Nome Common Council Regular Meeting- Oct. 26, 2026

The appointed time hath come, so the Nome Common Council meeting of Monday, October 26th, 2026, will come to order at 7:00 PM. Clerk may call the roll. Council Member Lust. Here. Council Member Johnson.

Here. Council Member Morrison. Here. Council Member Wallace. Here.

Looks like we have a quorum of 4. Chair, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. Motion by Council Member Lust. Second.

Seconded by Council Member Johnson. Any discussion on the agenda?

Hearing none, I call the vote. Council Member Johnson? Yes. Council Member Arnsen? Yes.

Council Member Bowles? Yes. Council Member Lust?

Yes. The agenda has been approved. Next item, approval of minutes. We have A, B, and C to approve. Anyone wish to make a motion to approve as a group?

I'll make a motion to approve the items A, B, and C. Motion to approve A, B, and C by Councilmember Lust. Is there a second? I'll second. Seconded by Councilmember Johnson.

Let the record reflect Councilmember Green arriving at 7:01. Okay. We have a motion and a second for approval of the minutes. As a group of 3? I'll make the motion.

We already have the motion on the floor. Just letting you know that that's currently the motion on the floor. Is there any discussion on the minutes?

Hearing none, may I call for the vote, please? Councilmember Wools.

Council Member Rawls?

No. We're calling the vote. You're choosing to vote no on approval of the minutes? Yes. Oh, okay, sorry.

Council Member Johnson? Yes. Council Member Martinson? Yes. Council Member Green?

Yes. Next item, Item A under Communications, the July 16th August 19th, signed Port Commission meeting minutes.

Item B, August 20th, 2026, signed Port Commission meeting minutes.

Item C, September 17th, 2026, signed Port Commission meeting minutes.

Item D, October 20, 2026 Alaska Beacon article, Alaskans to decide the future of Alaska seabed mining article, and a proposed item from Koyuk regarding seabed mining.

Since that's a communication, would now be an okay time to just talk about that briefly, or we don't have a city manager. I had some questions kind of on it, so I wasn't sure procedurally, and I'm flexible either way. I can maybe save them till the end for my own comments potentially. Well, if you have questions, your comments wouldn't be answered. If you have questions, I guess—.

I guess Procedurally, you know, I haven't polled any council members or anything like that, but we do have this thing going on in our backyard with this federal lease. Um, you know, I've made it really clear, like, I support responsible resource development, but our biggest resource, uh, in Norton Sound right now is a proven resource. It's our commercial crab fishery. And, uh, I know there's a lot of other entities that are looking at resolutions, things like that. I'm potentially knowing what I know about this and that there's the potential of leases going into effect right in our backyard that we don't know a lot about.

I'm just potentially wondering how, how do we go about talking about a very narrow resolution that just talks about the City of Nome's interest in this since it's happening in our backyard? And maybe a question more for the city manager. He's not here, but—.

Mr. Mayor, I'm online. Oh, sure, Dan, if you want. So this was sent over to us by, uh, Quirk. Um, does Amanda happen to be in the audience?

Yes. Or any representative from, uh, Quirk? I would invite them to come up. And, uh, uh, give a brief, uh, summary of, uh, the article and, um, what they asked to be included in the packet, if that's okay, Mr. Mayor.

That'd be a great item for the next, uh, session.

And I actually have a whole PowerPoint for you that I was told that at some point during the meeting, um, early in the meeting, I would be delivering. So I don't know if that's now or if that's at another time.

Should I do a go now? I suppose.

Okay. So yes, I shared with you that op-ed article. And so I'm here on behalf of Koyuk seeking your support as the Nome City Council to also passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on seabed mining in federal waters and AFN just occurred this So in January of this year, BOEM, the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management, which has since been renamed to the Marine Minerals Administration, released a request for information asking— soliciting information from the public asking, hey, we would probably be interested in these areas on the map. As you can see, in the High Arctic, Norton Sound, Bering Strait, the Aleutian Arch, Gulf of Alaska that they are interested in seabed mining in these areas and what do you as the public think and seabed mining means mining for minerals other than oil, gas, and sulfur. These are all areas in federal waters meaning they're beyond the 3-mile limit of state waters.

Next slide. This is being motivated by a series of executive orders orders that the White House has issued encouraging more domestic mining for critical minerals. Next slide. And this extends outside of Alaska. This is also being considered by the administration around the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Mariana Islands off the coast of the state of Virginia, and then also in the high sea areas between Hawaii and Mexico in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.

And the areas in the Pacific territories are the furthest along in this process. That's where the federal administration first initiated this process. Next slide. And so looking at Norton Sound, this is zoomed in on the map of the area that's included in the request for information. Next slide.

So one thing I wanna make very clear is that seabed mining in the state waters is very different than what could occur in federal waters. So the risks are greater in federal waters because federal waters, they're deeper than state waters. And that has been shown through a series of case studies that the deeper the water, the longer it takes for the seabed, for the ecosystem to recover from the effects of that mining. Whereas we know the nearshore waters here and state waters is very disturbed naturally through storms, through wave action, through ice gouging, and it's just very constantly being returned over, whereas that's not necessarily the case in the deeper waters. Also, the federal waters are much larger.

Than the state waters, so the area impacted could be much larger. And the federal process is very undeveloped. We don't know what technology will be used, how it will be financed, what kind of impacts will happen environmentally, or how those would be mitigated. Next slide. And of course, there are— there's already fishing and hunting that's occurring in Norton Sound.

Subsistence and commercially. And in particular, the federal area overlays the Norton Sound red king crab nursery, where, um, is where we get our wonderful red king crab from here in Norton Sound. And it's also the federal waters of Norton Sound is designated as a central fish habitat by the National Marine Fishery Service for all 5 species of Pacific salmon, as well as red and blue king crab of Norton Sound, and multiple groundfish species. Bottom trawling is completely banned in U.S. federal waters of the entire northern Bering Sea and Norton Sound. And it— the bottom trawling is banned to allow research to first determine what the effects of bottom trawling would be before it could occur because it's such critical habitat.

But there's no similar research impact evaluation that's being considered before seabed mining leases could be issued in the same area. So it doesn't quite stand to reason that these areas that are closed to bottom trawling should instead be open to mining. And then, of course, our commercial and subsistence catches of all 5 species of Pacific salmon have declined in recent years in the Norton Sound fishing districts. And the drivers of population decline are very complex, But we don't— we do know that salmon need habitat in order to increase their population.

And these extend statewide fisheries concerns that on that map I showed of the areas being per— looked at for seabed mining, 88% of those areas are— have restrictions for fishing because of the habitat concerns. So they already have these restrictions, so should they be open to mining? Additional areas could also be added to what we saw on the map. We know that our marine resources are already under stress, and particular species such as salmon, crab, and halibut, we've seen declines. And our communities are also being stretched then to be able to advocate and monitor.

These resources. And so we don't want to be asked to trade our fisheries and marine ecosystems for this speculative new form of extraction. Next slide. And so does Norton Sound even have critical minerals if these executive orders are in fact based off of critical minerals? Well, the question is, in Norton Sound, we actually don't know.

The prospecting hasn't occurred, but rare earth elements and tin are possibly reported. Gold is not a critical mineral. It is, however, included as a target mineral in one of the executive orders. But it is possible that there is not economically recoverable quantities of gold in the federal waters because we know, um, through the geology of the area that the glaciers that pushed all the gold that's being mined in the nearshore waters did not extend past 3 miles. And so, um, is there enough gold that would be in federal waters to make any operation economical?

But we still know that mining can occur without it being economical and that destruction can accompany it. Next slide. So our concerns, some of them I've listed before, is that seabed mining commercially in federal areas has never been done anywhere globally in the entire world. The methods are unproven, the technology is untested, the financing is unclear. For Alaska, it's a minimum— minimum 20-year lease.

That's an entire span of a human generation to just start this experiment. It's happening under a very accelerated timeframe where the proposal is to start issuing leases next year off the coast of Alaska. There is no more public comment period. That has already passed. That is included in the current process.

It would include only a desktop environmental assessment. Meanwhile, the federal agencies that are being tasked with this had significant lay— workforce reductions over the past year, so they're being asked fewer staff to take on bigger and riskier projects for management. There's absolutely no royalty sharing with affected communities or adjacent states. The United States, so Alaska is not going to see any royalty sharing from this. It destroys benthic habitat with unknown ecosystem-wide impacts.

Next slide. And we, of course, have overlapping stressors. We have climate change, we have increased shipping, increased industrial activity. All of Alaska except Bristol Bay is also being proposed by the administration to be open to oil and gas leasing. We have pollution, ecosystem shifts, extreme weather, lack of emergency emergency response infrastructure.

These all need to be considered together, overlapping with each other. Next slide. So I'm going to walk through a little bit just what is this process that we're in. And so here's the steps laid out, and I'll break them down. Next slide.

So the request for information and interest on these areas identified has been completed. That ran January, closed April 1st. Of this year to solicit input. There were over 90,000 public comments, including Koyuk submitted comments, other Alaska Native corporations, tribes, tribal consortiums, the Alaska House Fisheries Committee, and fishing groups issued concerns or opposition.

And so the next stage is area identification. We don't know when this will be issued. It could be any time. We're expecting it to be quite soon, actually. We were told that this was delayed for Alaska through the— I mentioned BOEM, Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management, and then BSEE, the Bureau of— I think it's called Environmental Safety Enforcement.

They merged into the Marine Minerals Administration. That process, I'm told, delayed the release of this area identification.

These are the areas that would be considered for potential leasing, and we have two case studies of the Pacific Territories of where this has occurred before. So, next slide. The America Samoa we saw in the RFI, which is the first one here, it was 18 million acres being considered. When the area ID was released, it was 33 million acres, so it was almost double. We saw the same thing around the Central Mariana Islands.

Next slide. Where it was 35 million acres in the RFI that was released to the public for public comment, but then when the area ID was released, it was almost twice that size. 35 Million acres to 68 million acres. So in our two case studies, what we've seen is an almost doubling. So in Alaska, it's 113 million acres.

Imagine if that were doubled. So if you look at the RFI of Alaska and think, That's not where I fish or hunt or live. Guess what? Those areas could be added because we saw a near doubling in the two other times that the federal administration has gone through this process. And once again, there is no more public comment period that is included in this process.

That ended in April.

And on top of that, and any company can apply to just submit an application to mine anywhere, an unsolicited application. Next slide. So after the area ID is released, there will be an environmental analysis and proposed leasing notice. So once again, in the Pacific Territories, these were released together at the same time. So these came out simultaneously.

The—. The environmental analysis is an environmental assessment. There's no requirement for any partic— public participation any— during an environmental assessment. The document just has to be made available on a public website. It's a desktop study analyzing existing information, so they're not going out in the field and doing baseline studies and collecting new data.

They're looking at what they already have. And what we know is every time that the deep sea has been studied, they knew— often new species are discovered. I'm not saying that would happen here in Norton Sound. It's very well studied. But that when you do conduct research, you learn new things.

And that's not the case that new research would happen. Environmental assessments are limited to 75 pages plus appendices. And in around America Samoa, it was completed in 8 months, and around Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, it was completed in 5 months. And that was released concurrently with the proposed leasing notice. And with the proposed leasing notice, the governor is allotted 60 days to comment.

There is no public comment period allotted. And what we saw in America Samoa is the governor of the territory said, I am going to open up a public comment period during the 60 days. You can submit comments to my office and then I will send those on. And so we know that we're getting a new governor here in Alaska and that person will have a role to play in this process because the federal agency, even though a public— the member of the public can submit comments at any time, the federal agency is not obligated to respond to those comments, they are obligated to respond to the governor's comments. Next slide.

After that is a final leasing notice that has to be published at least 30 days prior to the lease sale. We just saw that happen with America Samoa. They have a lease sale scheduled for next month. Next slide. And then the competitive lease sale in Alaska, this is being proposed to occur sometime in 2027.

And that would be a 20-year lease, meaning it would last at least until 2047 if it was issued. Once again, no royalties would come to our state. Next slide. Koyuk has taken a list of actions, some of which I've already mentioned, the most recent being, um, co-submitting along with Sealaska and, um, Tlingit and Haida, a resolution to AFN that just passed on Saturday calling for a moratorium This is not saying we never want this to occur ever. It's saying we as Alaskans need more time to get more information and to ask more questions and to be involved in this process.

And, um, November 17th and 18th, Koyuk invited the Department of Interior. We have officials flying in from DC along with the Marine Minerals Administration to meet with tribal representatives. On seabed mining and oil and gas leasing. We recommended that they also meet with the city, and I'm told that's occurring— that meeting is occurring that week as well with the city along with other groups in the region. And next slide is— so lastly, that's why Koyuk is asking the city for support on this issue to pass a resolution calling for a moratorium as well so that Alaskans can get more information and be more involved with this process and have a say before the seabed is strip-mined and with unknown impacts on our fisheries and all our other resources.

I recommend the language that was included in the AFN resolution, but at the same time recognize that the city will use its own language. Sitŋasuaq as well, but we've seen partnership before, particularly around IPoP where the City of Nome, Koyuk, and other groups in the region came together. In that case, it was to have a shared stance on a mining project. So we have precedent for a partnership and we ask for that again. And so lastly, happy to answer questions, provide more information.

Thank you so much for allowing me this time and for your attention. And I included— I shared with Wally also more information on seabed mining in Norton Sound federal waters, the Alaska Federation of Natives, the resolution that just passed along with the op-ed that was shown on the screen prior to my presentation.

A question I have is regarding the process. And considering that comments are closed, where does this go if we're to pass this and also the AFN resolution, where does it go from here? I mean, who does this go to and how do we get the word to agencies that may have an effect on making this decision further? Right. So, there's no formal public comment period that's scheduled, but as members of The public, we can always issue comment.

It doesn't mean that they're required to respond in the same way as in a formal public comment period. And so I think that's where the power of a coalition comes into play where we have Kaweraa coming past a resolution. There's 7 tribes in the region as well and likely more that will pass resolutions calling for a moratorium on seabed mining along with AFN. And if we get other groups in the state, city of Nome, and where we— if we have that united position, then that builds strength. And also, that's where we, we bring attention to it.

We let whoever's the next governor going to be, we let them know, we let our legislators know, we let our congressional delegation know. Koyuk has been keeping those parties informed of the actions that we've been taking. So I think it's through that coalition building.

Thank you.

All right, more questions? Thank you for the presentation. Mr. Mayor? Yeah, yeah, I, I was really studying on this for a while as well, and, um, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is Nome is a mining town for the last 125 years or or so, at least.

And, the other thing I noticed when reading the port minutes, that this was brought up to the Port Commission at some point, and I noticed that Charlie Leen made a comment in there, and Charlie's been with the Port Commission a long time. I mean, I respect his opinions that he has. Also, he was, with Fish and Game for a long time, and his comment was that he agreed with the Koyuk letter on the proposed OCS lease sale impacting what is considered a viable crab fishery. And then the other thing I noticed in this resolution was— and as Hannes mentioned that this has never been done before, never occurred globally or United States federal waters. And what the resolution is basically asking is not to scrap it altogether, but to ask for a moratorium so that more research can be done.

And similar to our local mining companies that go through a process of a severe— or a pretty intensive process process of in order to mine that's set in place. That's all that we're— that's what this resolution is asking for, is to be able to go through that process to get to a point before doing this lease. And for those reasons, I support that we pass a resolution. We are a hub community here and affect all of the villages in our area. And we do have a viable fishery, we have viable crabbing, we have— we're hunters and fishers throughout the region.

And if this has impacted any of those things, then it's going to have an impact on us all. So I propose that we do pass this resolution— or bring this resolution up to vote as a City Council, and that we support the ideas of of the regional— other regional organizations that are supporting this. So I make a motion that we pass this resolution. And I don't know if this is the right process to do this here or if we bring it up to the next meeting. I think that's what Adam was asking earlier.

And potentially, if I could kind of echo off of what Mark is saying, I think— I think the resolution and the draft resolution probably needs some work at the city level potentially. I would like to see a more narrow focus on Norton Sound, and I think it's okay for us to acknowledge that we support, the city supports responsible resource mining, that all of these things. I think it would just be nice to get it into the city's hands to have them look at this and see what they can come up with as a resolution.

Resolution. Sorry not to cut you off there, Mark. I think it could be honed in really specific to Norton Sound and the City of Nome's impact, which is really where our purview is.

But how to get there? Well, someone needs to write a good resolution. The resolution as written is inflammatory and is one that puts people on opposite sides of a fence. You could— it could have been written in with a different tone that would have allowed both parties to work cooperatively to seek a common resolution, and that would be the frame that I would like to see the city's resolution cast in. And then also like you say, more narrowly focused on the areas of interest and with our entire rural resident population in mind.

But it would need to be, like you say, written from the city's perspective. And who exactly authors that is a good question.

Yeah, go ahead, Dan. Yeah, we can most certainly work on that resolution and bring it back to the council.

All right, sounds good. Then we'll look for that in an upcoming meeting packet. Sounds great. All right. Anything else on seabed mining?

We'll move on then to citizens' comments.

Good evening. Thomas Simonsen, Nome. Mr. Mayor, before you were mayor, I appreciated seeing you on the front row here and keeping the council accountable, especially when it comes to executive sessions. I remember how many times you asked for more clarification, um, as to, um, reasons for executive sessions, etc., etc. Um, so I was a little concerned, or, or maybe surprised, from the October 13 meeting when there was an executive session on the agenda at 6 to 7, but nothing mentioned in the minutes from that meeting.

Um, we don't know if there was a quorum, we don't know if there was a motion to go into executive session. Um, and the— I'm also curious about the reason for the executive session stated on the agenda, reasons of which financially implicate the city of Nome. I think that's a pretty broad description considering nearly everything that the council discusses could have some financial implication to the city. And so as a member and a resident of the city, I would appreciate more clarity around executive sessions, but more so maybe that the council is more serious about being in compliance with Alaska Open Meetings Act in that you do call the meeting to order in an open setting and you call quorum and that that is reflected in the minutes, I think is a good practice. So that's my little input.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Simonson. Thank you for your discussion. For the record, would you please state your name? Anna Rose MacArthur, Marine Advocate at K'Werek. Thank you for the discussion and for the consideration of support for a resolution for moratorium on seabed mining concentrated to Norton Sound.

I'm not sure how long it would take the city to go through all the steps and then the following deliberative process that would accompany it. I would encourage expediency, if possible, around the issue because of the area ID is the next step for the federal administration to take. We don't know when that would occur. It is considered very overdue and could be coming soon, in that if a position— if a resolution was passed before that, it would have a better chance of affecting the process. And I think we've seen with many processes, including federal, that trying to keep areas out is often easier than once they are included, trying to extract them.

And so, once again, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Steve Longley, Nome. Bunch of things. One, your little Billy Miller show the last special meeting, she brought up my business license of all things. Richard Johnson could probably verify when you file for a business license, you pick your whatever your topic is, in this case transportation warehousing. And then you go down and it says, as you pick 6 of your favorite things out of the 40 or so, the first one you pick is what's going to show up when you Google it.

Um, there's 5 others, and there's nothing to prevent you from running any of those businesses under that transportation, including taxi. I mean, there's, there's probably a good 40 people at least. So yeah, I'm, I'm I'm fully licensed to conduct business in Nome as a taxi. You know, she's, you know, she's multiple times she's saying I'm stalking her because I park on a public street where the cabs have parked since beginning of cab business in Nome. They've always parked over there by Hanson's across from Bonanza.

You know, they always park there. I park there. Her house happens to be a block away. But she says I'm stalking her, but she's looking up my business license, she's checking my background, she's badmouthing me verbally and on Facebook. I don't have her on Facebook 'cause she blocked me, but I have friends who send me texts and say, "Hey, look what she said." But I'm the bad guy.

And to me, it's just hilarious.

You guys need to probably do a Robert's Rules of Order training because you're all pretty new, and the last couple of meetings I've seen, you guys need it. As far as having her turn public comments into public discussion, that was out of order. The mayor should have hit his gavel, which I don't see, he doesn't even have one. You should get one. Hit his gavel and say you're out of order.

This is public discussion, not a get everybody involved in getting your council members sniping at each other a little bit and turn it into basically a circus. That shouldn't happen at a council meeting. Anytime there's anything contentious, hit your gavel, 5-minute recess, talk to them people off off the record and say, hey, you know, let's play nice. I've been in that situation before. I've chaired a 24-member board with doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs and everything else.

And it just, you know, it's not complicated.

I wish Mr. Henderson was here, but he brought up a conflict of interest I think 2 meetings ago or 3 meetings ago, saying about Mr. Hughes.

That was also another spot where you should have ruled him out of order because it was discussion. It was something that was coming to the board for discussion. The only time there would have been a conflict is if there was a tie vote and the mayor had to break the tie. Then he could say, "Hey, there's a conflict," or asked about it. In this case, there is no conflict.

Mr. Hughes is the president of— what is it?

Not convention, but— huh? Yeah. He's the president of that. He's not getting paid. There's no fame or fortune involved, so there's no conflict.

Matter of fact, if you ask me, you know, they about bellied up multiple times in the past and were very inactive. It's like, you know, who's dumb enough to be on that board kind of thing? You know, him being the mayor now, that's more prestigious than being on the other board. So there is no conflict. I don't know if you guys tabled it or what, but you guys can bring it back anytime, even if there's a motion to table it.

But I guess you guys were looking for more guidance or looking into it, and I don't know who you're looking to, your lawyer? But your lawyer was at the special meeting the other day.

I'm not 100% sure, but more than likely that meeting was called improperly.

You guys follow Robert's Rules of Order. Robert's Rules of Order states that the only person— there was 3 yes votes and 3 no votes on Mr. Mosak's thing. The 3 people who voted no cannot bring that up. They cannot bring it back to the table. Ever for the rest of— or until, you know, until next year when it's a different situation.

But for the rest of that year, you can't bring it up. It has to be someone who voted yes, and it has to be 2 people voting yes. And then once they make the motion to bring it back up, then the whole group can get involved and discuss and vote on it. But the meeting was probably illegally called, and then the motion that was made by Mr. Henderson and Secretary of the Adam Martinson also was illegal for the same reason. They both voted no.

They can't bring that up. That violates your ordinance. In your ordinance, I checked it. You guys do follow Robert's Rules of Order. I've got 40 years serving on boards like you guys have.

I probably got more seat time on boards than all you guys put together. That was my specialty was Robert's Rules. Our chairman used to say, hey, Steve, did I do that right? Yeah, okay, yeah. You did okay, or you could have done this.

That's kind of what I did.

You know, as far as you guys denying Mike, the way I look at it legally, you're still right back at square one where it's been approved.

And your lawyer should have caught that. A lawyer should have some, at least basic knowledge of Robert's Rules, especially if he's advising a city council. He should have at least the basic knowledge. If he doesn't, he better get a new lawyer because you should have a— like in the lawyer we use in the corporation I'm involved with, they have to make Robert's Rules decisions and recommendations quite often. So you need someone that's more a corporate lawyer.

I think it'd be beneficial.

But anyway, like I said, to me, you guys aren't done yet.

The meeting and the motion were basically illegal.

You know, I know you guys are going to vote him down anyway. I have concerns about the same thing you guys do. But the guy shows up 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, and never misses a day, doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs. And he's kind of a grumpy old man. You know, that's common knowledge.

But then some of us are too.

You know, people say, why don't you fire him? He's grumpy. Yeah, well, you want his job? You come to work for me 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, I'll put you to work and I'll fire you tomorrow. But no, no one's taken me up on that offer, and it's still, the offer's still there.

You guys, you know, driving a shuttle taxi and whatnot is not for the weak of heart. You deal with a lot of Just like a Nome Police Department, you deal with a lot of inebriates, a lot of people that are in a bad mood for whatever reason. And it's like a bartender, we got to listen to everybody's sob stories. So it's not easy.

There was something else I was going to bring up. I've had a lot of concerns about Mr. Henderson. That's why I wish he was here. He's been kind of leading the charge of things that were basically illegal starting 2 years— the last 2 years now, where you guys allowed Checker Cab to run for 3 months until they got their act together. The council has no authority to allow somebody to break the law.

And that's basically what you guys did. It was not your— not this group. I think Mark was the only one on there. And I don't think Kenny was even on there yet. But you basically said, yeah, Checker, yeah, we know you don't have your permits and whatnot, but we'll give you 3 months to take care of that.

So you basically— they basically said, go ahead and break the law for 3 months. And then Mr. Henderson, along with Mr. Grimmer, met privately with Checker Cab owner, and I talked to Mr. Henderson himself about this.

They met and decided, okay, we're going to extend that to the last barge. And Mr. Henderson's reasoning was, well, I'd probably vote for it if it came before the council anyway. Well, again, you know, he's doing that on his own. They extended it to the last barge, and of course, last barge comes and There's no new cabs in the ward.

Permits were issued. The permits were issued illegally.

They weren't done properly, which is a whole other story. There were 4 different times that year where they had no insurance.

And that was proven. They got in an accident with an individual in front of the Roarin' Inn, and it was showing that Checker Cab did not have insurance on their vehicle.

The other guy did, which was kind of— but, you know, I'm concerned that Mr. Henderson is doing stuff like that as a councilman.

And that's why— that's another reason why you guys should have some training. You know, at least 3 of you are brand new. I know Mr. Hughes has been married before in Teller. Mark's been on— Mr. Johnson's been on here for a while. But I'd highly recommend some training.

You can get with QWERK or any of those groups and they bring people in for those trainings all the time. When I served on the Koyuk board years ago, we brought people in to train the whole board. I was on the council's board, same thing. We partnered with Nome Eskimo and King Island and Solomon and trained all the whole groups. That way it's more cost effective instead of just, you know, one small group.

Anyway, thank you for your time. Free comments.

Brad Soski, I'm Deputy Clerk. Clerk's Office would like to thank the following local Airbnbs for the generous contributions to the AAMC conference this December. Raven Rental Properties, that's Rafe, Sarah, and Lily Lysak. Brandy and Wayne Arrington from Arrington Ventures and Melissa from Nome Suite Homes. Each of these Airbnbs have donated a 2-night stay here in Nome, depending on availability, to this annual conference.

And our clerk's office just wanted to thank each one of them. That's it. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

Any further citizen comments?

All right. We'll move on then to unfinished business. Item A, findings of fact, conclusions of law in the matter of an appeal to the Nome Common Council from the City Clerk's denial of the chauffeur's license application of Harold Michael Amasek. Make a motion to approve those. I'll second.

There's been a motion and a second to approve those. Motion made by Councilmember Lust, seconded by Councilmember Green to approve the findings of fact and conclusions of law.

Is there any further discussion on that issue?

Hearing none, clerk, may you call the roll, please? Councilmember Green. Yes. Are we going to—.

I vote— your vote is yes. All right. Council Member Lust? Yes. Council Member Owls?

Yes. Council Member Martinson? Yes. Council Member Johnson? Yes.

The motion carries.

Next item under new business Would you read the resolution by title, please?

Resolution 26-10-03, a resolution requesting the Alaska Congressional Delegation secure full funding for annual maintenance dredging of federally authorized navigation projects in Alaska.

Make a motion to approve that resolution. Motion to approve by Council Member Lust. Seconded by Council Member Green.

Is there any discussion on this resolution?

Under discussion. We don't have Joy on the line, right? Joy is on Zoom. Joy is online. Mr. Mayor, may I ask a question?

Hey, Joy. Yes, Councilman Johnson. Yeah, on this, it says that FY27 federal Budget does not provide funding for the annual maintenance dredging. How that's different than other years, I thought that when we built the port, that the Corps was obligated to dredge for 50 years or a long time. What's happening here?

Why are we having to vote on this?

The Corps has been obligated to dredge, to perform maintenance dredging of the harbor since it was first built in 1917. That obligation, responsibility has not changed, and they are responsible for funding that. Every now and then comes a budgetary snafu, hiccup. We haven't had one in quite some time. Where there are not sufficient funds to go around and certain states, certain communities in those states are impacted.

In discussing with the delegation staff as well as the Army Corps District in Anchorage, um, they did not have sufficient funds to go around to the 4 facilities that are dredged each year. Sitŋasuaq, Homer, Nenilchik, Nome, and Dillingham, plus Anchorage. So somewhere up the chain of command, it doesn't happen at the district level, but the 4 communities were, those funds were not, those coffers were not filled for the '27 season, and Anchorage was given a slight increase, but Anchorage was funded. So we're chasing this down. The district office has said that they have tried to backfill these 4 communities for the '27 season through the F-27 work plan, but they likely won't hear whether that has been successful until February of '27.

And we have talked with the delegation. The other communities in the state that are having the same problem have also reached out to the delegation. And we're expecting, you know, I think it'll be resolved, but we do need to get the resolution out to the delegation to stress our concerns and the importance. It's— yes, it is their complete responsibility to do so.

Thank you, Joy. I knew that you would have a good resource and background on that.

Thank you, sir. Yes, we intend to hold their feet to the fire.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, clerk may call the vote, please. Councilmember Johnson? Yes. Councilmember Martinson? Yes.

Councilmember Owls? Yes. Councilmember Green? Yes. Councilmember Lust?

Yes. Motion carries.

Item B, would you read it by State your topic, please. Title. Resolution 26-10-04, a resolution to name the parties qualified to sign depository pledge agreements, orders for payment, warrants, and/or checks against the City of Nome accounts.

I'll make a motion to approve Resolution 26-10-04. Motion approved by Council Member Johnson. Seconded by Council Member Councilmember Green, are there names already in it?

Great.

Is there any further discussion?

May I call the vote, please? Council Member Lust? Yes. Council Member Green? Yes.

Council Member Bowles? Yes. Council Member Johnson? Yes. Council Member Martinson?

Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. Next item is Utility Manager's Report. Is he on or—.

Nope. All right, um, I guess we'll pick that up next time. Uh, the city manager is— his report is— he said he would present it next time. He has some more today, right? All right, um, so we move on then to, uh Citizens' comments.

Any further citizen comments?

Seeing no interest, we will move on then to Mayor's comments and report. Nothing at this time. So we will move then on to Councilmembers' comments.

Councilmember Lust. I just wanted to thank the NJUS crews, um, as well as Public Works during the storms the last couple days. It sounds like we have a couple more storms ahead of us over the next couple days, and, uh, it sounds like, uh, the NJUS board is going to be meeting here tomorrow. My hope is that city staff has the room prepared, that, uh, we're anticipating any needs they might have as far as printing things, needing a copier, that we can make this room welcoming for them so that way it's productive for them. And I will forward on to the City Manager some additional thoughts I have on a proposed resolution regarding the deep sea mining.

For his consideration.

That's all I got. Thank you, Council Member Lust. Council Member Green.

I just want to thank the line men and that equipment working at the plant, power back on, getting the old plant fired up, everything switched over. It's not fun. We're not super cold yet. But I know everybody started to feel their houses going a little cooler.

And then, hope everybody's safe this upcoming Halloween.

And head over to the elementary for carnival and everything that they're going to be doing.

That's all I have. Thank you, Councilmember Green. Councilmember Johnson. I just had a couple of kind of process comments. One is when roll call was taken, I think I only heard roll call of the people that were here in the room.

Is that right? Do you remember, Mr. Mayor? Just for process, all council members should be called whether they're here or not, and then either excused or not excused, just for process. Another process thing is on our agenda, Historically, we've always had the mayor's comments after the council member comments, not before, and I think that's a good practice for the mayor to end up with comments for the meeting. I do agree with Mr. Simonsen's comments earlier during public comment regarding the unusual executive session that we had prior to the normal council meeting, although it was timely for us because it's early in the evening as opposed to later in the evening.

You know, we all enjoyed that. But we could consider, if we're going to have a long night, we could consider advertising and starting the regular council meeting earlier so we can have an executive session or come into come into play with the normal council meeting and then call the executive session if it's necessary to have it early in the meeting. There are ways that we can take care of it without doing it the way that we did. I thought that was also unusual. And also, I agree with— we've said this for years about making a more distinct idea or reason why we're going into executive session when we have the ability to, or if we have the ability to do that.

Those are all kind of process things that come to mind. And then the last comment I had was we've been talking for months about doing a revenue workshop, work session, which is scheduled for tonight, which we put off basically a month ago to the last meeting of the night, and here we are again. We're basically following government. Government works— moves very slowly, and we're definitely proving that true. So, I'm not sure what happened to that.

You know, I understand City Manager's not feeling well tonight, but I don't know what happened to that work session. Session we're planning. And also, we had put off a vote, put it on the table regarding the pull tab issue. And that was also scheduled to come up on this last meeting of the month, of this month. And I'm just commenting, I'm not sure why, I don't understand why that happened.

And I don't know if we have the answer for that without our manager here. But it seems that we should stick to plans that we've had and talked about for months to try to address those so we do not drag them out and let them go by the wayside. That's my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Johnson.

Councilmember Knowles? No comment. Councilmember Martinson?

I don't have anything further.

Student rep. Student representative. Happy to be here for my first full council meeting. Thank you for having me.

All right.

Okay, I guess we'll move on to mayor's comments and report.

I appreciate Councilmember Johnson's and Citizen Simonson's comments regarding the special— the Executive Session. I struggled with how that all went down and didn't feel very comfortable with it. So I really appreciate that you brought that up. Thanks. Appreciated the— Power coming back on.

Appreciated NGUS, what they go through to keep our town lit up. We've got more storms coming, so here we go again.

Hopefully everyone be smart in the storms.

Roads are getting wiped out, closed.

Take care of your stuff. Get ready for it, it's coming.

And I guess I'm glad to see the water turn a little bit more to the solid side, finally for the season. Can't wait to get on the ice.

I hope everyone has a happy Halloween, and I guess I'll see y'all on Halloween night. You just have to finish.