the Clerk and Elections area, printing was down, training was down, postage was down, all of those. And then similarly, as we talked about with personnel savings in Community Development, they had almost $50,000 worth of training that wasn't expended, primarily due to vacancies in that department, and then a few other things that contributed.

So those are the big drivers in the commodities and services area for '26. Any questions?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. With the 100-some thousand invoices from RecycleWorks, was that like— is that a common thing from them, or was it like snowpocalypse holding them back, throwing things in disarray? What happened there? That's an excellent question. I don't think it's a common thing.

I think there were just some a lot of things going on with personnel in that area, and they just one day opened a door and went— that is a very technical explanation. So I would not expect to see that again.

All right, continue. All right, we'll go to the next slide.

Yes, so we've spent most of our time talking about general fund, um, general funded departments and divisions. I think, um, you all.

That you have responsibility for the entire city budget. And so we wanted to highlight some of how those other departments or funds were faring.

I don't know that I need to read all of these, but I know fleet's going to catch your eye. Fleet replacement, we're going to talk about that on the next slide. So on that one, you can save questions. I will talk about risk management. That was— that one is showing over budget on here, and that was part of the supplemental ordinance that was introduced on Monday, last week, Monday, yes, a week ago.

Um, wow. And that really does have to do with snowpock— snowpop— that big snowstorm we had in December last year. Sorry, I can't say that word today. Um, and we do anticipate that, um, we will be reimbursed through our insurance, through the state, um, for those costs. But, um, you know, there was plenty of, of damage, lots of assessments, and, and so all of that's just going to live in the risk fund.

Um, we'll adjust the, um, the budget for that. I'm happy to answer questions on any of these.

Hospital. Yeah, hospital is over budget. Um, this is in addition to the supplemental that was done Maybe in June, July, I can't remember exactly what month it came to you.

We are working with the hospital to try to better understand what that overage looks like.

They are one of, they are the only department of the city who does not use the city's accounting software, and so the information that we have is really about cash that's, that goes out the door, and then we true that up to their financial statements as their financial statements are collected. We have done a preliminary true-up of their expenses and also expenses that would come out of a budget world and really end up in a balance sheet. We can have a great accounting discussion later, but we've accounted for that, and it does leave them with about $7.4 million of cash out the door that sitting as an expense, um, pending their final financial statements, if anything comes through in that, um, that would have us, um, do adjustments. But at this point, um, it does look like those are, are actual expenditures, and, and that, um, department was also included in supplemental that was introduced last week.

Okay, I'll ask the follow-up question. Are they on a different software system because the hospital has weird things that happening at the hospital? Why are they on a different system, I guess, is my question. Madam Mayor, that's a fantastic question. Um, the hospital is a department of the city, and they do have, um, they have several operations that are run distinctly outside of the regular city.

Um, I believe it's absolutely appropriate for them to have a point-of-sale system. They're business, just like Parks' business is unique. And so how they manage their billings and their insurance processes and their patient billings, all of that's, um, you know, definitely unique to the hospital, and I would expect them to have their own system for that. Why their accounting software is separate from the city is an interesting question, um, and I don't, I don't have a history for why that is. I don't, you know, just sitting here today without doing a ton of research, I can't tell you that they need to be separate, um, but they are.

All right, Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Do you know if they're making 5% or more revenue in addition to being over budget? Do you know if they're bringing in more money? Uh, they're actually, uh, in the, in the trial balance sheet and income statement that I received mid-September, they actually are posting an operating loss.

So their revenue does not cover their expenses.

And that's not finalized. That was preliminary. Just, I'll say that again. Um, Ms. Hall. Yeah, and is this related to the federal funds that typically come through that haven't?

Um, I would not expect their expenditures to be related to the federal funds, perhaps the revenue. Um, I understand that if that, that revenue is approved through, um, the body that it's sitting in, that it contains language that would allow for retro payments. And so they would expect to get revenue associated with FY26. So that could change their, their revenue versus expenses, but their expenses over budget would not be impacted by that.

Madam Manager, December is when our joint meeting is?

December 2nd. Well, thank you for that. This might be a topic for our agenda. See nothing further. Go ahead.

Okay, let's move on to talk about fleet and the fleet reserve.

Excellent. As the previous slide showed, the fleet replacement was about 46%. Um, under budget, budgeted for $13 million, only expended $7 million. And, um, so here's a list of the departments and their over-under budget. And to get to that variance, I will point out that fire, transit, and wastewater make up 80% of the variance.

Also of note, those 3 departments have the highest single item value equipment across the entire fleet. So we're talking about fire trucks and ambulances and super specialized trucks to do cool wastewater things and a vac truck and buses. I mean, they are the expensive equipment. And another thing to realize is that a lapse in this does not mean that there's not a need. This is really about timing.

In particular, particularly when we're talking about these big, expensive, unique pieces of equipment, we require the appropriation to happen before we put a purchase order in for them. But it may take us well over 12 years or 12 months, maybe 24 months before we get that apparatus in and it really gets expensed. So, you know, in the case of fire, you know, ambulances, fire trucks are just really spendy and they take, a year to 2 years to get. So we certainly don't want to equate this lapse with a lack of need. This is, this is all about timing.

Ms. Atqasuk.

Um, with these timelines being so long for these very specialized, um, pieces of equipment, are, you know, wastewater and fire looking at extending their, uh, replacement schedules to account for that, or are we just going to keep kind of being behind?

Happy to take that one. Thank you, Miss Atkinson. So, yes, departments absolutely are taking that into account. It is only recently, at least in the fire world— Manager Koester probably knows more about wastewater than I do— but at least in the fire world that The industry, particularly on the engine side, but also on the ambulance side, has frankly become quite monopolized, that there are very few vendors that are providing these large pieces of equipment anymore, and their backlogs have gotten longer and longer as time goes on. So FHIR is taking that into account in their fleet replacement schedules.

It is not uncommon for the, you know, quoted timeframe to be in the 3 to 5 year range, which, 5 years ago, it was in the, like, 1- to 2-year range. And just looking at these numbers, I know for sure that FHIR has about $2.8 million committed in a prepaid account for equipment that is on order. So you could reasonably view that line as flat, not as 93% under budget for that reason.

Anything further, Madam Manager? Thank you. I just want to add the last two budget cycles we have more closely scrutinized that fleet contribution. And so we will continue to do that as we progress. You know, sometimes maybe you don't need a new truck after 7 years, you can extend that.

So that analysis happens on a department-by-department basis.

Okay, seeing nothing further, go ahead. Excellent. Well, we will move on to what I know you're most curious about, which is your fund balance and the general fund. Um, so I'm just going to walk through some timelines here and how things change. So, um, I'll just ask you to humor me as we do this.

So again, way back in March, we prepared the manager's proposed budget. And with that, we did some forecasting. The Assembly had taken actions on things in FY26, and we anticipated the ending fund balance of FY26 to be $20.7 million.

And then April and May happened, and we could go to the next slide if that's okay, Madam Mayor. Yep. And by the time we got to our adopted budget, So, in July of 2026, our 2026 budget went from $20 million to $10 million. Why, you might ask? There was a small little ordinance in there to resolve a revenue sharing agreement that was about $9.5 million in the general fund, is the bulk of that.

So, as we were just like closing, closing the door on time in July, that FY26 fund balance had dropped from 20 to 10. Okay, going to the next slide. Um, this— I have two slides that are the, um, kind of fund balance summary related to FY26. So, um, and I did this in two slides so that there was a, at least a small chance you could read this tiny writing. Um, but some of this, um, on this first slide, this is all of the appropriations that impacted FY26, and then on the next slide are the, um, anticipated and realized variances.

So, um, you know, through Uh, you'll notice— sorry, let me see if I can get this right— we went from March having $12 million to July having $10 million, and now because we've experienced everything in FY26, we're up to $18 million. So we've got an increase— almost $19 million— an increase of $8.6 million from the adopted budget. We can go back to, um, $2 million in commodities and services that added, and your revenue that added to the fund balance as well. So those are the big, big drivers, um, that took you to, um, that ending balance in FY26.

And we can talk about FY26, or I can answer the question of, well, what does that make FY27? Because I'm sure that's also the burning question. Let's go with the burning question. Okay, so we'll go to the next slide. So, um, this again, I'm gonna take you back in time.

In June, as you were adopting the budget, we gave you a summary of your fund balance, and at the end of FY27, after all of the budget decisions were made And, um, with anticipated FY26 legislation, you were going to be at, um, $3.3 million. And with potential foregone revenue items that were in the queue, it's going to get you to $3.7 million. So again, back in June, that's where we thought we were going to be. And then we go to the next slide. With that change in our ending FY26 fund balance, it pushes your expected FY27 ending fund balance from $3.3 million up to $12.1 million.

And again, we'll point back to those big revenue drivers— that sales tax that was really driven by that conflict in the Middle East. Um, we had almost $2 million from Gastineau Human Services that we hadn't anticipated the return of the grant. And then that additional $2 million in commodity and services lapse from '26, and that's the real driver, um, to get you to that '27 fund balance. So if you ask me what's my fund balance today, the answer is $12.1 million. And remember, it's today, just watching all the different things happen.

Ms. Cosgrove, you may not be able to answer this, but I'm curious. We, we talk about the increase in sales tax revenue driven by conflict in the Middle East, surely some of those same things impacted our expenses, and I'm curious if you've seen that on the other side. And I know there was a lapse in some of those pieces, so I recognize that, but I'm just curious how that same thing is impacting the city. That's a really great question.

I don't have hard data to share with you, but the last couple of years, our non-personnel lapse has been $3, $4, $5 million, and it was only $2 million this year. So I think that some of that cost that impacts the city's ability to give services is seen in that lapse being just $2 million. As we looked through the various ways that we can slice and dice sales tax data, the biggest driver was an anything that used fuel. So anything that needed a barge to come up here, anything that needed a plane to come up here, whether that was a thing or a person, you know, those, those were so clear as differences from a year ago. And, and you all know when you drive by anywhere that's got the fuel price, diesel at over $6 is mind-blowing.

And before we get too excited about the $12 million, we still have the glop conversation. Um, see no further questions. Um, I'll have a question. So the restricted budget reserve, we pulled some money out of that without replacing it. Can you give me a ballpark figure of that and just remind my assembly members that we are supposed to replace this when we pull it out?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, I'll give you a couple of facts about your, um, restricted budget reserve. Um, you've got 17 point— looks like $17.6 million in there right now. Um, you should have $24 million. Um, $3.5 million, um, was pulled out for glof-related expenses.

Um, there was a small amount that came back, about $300,000, where FEMA funding came through, and so that restored some of the restricted budget reserve. So $3.2 million of the restricted budget reserve is— was pulled out for glof. You also have just about $2.5 million set aside for the Eagle Crest deficit, which I know is something we can— is on the agenda to talk about on Wednesday. But those two things together is— are, you know, almost $6 million, $5.7 million. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Just a clarifying question with that $17.5 million, is that exclusive of the $2.5 million for Eagle Crest, or are we factoring that in as if we have it?

If you were to, um, direct us to resolve the Eagle Crest fund deficit through regular unrestricted general funds, it would take you from $17 million up to $19.5 million. Thank you.

All right, any further questions on that?

Okay, carry on. Excellent. So the last slide is what Manager Kuester really wants to talk about. Thank you. Yes, this is a teaser slide for questions that I would— direction that staff would like to get at the November 21st budget retreat so that we can take that direction and build you a budget.

So one of the things that we're going to be talking about is it's time to assemble a temporary 1% And looking for some guidance on assembling that list for you. My recommendation that we, of course, will go into greater detail of, like, example projects and needs would be a real theme of taking care of what we have. And there's a policy decision to be made there because often the 1% in the past has kind of been where you fund some of those more pet projects, for lack of a better word. But, you know, where constituencies are really looking Certain constituencies are really looking forward to, you know, different things, new services. And so that would be, that would be a policy conversation for you to have.

The other policy conversation is we have, you know, new revenue, and how do you want to budget for recreation? My recommendation is a status quo budget. We currently spend between capital and operating almost $20 million a year on recreation-related items. We will detail that all for you in the retreat, but That'll of course be, you know, how the assembly is wanting to kind of spend those new dollars that the voters very intentionally intended to be meant for preserving recreation while leaving that discretion with the governing body. Also, we'll be asking for guidance on budget, right?

Every year you say, you know, last year you said cut tighten, trim, and find new revenue. So we're looking for direction on both kind of status quo budget, cut budget, you know, what you all want to see, but also we'll be asking you, advising that we would present a balanced budget. So we've had a couple of years of fund balance spent in order to balance the budget, and this really isn't best practices. There were really good reasons that, you know, as evidenced by today's presentation, right, the good reasons why you did not make wholesale cuts to a lot of programming. Those have borne fruit, but it's kind of time to probably get back to balanced budget.

But that, of course, is a policy decision for you to give. Also, some policy guidance on our CIP appropriations. We have trimmed back CIP spend because our CIP spend is, um, uh, a lot of our CIP spend is sales tax driven and we just have a different sales tax number. So, um, we are in the last year of 1% and every year we've kind of sacrificed a project that might have been on the 1% list in order to make that budget goal. So kind of checking in with you on that.

Um, and then the last item that I think will be really interesting to talk through from a policy perspective is is how aggressive we are on forecasting. And I know we've had this conversation before. I mean, my first year as city manager, we had the whole how aggressive do we, do we forecast?

But acknowledging that we've experienced this inflation in, in, you know, transportation costs, which has meant we have more funding, but it also is incredibly volatile, right? We don't know what's going to happen. And so we want to get guidance from the body on a way to structure our budget, and I'm thinking capital budget specifically, where you can still make some of those really kind of bold assumptions on revenue, maybe more bold than even the finance director would recommend, but bifurcate your CIP appropriation in a way that if we don't make those returns, we're not, you know, overspending. And so just talking through that, that is a policy decision. So I mostly wanted to make sure that you had time to kind of chew on those that we can chat about them and, um, let you know what we plan on asking of you in, uh, no, on that November 21st date.

Any questions on the ask or any questions that you want to prepare staff for, for our retreat? Ms. Hall? Yeah, would the retreat— will we be provided with, you know, what was cut last year so we can take a look at that as well as if we want to do any adding back?

Absolutely. My question will be magic finance manager.

My question would be, I'm not going to ask you for a night just to put it in your head, and I don't even know if it's going to— can you peel out inflation on your sales tax and give us how close you would have been without sale, without inflation? But I'm not asking you to give me that number, but is it possible to do that? Um, it may be possible. One of the things we absolutely tracked was, um, the amount of sales tax we thought we would lose due to the food exemption and the residential utility exemption, and we were within a couple hundred thousand dollars of that. Um, so as— so that makes me believe, had there not been inflation our overall sales tax number would have come in, um, fairly close to our, our reduced with the election result, um, forecast.

That's pretty tight. So anyway, if you could bring those, that, those numbers, that would be great. Anything further, Mr. Burks?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Is there any way to get, you know, like a view over the last handful of years of parcels that have gone off of the property rolls or the property tax rolls, just, you know, not necessarily housing stock, but just, you know, commercial properties to things like that, just so we can kind of have like that comprehensive view of what we have compared to what we had just, you know, years prior. So, Mr. Brooks, just to make sure I'm clear, are you saying a piece of property was paying sales or property tax and now it's not? Okay, thank you.

Uh, that's a good question. Um, we certainly can, um, The answer is yes. The thing that I don't know sitting right here is if I can do it in minutes, days, weeks, or months, because certainly we can get a list from any year and put another list next to it and put another list next to it, and it's a very manual process. Um, we, we talked a few months ago about, um, looking to replace our enterprise systems, and one of the reasons why we're looking to replace them is, um, the reporting out of it is just not excellent, and, um, our parcel data, um, is, is part of that group that's just really hard to, to be able to answer a question like that. Um, that being said, we can do just kind of initial cursory review and see, see what we think it would take, and I can, I can work with Manager Koester to figure that out.

I do, and correct me if I'm wrong, Director Flick, but, uh, getting the value of, um, the assessed— I mean, we could, we, we can get like moment in time, uh, well, it's one, it's one year at a time value for property that is taxable and non-taxable, correct? So, so like that high-level data is easier to get and the parcel-specific information is more difficult. Am I understanding that?

We have aggregate valuation numbers, absolutely, at a high level. There are some properties that there's some parcels that just don't get values assigned to them because of the type of parcel they have, they are. So, like I said, I'll do a cursory review to see what we think we can pull together. And to follow up on that, what the manager was saying, yeah, that, that larger view of like what is taxable on the rolls and what isn't, you know, that for a handful of years would, would be just, just as good as a spice. Okay, got what you think you got where you needed then.

Ms. Cosgrove, let's see if I can frame this in a way that makes sense. If we're going to look at aggressive revenue forecasting, can I assume that you all are going to bring back some, uh, projections versus actuals so we can kind of look at trend over time of what that looks like, and maybe also consideration of what are those big unknown things that happen and pop up, which they frequently do, inflation being one of those things. Does that— is my ask clear? Thank you for that question.

We are planning to bring you several years of, for instance, sales tax data by year, what was budgeted, what was the actual sales tax for that given year. And then also, by November 21st, we'll have had July, August, September quarter of sales tax data was due today. So we'll, we'll have, you know, some more current numbers, and we hope to have at least a first blush of what we think '28 is going to look like. So hopefully through all of that, that trend data will pop. Thank you.

Ms. Niven.

Going back to the fleet reserve spreadsheet, is it possible to get the encumbered amounts and add a column in there so we get more of real time where we stand?

Uh, thank you for that question. Yes, we can. Thank you.

Okay, seeing nothing further, um, let's go ahead and take 9 minutes, so bring us to 8:20.

Back into session.

Save us quickly from that discussion.

Uh, telephone hill request for qualifications. Madam Manager. Thank you, Madam Mayor. On page 28 of your packet, you have a cover memo from me that's kind of outlining this topic. Um, this RFQ is the culmination of about 3 years of Assembly work that, you know, began with public meetings, developed into the place guide that's posted on the website, evolved into many, many different decisions that the Assembly made.

Eventually, the Assembly decided to pause on planned demolition of Telephone Hill and issue this request for qualifications to kind of see what developments are out there. So Normally a process like this, and I say normally, but acknowledging that this is definitely not a normal process and there's nothing about redeveloping a core part of downtown that, that is normal, right? So part of why you were here and you put so much effort onto this is it is a unique and transformative opportunity, but we do RFQs and RFPs all the time and staff has the authority to issue those. After the Assembly has appropriated those funds and given that direction. In this instance, just because it's such an important project, there's new Assembly members, we really wanted to bring the topic back to you and just have a touch base.

Sorry, I got distracted. Just wanted to come back and touch base with you on the RFQ, the RFQ process, and most importantly, the evaluation criteria. The evaluation criteria area is on page 50 of your packet. The, the memo says page 15. That's because when I drafted the memo, I was working off of an RFQ that got repaginated when it got stitched into the packet.

So, so again, focus of that is on page 50. You also have in your packet a nice timeline that staff put together, just kind of detailing the steps and the major decision points as a, as a matter of background on this topic. So the purpose for this conversation today is to really focus on the, that evaluation criteria. We will issue this RFQ pretty much as soon as you give us that direction to do so. We'll hold it open for about 60 days.

We'll have pre-bid meetings, you know, we'll go through all of that process, and then staff will come together and have a scoring committee. So we will take that evaluation criteria that's in the RFQ. It will be It will be a rubric, right? And, and staff will use that rubric to score all of the applications and all of the proposals, and we will develop a recommendation that is most aligned with the evaluation criteria. And you'll, you'll notice again, that's on page 50 of your packet.

That includes the, the project vision, which is an important part. It's kind of like what we've been talking about for the last 3 years, but Really, the major part of that, that criteria is based on a firm's kind of ability to do the work and their history doing the work. This is why it's a request for qualifications and not a request for proposals. So staff will— it'll be open for, you know, at least a 60-day period. We will come together and we will score those proposals, and then we will bring those proposals to the Assembly with a recommendation.

So we would say we recommend Proposal B because it is most aligned with Assembly vision and the most experienced team, project team, and the developer has experience developing affordable housing in urban environments similar to Juneau. And, you know, for all of these reasons, we recommend this, this, you know, Proposer, proposal, proposer number B. Then if you accepted that recommendation, you would, just like you do with all of our land development transactions. So think of 12th Street and Franklin, for example. You would authorize the city manager to enter into negotiations with that developer to flesh out details of that project, right?

So there's still one thing I want I want you to take away from today's process is there are still many touchpoints for assembly approval. If you get to that, you know, we've had the 60 days, staff gives you a recommendation and you say, I don't like staff's recommendation because I don't think they adequately assessed, you know, our vision as established in the RFQ. I recommend Proposal C. You can do that. I just would encourage you to have it justified in the evaluation criteria and the project vision that you're establishing in in the RFQ process today, right? Because it's important that all those respondents know what you're going to be valuing when you score those and when the staff scores those, but ultimately when the assembly reviews those.

So there is, I think, a degree of flexibility built into this process and touchpoints built into this process, right? You will authorize the manager to enter into negotiations, and then the manager will hammer out details of, you know, feasibility and all the, like, all the details that really matter through this process, because a proposer is going to have to invest a significant amount of money into developing all of those details. And then you would have, you know, another opportunity to approve any project or any transfer of property. So not as, you know, not as probably crystal ball as we would like to have to know exactly what we're going to do. But I think it lays out a process that keeps us moving forward on telephone hell while maintaining the assembly's discretion to, you know, provide that direction.

Happy to answer any questions. All right, who has questions?

Well, I'll start with mine then since everybody's being shy. Okay, I have said from all along we should do this a little bit differently, but that's okay. I can go with the will of the body, but I just want to make sure that this is open enough. You say up to 150 155 units, but let's pretend that I'm a developer. I want to do 30 high-end condos.

Can I still answer the RFQ? Yes, and you could answer the RFQ to not develop the entire site. You could— let's say you wanted those 30 high-end condos on the, the forward lot. You could just respond for that that piece. Okay, I'll just keep going.

What if I just want to do infill, keep a couple of the houses and put a fourplex or something there? Can I still respond? Yes, you can respond, and it would be scored, uh, according to the criteria that's established in this RFQ. Mr. Brooks, see, I got you guys started, so now you'll start thinking. Mr.

Brooks, um, I just want to know, like, The things that we should iron out for the understanding of us on the body here is like, exactly how many units do we want? What level of subsidy do we want to provide on the taxpayer's dime? And, uh, you know, what do we want to see out of this RFQ? Because right now it's for, you know, up to 155 units, but all the language is still very much full demo, high-rise, high-density. And I think we need to go around the table and see if that's actually what we want and kind of iron out some of those details now so we don't push this through and then get, uh, less than desirable responses and then have to get something new issued down the road.

And that's— I want to be efficient here. Now, Mr. Brooks, I hear what you're saying, but that's why I just asked my questions, is it's anywhere up to 150 units, so I don't think we want to take anything off the table, but we'll let the body think about that for a minute. I'll go to Mr. Kelly.

Uh, thank you. Um, so I'm looking at the timeline that you have here on page 31 of the packet, and I'm thinking— I, I've been looking through this as much as I can over this weekend, and I might have some ideas for amendments, but there's some things I might want to hash out. If we ended up taking another meeting to— in order to do this, uh, would— how would that impact the timeline, Madam Manager?

Um, it would delay the timeline by, uh, at least till at least another month, right? We're in November 2nd. Our next committee, the whole— is November 30th. All right, Mr. Kelly, start asking your questions. Um, Ms.

Hall, another, uh, I'm looking at the available incentives and the low-income housing tax credits, which, um, that program, they usually expire in 30 years. So then that would make those vulnerable to becoming market rate. Um, so I'm just wondering, are we— would this allow developers to consider other such as, say, limited equity co-op housing. You know, I want to make sure we throw out several different potential models that they might take a look at. Madam Manager.

Yes, one of the reasons why we are so heavily focused on the qualifications of the developer is because we want to attract a developer that has experience in some of these unique financing mechanisms, but also programs for affordable housing, programs for financing. So we would be leaning on that experience. We would be hoping to have that experience in the proposers who respond. Okay, Mr. Kelly.

Thank you. I also, looking at the timeline, I just had a question about what the definition for— so you— so I guess LCG, which I think is Leland Consulting Group, would be contacting regional developers. So what would that mean? Would that mean people— what defines region? Is it like Southeast Alaska?

Is it region, like the— this region of the United States. What are we talking about, Stephanie? Amanda, it is Pacific Northwest, and there is linked in the memo, the historical memo, there is a link to that initial developer outreach. I believe 9 different developers, you know, this was months ago from the Pacific Northwest. There might have been some from the, the middle of the country as well.

But really, we've been advised that the kind of most attractive, you know, developers that would find this attractive would be in our geographic region. So we would focus our outreach there. Thank you. I'm gonna follow up to Mr. Kelly. So I know we can't say Alaska-based developers because that's illegal, but can we say anything about who build in wet, snowy climates or anything like that?

I think—. Question for the attorney. Yeah, well, I think that the— that would go under the qualification section where they have demonstrated experience in similar projects. Thank you. Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm kind of on that same vein, just in terms of, you know, people building in northern climates or Alaska, or I mean, I guess, is it— is that important to include or not? I mean, I guess it isn't included now. It's like similar projects, but it's not like similar climates or—.

Thanks. Madam Andrew, we can certainly make sure that there's a reference in our criteria under quality and success of previous projects that is specific to not just similar land uses to those provided or scale of projects, but building in northern climates. Northern southeastern climates. Yeah, go ahead, Mr. Smith. I was just gonna say, like, only if, only if that actually makes sense.

I mean, saying like in Alaska, I could see not making sense because there's, you know, interior permafrost and then, you know, southeast clay soils. So like, anyway, I just wanted to flag that as if it makes sense to include some type That anyway, just then go forward. I'm not saying it has to. Thanks.

And I know we don't have to— we're looking at specific projects, but can we get any idea from this what the cost per square foot would be?

Or was that as we get closer to a project? Yeah, I think that level of feasibility just would be, you know, would require significant investment on the proposer's part. So I would see that level of feasibility hammered out after entering into negotiations. However, we have asked under the project vision that projects requiring less assembly incentives will be graded higher because the reality is we don't care how much it costs per square foot. We care how much taxpayer dollars are needed to make the investment successful.

So we're really trying to focus on that piece. Good job. You answered my other question. I was going to say, can we rate how much subsidy is needed? But that answered my question.

Ms. Niven.

I was just going to comment on what Mr. Smith said, and, and I do like adding the environmental experience in our climate, to make sure that's clear.

All right, anything further? Mr. Smith. Thank you. I hear, and you know what, as I read the words that construct up to 155 units, I, you know, I see how this— it is open there. I guess I just— just a point of consideration is, do— should we use— should we provide examples or, you know, say things so it is crystal clear, like submissions do— anyway, like submissions do not need to redevelop all parcels or, you know, just Just to make it like very clear that the other options are allowable.

I see how it is, but again, I don't know if like— so anyway, I'm not sure if a developer reading this would say, oh, hey, I want to develop one parcel and I'd feel good submitting that.

Thank you for that question. I think that we can make sure that we're clear that it's not an all-or-nothing RFQ, and there are other places that speak to that. I think it is difficult to, you know, if you guys are like, I really want to prioritize something low density over high density, that would be direction to give at this time, right? Because you have— you don't want the highest density. You made that decision when you discussed the place guide, when you discussed statement of objectives.

But if you're like, I really think a lower density number would be preferable nonwithstanding all other variables, than 155 units, then that is direction you, you should give, because the direction that we have gotten up to this point is, um, that, you know, higher density is preferred. Now you can see how the scoring criteria is weighted. Your quality and success of previous projects and your experience delivering projects is weighted far greater than project vision which encompasses all of those things. So you have, you have, uh, 70 points for basically can they do the job, uh, and then only 30 points for what's their vision of, of the job. So, um, I think there's a lot of room for that.

But if, if really you don't want to entertain 155 units, that is direction you should give today. Thank you for that. And I hadn't forgotten Mr. Brooks, I just was taking questions first before we had that. Mr. Steininger, you look perplexed.

Uh, less perplexed. I'm just thinking about the statement that, uh, that Mr. Smith made and kind of trying to consider that with comments of, of Manager Kester. Um, I do kind of lean towards, towards what Mr. Smith just said of maybe having some kind of statement in there, finding a way to include some kind of statement that makes it clear that or a, a not proposal, because these aren't proposals, but a response that, that did not look like—. There's this diagram on the, the place guide, page 47, where it shows the 9 different design guidelines. In every one of those pictures, all the current buildings are gone and replaced with new structures, which I think would further lead a respondent to maybe sync that response is required, all the structures demolished, because they're not going to watch this hearing and go back and read our minutes.

So maybe a statement that makes it very clear that they're not required to demolish all structures, but that, you know, the addition, or the— there'd be a favorable score to responses that increase the number of units on the hill or something. I'm not getting—. That's why I looked perplexed. I couldn't phrase what I wanted to say in my head. Mr. Brooks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, do you think an appropriate way to encompass what Assemblymember Smith and Steininger are saying is something like— and, and I'm not going to use the 155 units because I don't think it's nearly as feasible, but But could you say something like 30 to 80 units including existing structures, and then that way it could encompass what's already there in addition, because I mean, of course we want more, uh, housing. So the 30 or 35 is double what's already there, but what's already there could be contributed to it. And then doing that range, 30 to 80, you know, sets that clear definition as like, we have to do at least this much and then up to, up to this point.

Um, so I, I want to go back to Assemblymember Steininger's comment on page 50. It says a statement of the respondent's vision for Telephone Hill, including whether they propose to develop the entire site or only a portion, proposed uses and open spaces and considerations for affordable housing. So, It is mentioned in there. I also want to note that when you, when you pause demolition, you pause demolition. You did not cancel demolition.

You did not say you were not going to demo those houses or pay for demoing those houses. So that is one of the potential assembly incentives that is still on the table for development of this project. And then to address Assemblymember Brooks' question, Um, I think that you absolutely could amend this RFQ and say we want to prioritize infill over new development, and we want to prioritize a lower density of housing. I think that would be a very hard pivot from all the work that has been done to this moment, and might, though I'm not sure, necessitate a little bit more just thought work because it is— because we've kind of been going on this like this path, right? The place guide is very, is very clear.

Like, I think we would want to like go back to the place guide and look at some of the other options and maybe spend just a little bit more time if we're going to prioritize. So it's not that that option's not on the table, right? It's not that if someone submitted a proposal and said, I want to do 30 units and I want to do infill, that this simply wouldn't, that, that you wouldn't, it wouldn't be considered. It's just that it would be scored lower than a project that that is proposing a higher density project, all other things equal, right? Remembering that we're actually valuing the ability of the team to do the work more than anything else, which still leaves a lot of, a lot of room, right, for those negotiations on exactly what that project would look like.

So I guess if we want to go back, you may want to consider kind of just sitting on this for a little bit longer and rethinking that, if that's the direction you want to choose. An idea. Uh, follow-up, and then Ms. Atqasuk. Thank you. Uh, I, you know, I, I was just asking if a proposal like what I had suggested would encompass what Mr. Smith was asking, and that was, you know, the, the clear statement to whoever might be responding that, hey, it, it can be a combination of some existing things And then also given that clear definition of exactly what we're looking at for a range, not just up to one large number.

So would, um, you know, that direction of 30 to 80 units, that which can include existing structures, encompass what Assemblymember Smith was kind of asking for in a sense?

I'm sorry, um, I might have been lost as to what Assemblymember Smith was asking for. Can Assemblymember Smith, can you restate that? Mr. Smith, thank you. I don't think I was suggesting putting in another set of numbers.

Um, I think I just wanted to— I wanted to have some language potentially in there that just made it clear that, you know, I mean, you brought up about Latin, not developing parcels. Anyway, I guess just language in there to make it clear to proposers that it doesn't have to only be 155 units in developing the entire site. I'm not totally sure how exactly to phrase that, Madam Manager, but that, that is more of what I, I want. That, that was more of my intention. Does that help?

No. Um, thank you, Mr. Smith. She's nodding yes. Ms. Cosgrove, I don't know if this helps, um, but on page 45 of the packet, there's a, uh, under goals, site plan and design.

There's a diagram of the Telephone Hill area with the 4 primary lots drawn in, and under goals it says construct up to 155 housing units, blah, blah, blah. Now obviously you're not going to get 155 units if you only say— well, maybe would— can do 1 parcel. You're not going to get 155 units on 1 parcel. And so maybe in that area, that's a place to just rearticulate that proposals for less than all 4 plots will be considered, or something along that line. I'm not phrasing that very well, um, but maybe that gets to Mr. Smith's concern.

I do recognize, um, what you said, Manager Custer, about that being included elsewhere. I just think we want to be clear that we're not communicating We're not creating dissonance in what we're— in what we're communicating, if that makes sense.

I think everybody has kind of said the same thing. I think we just want to make it clear that we will look at any project, but here's our grading criteria, but we'll look at any project. So we just want to make that clear in it somewhere. And if it's— that's the place or up in the front, just I think some statement that says we're interested in any project that increases— increases housing units or something.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think just to kind of summarize that, I think Assemblymember Cosgrove, that's an excellent addition, and we can definitely add that bullet point. I also think that there's probably somewhere in a preamble to summarize this conversation, and I would— I think I can— I think I can take that direction, right? To like, the Assembly will consider all options. We've done our best to lay out a vision that's consistent with community values and public process.

However, we understand that there are many factors that would influence, you know, feasibility and a developer's, you know, ability to bring this project to fruition. Something, something like that. And keeping in mind, we will also have pre-bid meetings with developers where they can ask a lot of these questions too. Okay, so I'm just looking— does that satisfy you, Mr. Brooks, something like that? Okay, you can say more.

Um, Mr. Smith, does that satisfy you, or you looking for something different? That, that works for me. Okay, Mr. Brooks, what would you have it say more?

I see Mr. Kelly, but we're having a conversation. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just, you know, want to emphasize that I think being willing to allocate millions for demo— like, there's two fronts on it, you know. The reason I said the 80 is because of the dual access. We go over 100 and it changes the complexity of, you know, having two modes of entrance and access for, uh, emergency response and You know, we're looking at doing— offering potential utility work, but not offering the road reconstruction, and that puts it to where only very few people can respond or do work like that.

But also, you know, the, the And so for that reason, it's like doing that 80, it kind of alleviates the need to have that potential for such large amounts of demolition. And it just— spending millions and millions of dollars should produce something, a foundation, a skeleton of some sort of housing. I can't imagine spending that kind of money, uh, with our financial situation to produce no housing at all. And it's something that, you know, in, in better standings and, you know, better financial positions or more buildable areas would— might be a little easier to digest, but I I just currently cannot imagine, like I said, millions being spent, especially since a large portion of that is a shipping cost to just make our hazardous materials someone else's problem. And so I would really like a focus to be is like, hey, let's get as much additional housing as we can in the area, but we can't subsidize it with millions of dollars of taxpayer funds just to make a blank slate.

We have to use money like that to actually create housing. Yep, and I think that will be a further discussion because I think that's where we would differ as a body, is all of us want increased housing, but how much we have to spend as a city is probably up for discussion. But I think that'll be a future discussion. Mr. Kelly, did we— did you have Anything to add? I was going to move the discussion in other areas.

I was going to go over the incentives a little bit, but could you pause for one second? And Miss Atkison raised her hand. Are you ready to chat now, Miss Atkison, or let Mr. Kelly go ahead? Mr. Kelly, I was just kind of— I was looking at the available incentives and I was also kind of looking at the overall project scope, you know, being up to 155 units with 30 of them being affordable.

I think that actually, um, if somebody did want to build the maximum of 155 and do the 30 units, that would not technically be 20% affordable units. That'd be just shy of that. So I think I would want to specify, like, if you are searching for that incentive, that you still must meet the requirements of that incentive. We're not going to give you special treatment because you're doing this project. That was, that was one point I wanted to make.

I think there might be another, but I'll let Ms. Atkason go first.

Uh, that might be a tough one, Mr. Kelly, because I think the rest of ours are going— we don't want to put too many sidebars on any projects. So I would certainly entertain— I'm speaking for myself totally— uh, 30-unit condos. So if nobody else comes through, yes, we want to find more housing, and we would love to do affordable housing, but if no one's going to bid on that, then I don't want to stop anybody from putting a project forward that we could consider. Ms. Atkason, you want to jump in there? Yeah, Madam Mayor, I guess I'll just have kind of a broad thing, which is we can definitely go through this whole RFQ and pick apart and really try to be so specific about what we're looking for.

But I actually think that's the wrong approach. I like the questions you asked in the beginning, trying to be be as flexible as possible while still making our intent clear, because I, I don't know about the rest of the body, but I want to see any feasible project that people can come up with. So we've made it clear what we're looking for, but I'm not really interested in adding a lot of sidebars that would prevent a person from being responsive and submitting a project. Mr. Kelly and Mr. Smith and Mrs. Niven, you can't see it, but people are nodding their heads on the assembly.

Okay, who else has— Mr. Kelly, I guess my pushback to that is that we're going to put this out and then we're going to create this expectation like this is, this is what we want. If you give us, if you give us what we're saying, these are what— this is what we're looking for. And if somebody puts back a proposal and then it ends up being something that none of us actually like, or maybe a majority of us don't actually like, then, um, then we're actually kind of damaging our credibility a little bit. And so I think it actually would be important to actually be specific on what we're reaching out to the developer community and asking for.

I'll go to Meta Manager on that one. Do we have enough criteria to rate people on that we could say no to a project that we didn't like? If it didn't meet some of our—. Yeah, I think where Assemblymember Keller— Kelly is getting is, is this line that you guys need to draw, the body needs to draw between being specific enough to articulate what you want so that there's a fair process and so that the developers are, you know, positioning themselves to it to build something that you, that you want, and that's going to be judged based on pre-established criteria, not based on the whim of like the whim of the day. And the, the flip side of that is to make sure there's enough flexibility so you can be attractive to all kinds of different developers because you don't know what's out there and you don't know the art, the, the, what is possible.

And I think this RFQ really tries to thread that needle. I also think that there is room in here for you to give different directions. So if your, uh, you know, direction is less density, you should give that. If your direction is more affordability, you should do that. If your direction is we absolutely don't want to spend any money on demolition, you should give that direction.

Does, does that help? I know that, um, I mean, and I don't want you to get so wrapped around the axle on all these details because in the end it really doesn't matter how long we talk about 80 homes, 31 units affordable, 30 units affordable. What matters is what people are willing to build. Mr. Steininger, and then, um, Ms. Niven.

I'm good, I'm good for now. Yeah, Ms. Niven.

I think maybe we need a more— a little more flexibility in the points under vision, and maybe that will help. I feel like, um, if people propose building a larger number of units, they're going to require more incentives, and the points that we score them at are going to offset each other, but only if we have the flexibility to do that with the, the way the points are, so that our vision for what we want to see outweigh— not necessarily outweighs, but gives more weight than the experience of the contractors, the developers that propose it. I think it's— I think it sounds to me like everybody wants to make sure we get what we want. And I think with having 30 versus 70 points, it's going to be harder to to meet our vision than just making sure we have a really good contractor, if that made sense.

Thank you for that. Mr. Steininger, you want to add to that, or? Yeah, I guess that, that is inspiring me to chime in a little bit because I actually kind of think about this sort of the opposite.

I like that success and experience, prior success and experience, are because to me, yeah, there's a lot of things that I might want to see on Telephone Hill. There might be, you know, a greater level of density. I think, you know, having seen a lot of density lost in downtown over the last decade or so, but achievability of a project is a lot more important, I think, than, you know, my aesthetic desires for what the buildings look like or the exact number of units or how it's done. And that's why I really want to make sure that we're, you know, like my comments earlier about making sure that's very clear. We're not going to throw away your application if it doesn't look exactly like this 155 units.

If you're only, you know, if you're leaving these homes and you're building, you know, 30 new units net total, yeah, it's not the 155, but if you're an applicant that has experience, can get it done. That's more important, I think, than these kind of dreams and visions. And so I, I kind of like that scoring criteria, and I, I hope maybe that statement answers some of the questions Miss Kester asked about, oh, do you want to change specific terms? I don't think so. I think what's in here is good because it highlights once but it doesn't bind us to them at the end.

So thank you for that statement, Mr. Steininger. So we will just— I think you led us to where we're to the statement thing.

So, um, Katie doesn't get to talk. Go ahead, Madam Manager, because I think we're to the point where we might say what we're thinking. And because I'm hearing that we're pretty open to ideas, but But I want people to state if that's the case, so I'm not misspeaking for them. Go ahead, Madam Manager. I just want to remind the body that this is a request for qualifications for a reason, and we heard that from the developer community.

They were like, this should be a different request for qualifications, not proposals, and that there will be additional opportunity to negotiate what that transaction looks like once you select the most qualified developer, and, and that is really where you're going to hammer out, like, some of these, uh, the more of the details. Uh, thank you for that. So, um, Mr. Smith, we'll start with you. Give us your statement. What do you want to see?

Um, I I'm fine with the 2 kind of, at least with the count of 2 changes that we have before, just creating some space or opening, you know, that to make it clear, we'll accept proposals that are not, you know, 255 units on all 4 parcels. Anyway, I think we've already covered that. But the things we've already discussed and the way it is now, I'm actually fine with it, with those, with those changes. All right, thank you. Mr. Kelly?

Um, thank you. I think I am too. I just, I don't know, do we need some sort of— is the— is the manager at this point kind of taking— I, I— yeah, um, is the— is the manager at this point kind of, um, going to make edits based off of our conversation, or do we need a motion to make edits and make things clear?

We're going to wait and see what we— after everybody talks, if she thinks it's clear enough for her.

So, okay, do you want to add your two cents? No, I, I think, um, well, I guess I'll just add, add two cents. Like, I, I just, um, I'll just reiterate that I think if we are going to offer any sort of incentive that involve certain program requirements, that those would be conditional on meeting those program requirements. So if it's, you know, something they're looking for the affordable housing fund support, they should still meet the requirements that any other contractor would have to meet in order to do that, to qualify.

Okay, I think you said it a little bit better than Mr. Kelly, so Um, if they meet the affordable— if they want to use the affordable housing fund, then they have to meet the criteria to use it. So that's what I got out of what you said. Is that correct? Yeah, and I was being more broad. I think that's the only one that has— I think that's the one that has the strictest requirements.

So yeah, that works. Thank you. Thank you for that. Um, Ms. Atqasuk. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I'm in a similar boat to Mr. Smith. I am fine with the way it is currently with, you know, I think the language about, um, working in a similar climate and kind of giving the more flexibility that Mr. Neil Steininger was mentioning, uh, so I'll spend my time talking about what I am opposed to. I am opposed to changing the top number of units we have in here. I think it should remain at 155. Um, I like the way it is currently.

I don't want to change direction on, um, whether we do density or infill. Um, this is the direction we've been working towards for the last 3 years, and it's a direction I remain committed to. Thank you, Miss Atkason. Mr. Steininger, do you have anything to add to your statement? No, I'm good.

Miss Hall. Yeah, and I, I'm also good with what's here. I, I think that up to 155 is clear enough, and, um, and nothing here precludes that someone couldn't propose infill. So, and, um, Yeah, I'm not in favor of a big direction change at this point, and if, um, no one's planning infill and we decide to incentivize clearing some of the properties, I'm okay with that as well. Thank you.

Mr. Brooks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, I, I still think that it should go below 100 just because that I believe will elicit more responses because the type of development with less than 100 units in an area is easier to do than over 100 units, or right at 100 units. And I would like to see no offer of site demolition. We can do tax abatement or other ways, but spending the taxpayers' money to destroy existing livable structures is I don't think in their best interest. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Mr. Brooks. Um, Ms. Cosgrove, thank you. Um, I am comfortable given the conversation that we've had today about maybe putting in a couple places that people can propose less than the full 4. Um, I think we just need to move forward and we need to figure out if there's anybody out there and what that looks like at this point, and I think rightly so, there are a lot of people with a lot of questions that we simply can't answer right now until we have more information, and for that reason, I think we just need to move forward and trust that we've created a process that will allow us to look at the options and navigate towards the best solution for the community.

Thank you, Ms. Cosgrove. Ms. Niven, After the conversation we've had and with the recent, um, what Ms. Cosgrove said and, um, the city manager said, I think I agree. I think I'm ready to go with the way it is with the changes that we've, we've suggested.

Thank you, Ms. Niven. Um, none of you noticed, this is one time I went by seniority. I usually don't do that, but the senior people have dealt with this for a lot longer, so I figured they could get first stab at it. Um, my take would be, I think we've made it quite clear, um, that it could be less than 150 units. I've said all along I thought 150 units was, uh, Yeah, way too high.

Sorry, Miss Ellison, but I agree with Miss Cosgrove, and I think we just need to move forward and just basically see who's interested in what they're interested in doing. So I'm okay with moving forward with hopefully a little bit wording just to let people understand fully that we're looking at all options. So now it's your turn, Madam Manager. Do you have enough direction, do you think? If you will indulge me, I'm going to summarize the edits that we will make to this RFQ.

You have 30 seconds. Thank you. When we talk about the affordable housing fund as a potential tool, we will mention that the project needs to meet requirements of that fund. We will mention in our scoring rubric that there will be a climate experience in similar climates will be weighted. We will, oh Lord, we will add a preamble that expresses the desire for kind of any option to be on the table, notwithstanding You see our vision, but we want, you know, to know that proposals that are outside of that vision may be scored, maybe not be scored as high.

However, they will still be considered. So working on a preamble and then adding a bullet point to our goals that says we will also entertain proposals that only propose to develop a portion of the lot.

Okay, can everybody live with that, or do we need to take a formal vote?

Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for your flexibility on that. So, um, I think we're good to go. So, okay, next item: Glove Strike Team Update 2.

Like I said, this is where any fund balance just disappears.

Um, thank you. Thank you, Mayor Weldon. Um, this memo is informational only. It's really meant to summarize the work of the Glove Strike team. Um, as I mentioned, this group gets together, hammers through some of these details, and then we report it out to you.

No final decisions are made, so this is informational. There are just a couple of of impactful numbers included in this memo. One of them is the combined spend, either committed, appropriated, or spent. So keep in mind that this, this number of $86 million on your first page does include funds that haven't been spent yet, but it just gives you a really good order of magnitude idea of this problem that we have. Honestly, the week I was appointed city manager, started experiencing.

So that's been 3 very long years has consumed a lot of the resources and the energy and the opportunity cost for our community and our agency partners too. And this list does not include DOT, Tlingit and Haida, Coast Guard, or DMVA. So there are numbers not articulated on here. It's mostly just like a good snapshot. We all—.

Before we move on, since Everybody can't see this chart. Could you just say how much CB, CBJ funds we've expended? Yes, it's $14 million.

Okay, carry on. So, so then the memo kind of breaks up the all things flood into 3 different categories. Event response, that's the very specific standing up the EOC, manning the pumps, manning the hotline, doing evacuations, really it's the moment that the EOC is activated, and the EOC is activated by the City Manager. So there's a lot of work that happens before the moment that is activated, but when the EOC is activated, it's all hands on deck, right? So we are pulling people from the library, from the Parks and Rec Department, all other city business kind of comes to a grinding halt at that moment.

Then we have flood fighting as a program, And that includes all things HESCO, but also our public education and our outreach and, you know, all the things that we do year-round that are really specific to flood fighting. So lots of HESCO maintenance, lots of communication with homeowners and that type of thing. And then we have long-term solution, and that is really working with the Army Corps of Engineers on an emergency water conveyance prototype. So that includes lobbying efforts, that includes a lot of engineering coordination. We are responsible for, you know, a lot of the interagency, like permitting and things like that.

So it just takes a tremendous amount of effort. So those are the 3 buckets. And if you look at on page 58 of the packet, we have tried to think of these 3 buckets, event response, flood fighting, and solution work in different categories. And the category of new funds needed is money that we don't have currently appropriated in the budget, or money that we've been spending CIP funds on, but we really need to start operationalizing it. So when you look at the first line, event response, we have a small a small line item of new funds needed of $21,000.

Event response is largely funded by the ongoing budgets, right, because we're all getting paid every day and then when we pivot to event response, we're still getting paid. That increase really represents some training. We want to do more coordinated trainings for for response so that if we have a HESCO breach, we're a lot more prepared. Then we've got the opportunity cost piece, and that is— sorry, I misspoke. The training would actually go into flood fighting because that is outside the actual event.

So I apologize for that. Keeping the— but the opportunity cost is mostly streets' time when they are working on EOC response and not streets. So again, So that's a cost that gets absorbed. And then the other line item is emergency programs budget, and that is again money that we appropriate for emergency response and seems fine to live there. So event response, you know, you can say it cost $125,000 to spool up that EOC and respond to that event, you know, a couple-week time period.

In a normal event. We're kind of— we don't— we've never really had a normal event, but this last year was kind of as normal as it can be, right? It was still very impactful, still very exciting, but we didn't have a lot of rescues or, or, or, you know, damage or things like that. Flood fighting operating includes the new fund item would be things that have been funded in the past through CIP spend. So a lot of that is your project manager time, coordinating with property owners.

It's your HESCO maintenance, and like I said, that is where our training would live. Flood fighting operating opportunity cost is again a lot of those laborers and street workers that, you know, are not filling potholes because instead they're working on flood fighting. And then there's a big portion of the emergency program's budget. Flood fighting operating also includes a lot of communications because it's a very communications-heavy effort to, to do, do this work. And if you recall, we had planned on funding about 20% of the communications engagement budget with CIP projects.

We have not been able to meet that metric because we've been spending so much time on flood-related projects, and when we can, we charge that time to flood-related CIPs. But again, as we operationalize this event, it's more appropriate for that to live in an operating budget. And then solution work, we would use that funding to fund a new position that would really be like chief engineer for coordination with Army Corps of Engineers. And there's some other communication staff time, like, you know, making us presentations and, you know, communicating I'm awesome saying Mayor Weldon because we were headed to DC to do a lot of this communicating work, and that is work that you cannot fund with any— you need to make sure you're not funding that with any federal funds because of the nature of that work. So we've, we've broken it up into those categories and kind of determined that the new operational cost is about $630,000 a year.

The opportunity cost, so the the things we're not spending money on is about $130,000, and then it's a significant portion of the emergency programs budget, which we've already budgeted for, and that money is already appropriated. So when we met with the strike team, we talked about how we want to approach these, uh, you know, this new cost center, right? And so the group kind of decided, yes, we should be accounting for this in a cost center. So even though emergency programs is already got budget for emergency management, we should be making sure we're tracking what they're spending for GLOF because there's also other emergencies. Same with like our streets laborers and our equipment operators, right?

Like, like we don't necessarily need to backfill that with new positions. We're going to acknowledge that opportunity cost. And then there's the new funds that we've, we've been able to lean on this CIP, right? Because we've been doing all of this HESCO construction work. So the HESCO construction work has funded the project managers and a lot of that work, and moving forward, we would need to operationalize that.

So the team liked that idea of absorbing what we can within the opportunity cost and looking at a new cost center that's about $1 million a year in glof, all things flood glof response. And acknowledging that we need to come up with about $630,000 of new ongoing revenue. The other piece that we pulled out of operating costs was HESCO maintenance. So there still will be some ongoing HESCO maintenance. We really don't know what that is.

The estimate this year is $1.2 million. You know, keeping in mind the Army Corps of Engineers said they're going to fund any damage damage to HESCO barriers that happened during this event. They're working through what that looks like. Engineering and Public Works has, has worked with them on a damage assessment, but there's still going to be a role for us to play in all of that. And we wanted to carve that out as a CIP because above and beyond the, like, normal communication with property owners, surveying the HESCO barriers, you know, those types of operational costs, we really don't know what that is.

And so the recommendation that the team made was to use a portion of the funds that were appropriated for the general investigation study way back in 2024. If you recall, you had an emergency appropriation to appropriate $3 million as a match for our general investigation study to get started on a long-term solution. Very valuable to have it in our back pocket as we went to Washington, D.C. and demonstrated the community support, but really because that has morphed into a different funding mechanism, for our long-term solution, applying it to these funding sources we think would be reasonable. So we would want to come forward with a transfer to spend a portion of that $3 million that was appropriated on, on this HESCO maintenance, and then the remainder as matched to our $3.2 million congressionally directed spending request that Congressman Bagich got us, and would really focus on long-term solution, geotech, engineering and all of those types of things. So those were the recommendations that the team made, um, uh, and, and the idea is to update you on those here, but to incorporate those actual decisions as part of the budget process.

So you will see, you know, these decisions, um, and be able to make those decisions as a body. Just wanted to walk through the thought process. Did I miss anything, team? And we will look forward to seeing this in the future. Any questions on this right now?

Ms. Cosgrove, I just wanted to thank you for pulling this together. I think it's really helpful, um, not only for the assembly as a, as a body and making decisions, but I also think for the general public to understand the impact moving forward. So thank you, it's really well done and it's quite possible. That wasn't a question, but thank you for saying We'll train you yet.

Any questions?

Uh, seeing none, again, we will see this— we'll make more decisions on this at a future date. Information only. So that brings us to Madam Mayor. Can I get a 2-minute addies? Absolutely.

Thank you. 2 Minutes.

All right, um, item number 5. Madam Clerk, we'll have you read the resolution title.

We want you to participate.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. A resolution supporting a partnership with the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority to advance housing opportunities and coordinated infrastructure development in support of United States Coast Guard expansion in Juneau. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Madam Manager.

Thank you. The purpose of this draft resolution before you today is really just to further formalize an existing partnership that these 3 entities have specifically on developing Cowie Creek subdivision. We jointly applied for a Thriving Communities grant that provides technical assistance to, to that project for removing obstacles to development, and the reason why that's a The 3 partners are engaged in that is the Tlingit and Haida, the Housing Authority, and CBJ, all are landowners of that subdivision. In total, approximately 50 acres of land in that area. That's in that area is right across the bridge.

Tlingit and Haida Regional Housing Authority is the most accessible land. They've already begun some site development, so that is the most developable land. But more than that, we really wanted to just provide our partnership in aggressively pursuing Coast Guard housing. The Coast Guard issued the request for information for Coast Guard housing proposals in January, and we haven't heard much since then. There have been some public meetings and some updates.

I did reach out to Senator Sullivan's office, and of course, Senator Sullivan has been a champion in bringing the icebreaker to Juneau. Juneau and is, you know, helpful in trying to move that forward, move the housing piece forward as well. So we— I, as a group, I think, and I imagine the assembly shares this, and this is an opportunity for you to articulate sharing that, we've really been told we need to be aggressive in solving some of the obstacles for homeporting the stores in Juneau. I do have an opinion in this memo that says without adequate housing, the Storis will not make Juneau its home port. And I think I should qualify that because that is just the city manager's opinion.

There is an option for the Storis to home port in Juneau. It has been commissioned in Juneau. It has been, you know, it is a Juneau vessel with geographically separated status. So if they don't have housing they could have just the service members living aboard the vessel and the families staying back at home. That is not, I think, what we think about when we think of having the Coast Guard as our friends and neighbors.

And— but when you look at their environmental assessment statement for the project, they do cite that geographically separated status would be a possibility.

So just wanting to keep pushing, you know, pushing the ball forward on doing everything we can to advocate, to coordinate, to work with not only our government partners, but also, you know, Southeast Conference and JEDC and the Navy League. The Navy League has been an amazing champion in making Juneau a hospitable home for Coast Guard. So I don't know that this resolution does much than restate all the work that we have been doing, but I do think that the opportunity to further formalize it is, is good. You may ask, what does that partnership look like, Katie? Well, for example, we need to bring utilities into that subdivision, and if we bring utilities in in a coordinated way, we have the potential to open up a lot more land for development.

So that's the type of coordination that I would be talking about, and anything that goes beyond coordination would require Assembly approval and Assembly resources. So, you know, this would, uh, this would be kind of the, the first step in, um, in many more touch points. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Madam Manager. Any questions?

Seeing none, Ms. Atkason, can I get a motion? Thank you, Madam Mayor. I move that we forward to the full Assembly the resolution, or we're supporting a partnership with Tlingit and Haida in regards to Coast Guard housing, and I ask unanimous consent. Any objection? Seeing none, that motion passes.

Item 6, Madam Clerk.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Resolution 4043, a resolution encouraging increased engagement in city and borough of Juneau boards, commissions, and committees. Uh, thank you, Madam Clerk. Um, this is kind of self-explanatory unless you want to say something, Madam Manager? Seeing no, we'll just bring it to the assembly.

Uh, Miss Atkason. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I move Resolution 4043 to the full assembly and ask unanimous consent. Any objection? Seeing none, that motion passes.

So, um, no staff reports. Next meeting date, November 30th, 2026, and I'm hoping Mr. Smith is— will be back to do an awesome job job. I blundered through today, but, uh, we made it.

Um, oh, I thought you raised your hand, Madam Clerk. Don't raise your hand. All right, seeing nothing further, we are adjourned.