Cordova: Sept 16, 2026 City Council Public Hearing and Regular Meeting

Okay, okay, we are going to come back and from recess into the public hearing. And see if there's anybody who would like to speak to Ordinance 1241, authorizing the city manager to enter into lease with option to purchase agreement with Prince William Sound Economic Development District. And there are crickets and nobody coming to the mic. So with that, we will adjourn.

Okay, no comments.

We will move on and call to order the regular City Council meeting of September 16th. If you could join me with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, thank you. And if we could get a roll call, please.

Mayor Kristin Smith.

Here.

Deborah Adams. Here. Lee Collins. Here. Aaron Hanson, absent.

Casey Kinsman, absent. Michael Mickelson is absent. Wendy Rainey. Here. David Zastrow.

Here.

Have a quorum.

Okay, so We have— we move to just— do I just— we just hearing— suggest that— oh, we have a— we suggest the, uh, approval of the regular agenda with no comments, with no objection. We will consider that approved.

Does anybody have a disclosure of conflict of interest or ex parte communications.

Um, Madam Chair, yes, ma'am, not that I'm, um, voting, but I do want to just note that I am employed by the Prince William Sound Economic Development District, and that issue is on the agenda tonight, just for the record.

Okay, thank you.

I guess just disclose that I did a first reading of this, that I'm also employed by the Tacoma Federal District.

And I think it was decided at that point that it wasn't going to be a conflict for you, correct? Correct. Okay, okay. Anything else for disclosures of conflict of interest and ex parte communication?

Okay, we'll go to communications by and petitions from visitors. We have no guest speakers listed, and so we will move on to audience comments regarding agenda items.

Hearing none, we'll go to chairpersons and representatives of boards and commissions. Um, Hospital board, school board, we do have the Planning Commission resolution on page 2 of our packets with the CIP list. Does anybody want to speak to that?

Okay, hearing nothing on that, we will go to the consent calendar. There's nothing in the consent calendar and nothing listed for minutes. We have no consideration of bids, proposals, and contracts, so we will go into reports of officers. Um, there's no mayor's report listed, but Mayor, did you have anything you wanted to bring forward?

I— let's see, there couple things. I haven't heard anything back from the AMHS about our discussions about the ferry system and, or, you know, the ferry schedule and the possibility of adding an extra sailing. I did— it did occur to me, I heard them say that the Tustumena can't tie up at the regular ferry dock and that they would have to use a cruise ship dock. I don't think those— I mean, I'm in Whittier and I was looking at those cruise ship docks and I don't think they're set up for vehicles to unload. So I, I don't know how that would work.

And I don't know that having the ferry with just passenger service would do us a ton of good. But anyway, I did email Craig Torga about that and have not heard back. And Craig Torga and the DOT Commissioner Ryan Anderson will be in Cordova on Tuesday, and I have a— the Commissioner's Office called today and asked if I could meet with them. So I've got a meeting set up for Tuesday afternoon, and I was going to ask all of you what else we should put on the list to discuss. Are there other transportation issues that we want to bring to DOT's attention while we have them?

And if— I mean, if you don't, obviously don't have to tell me right this minute, you can think about it, but I would say the, uh, Whiteshed Road, Three Mile, you know, basically just past where they're fixing it with our grant project. There's some areas out there that are pretty scary, and they're going to get scarier with snow and ice. Yeah, well, and it may be an issue since I don't think anybody's going to be tying up at any cruise ship dock in Whittier for a little while, um, considering the fact that they just finished having a big fire there. But that fire was across the bay, not at the dock. Yeah, ships use—.

Well, there, there are two cruise ship docks, and, and the fire was at the new one. And the other one is, um, is the, the Princess dock is at the Cliffside Marina on the— what, on the town side of Passage Canal. And the new one at the head of the bay is the, um, Holland America or Norwegian line at the far end, and that's the one that was on fire. Um, yeah, so can we just send you an email then if we have ideas? Yes, please.

Yeah, that'd be great. Mhm.

Yeah, so this is DOT and the ferry. Yeah, you have a meeting. Okay. Yeah.

Okay, anything else? I was just going to add, um, folks maybe already know about the Confluence meeting that's happening next week. It's being organized by the Alaska Outdoor Alliance, which is focused, as the name suggests, on, um, outdoor recreation as as a key element of wellness, personal wellness, community wellness, and they are having— it's a conference gathering. There is an agenda posted on their website. They're going to start meeting Tuesday afternoon, the 23rd— 22nd, and then all day the 23rd and the morning of the 24th.

And there's a locals rate if you want to just drop in for $50. There's an event, I can't remember, I'm sorry, if it's Tuesday night or Wednesday night about— that the Alaska Conservation Foundation is putting on about kelp values and the work that they've been doing with Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council money. So a couple community events going on. The Alaska Municipal League, I think, is coming to town to be part of this gathering, and they're leading some discussion, some sessions around braiding funding sources together to help communities achieve their priorities. So, um, that session might be worth attending given that, yeah, we have some pretty major capital needs, and I do plan to attend those.

But it's open to the public. Yeah.

And it's all scheduled for the Cordova Center. I'll be there both 22nd and 23rd, but I'll be leaving the morning of the Thanks. Yeah, I, I don't have anything else. Okay, any questions for the mayor? Otherwise, we will move on.

I'm happy to answer questions.

Hearing none, we'll move on to city manager's report.

Okay, um, I have a couple things to add to my report. Mona Smith is out of town. But there are people swimming in here. That's all that's—. So it is over.

Yeah. Yes, it's a big day. It's a big week. I would like to just speak to the dog ordinance. I understand there's been some communications with council members about a dog that has had some issues with other dogs.

We are working through the code currently. We've been working on it for about a week. Um, we spoke with the lawyers first to try to figure out what we can do to make it work better. Um, Kim and Holly will continue to work on it. We're hoping to have a draft ordinance to the lawyers by next week, and then they have to, you know, go through it and make sure we're not— we're following all the rules.

And, uh, and maybe, uh, by the second we can get that ordinance on, because it is a coaching, it does require an ordinance. And that kind of stuff. So we are working on it. Um, and then the other thing, I was gonna have Kevin and Baby come up to talk about a training that he has pulled together for the tree guys and water guys.

Oh, I'm gonna bring Baby. Oh, good.

Turn it off. Yeah. Hey, good evening. Pretty exciting. So obviously we know, you know, travel budgets were cut last year.

Most of the trainings that are for equipment is usually out of town. The state puts on a lot of trainings. Like, we sent somebody for a snow motor grader training a couple years ago, which was pretty beneficial just to help learn some new techniques for pushing snow around and things like that. So because of the budget cuts last year, removing travel, I have been pushing really hard and advocating to the state to have them bring some of those trainings here because they do them in Anchorage, Fairbanks. They've done them, they do them out in Kodiak, other, you know, remote places as well.

They do all sorts of trainings. And so this one is specifically two different classes. One is for graders, just general graders, they're not snow related. And then the other one is for excavators and loaders. And so while most of our crew has a lot of— at least the streets crew has a lot of hands-on experience with that.

It's going to be very beneficial for specifically the water sewer guys are going to get a lot more hands-on training with that sort of equipment. We do have some new people on the streets team as well over the last couple of years that are going to be involved in that and the refuse department. They do a lot of loader and excavator work. So just wanted to let you guys know that even with the restricted travel budget, we are doing our best to still find those trainings and bring people to town. This was no cost to us.

So, yeah, so just pretty excited about that. Going to keep looking for it. But, and with budget coming up, I mean, I'm always going to advocate, you know, we're going to try and bring trainings here, but Travel to trainings is always important. Continuing education, uh, getting those guys in different pieces of equipment, different scenarios, uh, different, different people that have different experience. You know, you learn a lot from that sort of stuff.

So while we're doing our best to, uh, bring trainings here, uh, I do want to just always make sure to advocate that if we ever are able to, um, afford to send people out for training, it is something that I hope that the council will, uh, consider in future budgets. So, yeah. They get to use their own equipment too. Yeah, yeah, that's the other part. Yeah, we'll be training on our equipment, which is even better.

So just that much more familiarity with it. We're going to be setting them up with the grader down at shipyard. So we're going to get a little double dip on this because we always grade the shipyard a couple times a year. So during the training, we'll be doing the grading of shipyard to get that out of the way. And then we'll be taking an excavator out to our property at Five Mile Loop out there so they can actually practice some trenching.

We were trying to figure out where we're going to do that. Obviously, you know, really the only locations we have in town is the water treatment plant out by the burn pile or next to the Old Eagle lot, and all of that's pretty rocky ground, so really can't do a lot of trenching there. So we're going to be taking them out to the Five Mile Loop to do trenching practice.

Madam Chair? Go ahead, Dave. Yeah, I got a question, uh, uh, Kevin. So that sounds fantastic, uh, bringing, uh, uh, trainers here to train the crew on equipment that they're going to be using anyhow. I'm just curious, is this a formal training where they go through scenarios and end up with some kind of an official certification?

Um, I mean, yeah, they'll get a certificate at the end from the trainer. It is a state training program, um, so they have— the state has an entire training division that they offer to both their state employees as well as other municipalities and public entities like utilities and things like that. So, um, this is like a state official state training where I guess, yeah, they will get some sort of a certificate after that, but it's more of just, you know, you did this training, so Fantastic. That's great to hear. Thank you.

Okay, is that me? Oh, okay. Hearing no other questions for Kevin, thank you. That's awesome.

Yes, other than that, I don't have anything to add, but, um, open for questions.

Um, Madam Chair, Councilman, I noticed the bear fence contract has been signed. Report, um, do you have a timeline from them? Are they going to start now or— well, they have the spring—. They have to order everything. Um, the idea would be hopefully be able to work through the winter.

Um, uh, it's unknown really what the weather is going to be like, but, um, yeah, as soon as stuff starts to be coming, they're going to start working their staging and things together. There's one project about us. Is there any way we can take the aggressive dogs from town and put them out there as bear protection?

Madam Chair. Yeah, go ahead, Councilman Zaskar. Uh, yeah, just a question for city manager. Um, we always seem to get a pool update. Why should tonight be any different?

Love to hear what you have to say about the pool.

Well, Samantha's out of town, and so my update is the pool is open and people are swimming. Yay! Lots of carbs there the other day. I can speak to that because I went to the party on Saturday with two little ones and they were— it was wonderful. And they were very excited about having cake after they got out of the pool.

We're in the locker room. You know how cold it is when you get out of the pool. So don't worry, it'll be hot. The showers would be nice and hot. No, they ran out of hot water.

There's that many people there. But it was wonderful, and a lot of the other improvements too, to the decking and such, made a big difference. Definitely something to celebrate. It was a long time coming, so it's fantastic.

Any other comments or questions for City Manager?

Okay, hearing none. There's, um, City Clerk, no report in the packet. Did you have anything? I don't have anything today. Okay, the correspondence primer is in our packet as always, and we can move on to ordinances and resolutions.

With Ordinance 1241, and I am looking for a motion on this. Madam Chair, I move to adopt Ordinance 1241, an ordinance of the Council of the City of Cordova, Alaska, authorizing the city manager to enter into a lease with option to purchase agreement with Prince William Sound Economic Development District for Lot 2, Block 7, Northville Development Park. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second on the table. Councilman Collins, do you want to speak to your motion?

Not really much to add. This is our second reading, so we discussed the previous meetings and then during the previous proceedings. I think it's— yeah, excited to see it moving forward. Council Member Adams. I think I'd say the same thing.

I have nothing to add except that, um, I'm excited for the, the entities that are going to be developing that property.

Council Member Zastro. Nothing to add.

Okay, and I have nothing to add either. So do we need— since we have nothing new to add, if we— we're going to be looking for a roll call vote for this one, please.

So on Ordinance 1241, Lee Collins, yes.

See, Ken's been— he's absent. Deborah Adams, yes. Dave Zafirov, yes.

Michaelson is absent. In his absence When you ready?

Yes. It's 4 yeses. We have a form, uh, pass.

Okay.