Kodiak Borough: Assembly Work Session of August 13, 2026

All right. I will call the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly Work Session of Thursday, August 13th to order. We will begin with citizens' comments. This is your one opportunity for citizen comments tonight at a work session. For those who wish to call in, the local number is 907-486-3231, toll-free 1-855-492-9202.

Please turn off your radio or any listening device to prevent feedback. And for those in the room who wish to speak under citizens' comments, come to the podium and sign in, turn on the microphone, make sure the green light is on before speaking, and speak directly into the mic. And please state your name for the record. Please address all remarks to the Assembly as a body and not to any member thereof. And we'll start with Mr. Van Dale.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor and Assembly members. I appreciate the invitation to this baña— I mean, Assembly meeting. I just would like to introduce myself. I think I know all of you and you may know me.

I'm Larry Van Dale. I am the chairman of the Solid Waste Advisory Board. I've also had the good fortune of working with Kodiak bears for the last 45 years, first with Fish and Game and now as the executive director of the Kodiak Brown Bear Trust. And in the role I have now, I can give you unfiltered advice because I don't work for the company anymore. And that's what I'd like to offer, either as my role as chairman of the advisory board for you guys, or anything else, I'm here to help, to help us as a community solve this problem.

So thank you for the invitation.

Good evening. My name is Scott Arndt, and I'm here tonight representing Service Area Number 1. There's an agenda item that says review of Service Area Number 1 lease with Fields Rental. I've not been contacted as to why this is on the agenda, so I'm here to answer any questions in regards to this. So I hope you give me the opportunity when an issue comes up.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Scott.

My name is Carly McChesney. Good evening.

I just wanted to clarify something.

About the data centers. I learned about it at the KEA annual meeting. Yeah, I was just standing there minding my own business when Just Call Me Mike Brecken came up and started talking with me, and then afterwards I asked questions of Dan Menth and got more information. And then I went to the reentry program and just happened to sit by Ron, and I learned more about the data centers. So I just wasn't going to say anything because I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but I kept it to myself for quite a few months and then got some research on it, and, um, I thought I better speak up unless you never believe a word I say ever again.

So Thank you.

Thank you, Carleen.

Hello, Mayor and Assemblymembers. My name is Dan Rohrer. I am here to speak in regards to item number C under your agenda discussing draft ordinance to remove limitations on your electronic participation. I was very concerned to see that and to see the magnitude of which you're looking at possibly making changes. I think it's— well, let me just share my point of view.

So as a previous assembly member and as a previous pro-mayor, this item has been discussed often throughout the past. The concern I have is that right now, like a contentious issue, you're all 7 here, the mayor's here, we can talk, I can make eye contact with each one of you. When it turns into electronic participation, I can't make eye contact with you. We don't have a real true conversation if you're just here on Zoom. In addition to that, if I don't— if I don't even get to see your face on the screen when you are participating via Zoom— we've all been in Zoom meetings where you know that the people are not paying attention.

They're doing other things, they're multitasking. I don't want borough assembly members or mayors that are multitasking. I want them to be 100% focused on the business of the borough when they're in meetings. My fear when I was the borough mayor was that it would end up being literally the manager, the clerk, and myself sitting in a room with the public. Everybody else would participate electronically.

And if it was a contentious issue, you could all just not show up, show up electronically, not have to deal with the community on— there's so many contentious issues that come up— and literally leave it be to staff members and the mayor to deal with the public on that topic. And I, I think that's just unfair to the public. We know when we run for elected office that it's a massive time commitment, and I get that it would be convenient at times to just not, not have to be here in person. But I think it changes the entire feel of our local democracy. It changes the whole conversation.

It changes the whole way we interact. Um, I'm also a big fan, if you're on vacation, enjoy your vacation and, uh, don't call into the meeting. Like embrace your vacation, have time with your family, unplug for a little bit. But, um, anyways, as I I looked at it, I just feel like the ordinance would go way, way, way too far towards making it be an absentee body of elected officials that could be gone for an extended period of time. I also am of the mindset of if you're going to be gone out of Kodiak for 3 months, you probably should resign the position and let somebody who truly lives year-round in Kodiak be present.

I know that's maybe not a very popular opinion, but bottom line for me is I I like to be able to come, make public comment, look each one of you in the eyes. You can look me in the eyes. We make contact. I can tell if my public comments are reaching you or if Steve's sitting there going, "I have no idea what Dan's talking about." And I can make eye contact with him and make sure— or if I state something that is clearly not connecting because I'm speaking poorly, I can try to correct that. All of that goes away when it becomes majority electronic.

Last thing. Quorum, you have to be able to maintain quorum in the room. Quorum spread across the country, spread across our world, to me just makes no sense versus quorum present in the room. I think otherwise it's, it's literally unfair to the public. So, and I'm questioning whether it's how it, how it deals with the Open Meetings Act of Alaska, because if none of you are present, is it really truly an open meeting?

So anyways, thank you for your time. Thanks for letting me go a minute over. Sure thing. Thanks, Dan.

Anyone else? Any calls?

Good evening, Borough Assembly. Thanks for having me. I don't have any— my name is Nate Sabota. I'm the area wildlife biologist for Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Excuse me.

Prepared comments, but I did want to let you know my staff and I are here to answer any questions you might have relative to your first agenda item there about the landfill bears. I also did want to extend my appreciation to Amy and Cody for their efforts thus far in getting things underway at the, at the landfill. I know you guys are fully aware of the issues out there, and I just want to extend my appreciation to them. It's a big task. It is a lot for a group with limited resources and limited staff to tackle.

They have been doing the best they could. We need to increase things a little bit better out there, but I did want to extend my appreciation to them and let you know that we are here to answer any questions you might have. Thanks. Thanks. Anyone else?

All right. We will start with our first agenda item, which is— oh, Manager's Comments. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. On Tuesday, there was a Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen, the Coast Guard Commandant, the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard, and Senator Sullivan were at the Marketplace, and along with the Mayor and Assemblymember Gardner and Ames. We were able to listen to them speak.

I think there was some confusion around the data centers at that speech and what we know locally, and so we talked with Senator Sullivan's staff to try to figure out what was really going on there. I attended a meeting on Tuesday that started the design process for moving the outside perimeter fence at the landfill closer to the access roads within the landfill. This will make the fence easier to visually inspect and repair. It will also remove much of the bear habitat to the outside of the main fence line. We'll get into much more of that when we get to that agenda item.

Our next Providence lease negotiation is scheduled for September 4th. Um, on the 11th, I went to the Service Area 1 Board of Director meeting. I know you've received emails from some residents in Service Area 1 asking for assembly assistance in some flooding issues. I think Service Area 1 board did a good job addressing that and said that they would continue to work with the resident to see what they could do and to track the way water was flowing around their property. And then the assessor and I walked over to the City of Kodiak work session as they were talking about the Kodiak City sales tax and what they were going to do.

And while that's not a borough thing, um, if you guys were to go on— if the public were to go online and look at Tuesday's packet, their packet is was so good and so informative, and they just did a really good job showing all the exemptions they give, what all of their income from different taxes are. So if you're interested in finding out that, the Tuesday work session work packet for this city is excellent.

Um, we are currently recruiting a maintenance employee and a treatment plant operator at the Leach Treatment Plant. Assessing actually had an interview of a candidate for appraiser tech, and I authorized the offer being made today. And as soon as we approve the new job description for the GIS analyst, we will be recruiting one of those as well. If you're paying your 2026 property tax, you're— and you're paying it in halves. The first half payment is normally due August 15th.

August 15th lands on a Saturday this year, so that payment will be due on August 17th. Please make sure that you're in here on time or it's postmarked with that date, otherwise it will not be considered on time. Uh, we are still working with Tyler on our property assessment and taxation implementation project. I think we've made some progress, and we're talking about moving from their implementation team to their transitional support team, which is the middle step before we get to their regular support team. And so that is a good sign for us.

I think finance is a little bit closer than assessing is, but they're working together really well to get us closer to that In IT, we're making good progress on the virtualization test project, as well as working on network equipment at the landfill scale shack. They are also working with Koniag Cyber. That infrastructure project is ongoing. Phases 1 and 2, which are planning and design, procurement and staging, are now complete, and they're in Phase 3 for implementation. There's also a Phase 4 and 5 with testing and validation, which is tracking for sometime in mid-December.

The IT and GIS staff are continuing to work on documenting our GIS systems. We're trying to get all of Travis's information out of Travis before he leaves, and so while we're trying to hire a new employee, we're not totally lost. They're also working on creating maps for the Community Development Comprehensive Plan and new neighborhood maps for assessing. In assessing, they are reviewing properties inside of the city Kodiak this summer. There are no changes to the senior citizen or disabled veteran exemptions.

We have 21 that have no PFD and we have 26 that still are undetermined. That means they have filed for a PFD, but the PFD haven't said whether or not they meet requirements or not. No changes to our exemption date updates except the Kodiak Maritime Museum is currently being worked on. Um, for our exemption appeals, we have a status conference scheduled for August 18th for the Alutiiq Heritage Foundation refund case. We're hoping to have a decision from that case before, um, the deadline.

Uh, the 2024 case was heard on July 24th, and they're— as you can imagine, they're all intertwined, and we're waiting for that first answer to come back before we can have answers for '24, '25, and 2026. The Alaska Supreme Court case with KANA was heard in December of 2024. We don't have a decision yet, but the case the day before us had a decision, and that was between Nome and the Norton Sound, um, Consortium. And the Supreme Court sided with Norton Sound in that case. And so if you're interested in that, I can share what Scott Brunton Erickson, our lawyer who's working on that for us, still shared with us.

And then CIMA has a software conversion update in there as well. Community Development unfortunately didn't have a lack of quorum— or they did have a lack of quorum last night, so there wasn't a meeting, but their regularly meeting scheduled for next week is a review of the CIP list, a rezone request for Cliff Point, and the disposal review for the Beaver Lake properties. In Engineering and Facilities, we received one proposal from Alaska Waste and that review process is ongoing. The landfill soil remediation project staff is continuing to till the soil. We've had a lot of good weather, so that cover has been able to be off.

It's back on when it's raining. We're hoping the next sampling event in the end of November will make it so that we can be done with that project. At the long-term care center, NWFF conducted soil sampling, and we're waiting the results. And NWFF is also going to be working with us in Carluck and working with our contractor who is actually doing that work, Three Tier Alaska, but they're going to be doing the drilling out there for Three Tier Alaska. We have several small projects going on, the Port Lyon School painting project, the annex building UST removal, it's been substantially completed, that got taken out of the ground last week.

Our new skid for the leachate treatment plant has arrived for citric acid dosing. We are working on the office, our main office roof warranty. Is going to be late this summer. Um, and then we have building automation system projects at both, um, the KFRC and the Borough Building still scheduled. We are working on a lot of designs.

The North Star roof is in its final stages. The pool small-scale repair is moving up to the 65% level. East Elementary roof was paused because I asked for it to be paused. The, um, automatic transfer switches at the hospital Staff received the 65% design, and they'll be going to the ARB soon. And then, as I referenced earlier, that discussion about the long-term bear fence solutions are underway with our architectural and engineering team.

That perimeter fence won't be something that we can do this summer, but it can absolutely be a future project. Upcoming contracts, we're working our contractor roster for preferred vendors. Our facility snow removal and ice control contract and our environmental services contract. It's been fully executed and staff are in the process of scheduling a meeting to start work with NWFF to fill in any gaps that we have until our environmental specialist comes up to speed. And our next H-FAB meeting is September 15th and we are being holding those at Providence.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions for the manager?

I just have one. Just, I'm still a little concerned, or quite concerned, about the 26 exemption applicants that are still waiting on PFD. What is happening to their cases or to their applications right now? Are they just on hold? Is this affecting their deadlines?

Assessing checks all of the time. And so what happens if you think that you're going to get exemption and you don't get it when you get your tax bill sent out on July 1st? It's for the amount. As soon as your— the PFD comes through and says you're eligible, then if you've already paid, you get a refund, or we update— it's called a supplement. Assessing will supplement your tax bill, and then you get your money back.

We do have a way for people to prove their residency, and there is a form you can come in and fill out if you like, because some people just forgot to file for the PFD, so we're, you know, we can wait for the PFD to come back forever and they didn't file. So we have a system. So there is definitely a way for people to get their money back. I did that my first year with disabled veteran exemption. I, we didn't, my husband's PFD didn't come back in time and so we paid the full amount and then as soon as the PFD comes through, we got a check back.

Okay, cool. Or I just paid less for my second half actually. Oh, okay.

All right. Seeing no comments or questions for Amy, we will move on to Agenda Item A, the Landfill Bears Management Discussion. Let's pull up this huge document. All right. Manager Williams.

Thank you. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation noted in our 2025 landfill inspection that the bear situation in the landfill was out of compliance with the ADEC solid waste regulations, stating that bears be kept out of the landfill. ADEC, along with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, came up with a plan to ensure that a series of repairs were made to the landfill perimeter fence to ensure that bears did not have access. Obviously, the borough was involved in that plan too, but I didn't write that. Uh, after the required fence improvements were finished and inspected by the Department of Fish and Game and KIB.

Uh, we worked with ADC to develop a bear management plan for the landfill. The plan was approved on July 15th of this year. The requirements of the plans are being met. However, there continues to be bear presence at the landfill due to the presence of a constant attractant. Um, as we continue to have issues with bears accessing the landfill despite our best efforts of keeping the electric fence repaired and up to date, We've— in the bear management plan that's included tonight, you can see that we kind of had an escalation.

If we had problem bears, we were— we talked to the state troopers, we talked to Alaska Department of Fish and Game and used their expertise to help us try to figure out how to manage them. And at one point, we were doing really well and we didn't have a lot of bears in the landfill. And now this summer, there's quite a few bears in the landfill. And so as we had this conversation We were trying to figure out different things that we could do, and one of the, I think, the best, fastest solutions that we can do is add a secondary perimeter fence around the cell where the actual municipal solid waste face is, where we actually stack the bales of garbage. And then we have a future cell right next to that, and so we're also going to include that inside of the interior perimeter fence.

Our ENF director is here tonight, and he actually wrote you a letter that I know that he's going to come, uh, read in probably next, um, and talk about some of the efforts that have been done. So in your packet tonight, I included our landfill permit, the 25 landfill inspection, the approval letter that we got for the bear management plan, the bear management plan itself. Our proposed interior electric fence location is marked on the map, and we have a Wind River Bear Institute proposal for bear dogs to come and help us keep bears out of the landfill. So as you heard tonight, we've invited a lot of participants. So we have people here to answer your questions who are subject matter experts.

So Nate came up and spoke already, and he has two other people from the Department of Fish and Game. We have Larry Vandale, who introduced himself, and we have Anna Mika Powers. Anna Mika online is from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. She's our main contact for our solid waste permit. So she's the one that comes out and does our inspections, and when we have questions about our permit, that's our point of contact at DEC.

So thank you to all of you guys for being here. I'm going to have Cody come up and speak first, and then whatever questions you have, hopefully we'll be able to get your question to the person who's the most appropriate to answer it. So we can kind of have a community conversation about the best direction to go on this. Thank you. Yeah, so, um, Amy covered most of it already, but I just kind of wanted to format For context here, we're at kind of a cross in the road, so to speak.

I applied for a grant with Defenders of Wildlife for a fence that will go around the municipal solid waste cell itself, and we were approved for that grant. Materials will be shipped to coming to Kodiak here shortly, but that still comes at a cost. About $250,000 is what we're getting estimates to install said fence. And so I really wanted to focus my, um my comments to the Assembly and the Mayor tonight on kind of the history of this and a little concerns and reservations I have about reactionary measures when it comes to projects like this. And so the Kodiak Island Borough has been actively working with ADEC and ADFNG for more than a year to address bears accessing waste at the landfill.

This is just my involvement, so this is just my perspective. During that time, the Borough has implemented and approved the bear management plan that Manager Williams spoke to. And we pursued recommendations provided by both agencies and all outside resources provided. A detailed timeline was provided to the Assembly as a separate document. And so I think I am a pretty solution-oriented person and the Department remains committed to resolving the issues that we are aware of with bears.

A primary concern, however, is the lack of clearly defined measures of success. And since my involvement, the Bureau has implemented each recommendation provided by ADF and AIDFNG and pursue the external resources suggested to ADEC— or suggested by ADEC, rather. And this has included significant modifications to the existing fence in 2025, including structural improvements, lowering the bottom wire around the perimeter and patching openings with chain link fencing, relocating sections of the fence, and replacing the fence energizer with a specific model recommended by AIDFNG. At the conclusion of these efforts in 2025, the identified deficiencies in the fence had all been addressed. The next recommended approach was to drive the bears out of the landfill with ADFNG's support.

That approach, along with the repairs in the fence, obviously have not resulted in the desired outcome that we collectively agreed upon at that time. And we continue to see bears accessing the landfill despite the measures implemented. And so this raises an important question to me as the director of the department whose staff spent a great deal of time out there maintaining this equipment infrastructure. What is the path forward if the next round of recommendations is unsuccessful? And so when we are looking at a $250,000 price tag for one fence and a potential $750,000 price tag for the larger fence repair, this is a significant investment for the community and the borough alike.

So the Department's experience has been that we are continuing to evaluate and implement potential solutions without clearly established and measurable definition of success. As the bears adapt to each measure, the recommended measures have evolved to respond respond to their behavior with the support of ADFNG's recommendations. This makes it difficult to determine what additional actions are necessary and when the Bureau's efforts will be considered sufficient per our ADEC permits. There is also a distinct— distinction between the Bureau's regulatory responsibility and the broader concerns being raised regarding potential attractants. Under our permit, the Bureau is required to protect the municipal solid waste operations and limit the bear's access to municipal solid waste.

At the same time, we are being asked to address other potential attractants, the significance of which may ultimately be determined by bear behavior. This creates uncertainty regarding how compliance and successful resolution of the issues will be measured. The Bureau recognizes that the bears are accessing municipal solid waste present and that presents a serious safety concern and operational concern for staff alike. We share a goal of preventing that access. And the department has continued to take action throughout the process.

The challenge is establishing what additional actions are necessary, what standard those actions intend to achieve, and how success will ultimately be measured. The Kodiak Island Borough landfill also presents a unique challenge compared to many other landfills in the state. I've reached out to everyone that has been recommended, and each one has different infrastructure and things that we're doing unique to us. As we consider additional investments and operational changes it is important that these efforts be directed towards solutions supported by clear objectives, measurable outcomes, and defined understanding of our regulatory responsibilities. The purpose of the accompanying timeline is to provide the Assembly with a history of the work completed to date and the progression of the measures implemented over time.

The intent is to provide context where we are today and why, and after substantial effort and multiple rounds of corrective measures, the Department believes it is important to establish these clear a more measurable path towards success. And so attached, you'll see that timeline that the, uh, Manager Williams provided. I added it to the letter just to make it, uh, easier to read. And a few key dates there that I wanted to point out is, um, the July 15th is when that bear management plan was accepted, but we, we submitted that way earlier in the process, back in November of 2025. And so there was multiple iterations and multiple review view of that.

And during that time, we're actually actively working on our first fence remodel project that I had been involved in. Bears had been a problem long before that, and we were trying to correct and realign the fence that was there. Since that point in time, we've reached out to the resources that are available, and everyone collectively agrees— and that's kind of what drove me to write this letter— it's a collection of people that are a lot smarter than I am, and they're all and hey, this is kind of a multi-phased approach. One thing alone isn't going to address this issue, so it's not something we can theoretically just throw infrastructure and money at in our typical projects world and resolve. And so the next date on the timeline would be the conversations that I had in July following our July 22nd meeting with ADEC and ADFNG, and that would be with AFIS.

I cannot remember the name for that acronym, but they're basically federal wildlife trappers and things. They pointed out that to do what we needed to do alone, even with the size of our landfill, because the size of the fence encompasses about 100 acres, would be $600,000 to $700,000 per year just to come and haze bears for us. We reached out to the Bear Dog individual, Nils, and that's a nonprofit organization, had many phone calls and conversations Conversations with him. I should back up a minute. I do still plan to meet with the AFIS individual on August 20th, so more to come from that conversation.

Neil's provided us a proposal for $39,900 for the 14 days. I can't remember the exact amount for the additional weeks, but that should be in your packet tonight. He too agreed that his efforts would be best served if there was a fence around the municipal solid waste, and part of his, his proposal is to install a temporary fence at the municipal solid waste base to then work the dogs and do what they need to do. And then we also got screens that we started installing today on the nets to keep the lookie-loos and things from the street because that's an entirely separate issue that gets brought up by SWAB and other boards and committees that are concerned about people stopping and viewing bears. And so there's, there's many things that are happening, and the biggest concern from Departmental's perspective is that we're going to have a huge investment but still technically have bears on the landfill property, and they are attracted to other things that aren't municipal solid waste.

Just this week we had a bear eat plastic from a covering that we're using for a cell that is basically fuel-contaminated soil. And so we were out— the project manager, myself— were out for a couple hours patching that plastic. Plastic. And so it's not food, it's not anything else, they just started chewing it up. And so now we have a new issue that we are tackling this week.

That concludes my comments.

Anything else? Amy? We are ready for questions, Mr. Mayor. Okay. I agree with Cody, like, the— to be compliant with the regulations, we need to get— we need solutions to get the bears out.

And I think that's the line, right, that we're looking at. So I appreciate all the documentation that Amy and Cody provided about the timeline, the history, all of the maintenance tickets that have been issued and resolved, and that certainly shows that Right? The problem is with the system, you know. So let's ask some questions and see if we can get to a place where we get those questions answered and, you know, come up with whatever kind of configuration we need to or recommendations to concentrate resources where, you know, where we can would be most effective. So I think I saw Jeremias first and then Mr. Woods.

First of all, thank you, Cody, and thank you, Amy. I know how many trips you guys have had to make out to the landfill. I know you guys have been working hard out there, and it seems at some point it becomes futile. I've lived in Alaska for the vast, vast majority of my life. I've been dealing with bears getting into things my entire life.

There comes a point, it's I'm going to go ahead and just voice what is wildly unpopular anytime that I speak it, but I'm going to put it out there so that we can start the conversation.

I looked at the scoring and the rubrics that Kodiak was judged on by DEC in our packet here, and we've got a borderline almost perfect score. It's, it's an A on this report, right? So we're doing what we can do, but you're dealing with what is arguably, you know, the largest apex predator— what is it on the planet? Is there another bear that's bigger than the Kodiak bear? I don't believe that there is.

So we're being scored by outside entities that are looking at a unique problem. No one else in the world has ever had to deal with this this problem. And I know people don't like to hear it, but at what point do we say that we are dealing with defense of life and/or property and euthanize problem bears? 99% Of Kodiak is a wildlife refuge. This 1% is mine, it's yours, it's our neighbors.

And if they're going to keep up bad behavior, at what point do we step in and deal with it from that perspective, because throwing millions after millions after millions on fences is a little ridiculous in my opinion. So I really wanted to start the conversation. I know people aren't going to like it, but I want to hear what you have to say. So is, is that a question you'd like answered from some of our guests? From the entire room and the community.

I'm just putting it out there.

So maybe. Okay. I would love to hear from Larry and Nate. So I think the question that we have here is, I guess, what is the point, what is the line where we have to make that decision? We scored an A on our test, okay?

We have a good fence. Cody's team has been killing it out there. My own friend Conrad put in tons of time working on that fence out there. And at what point do we keep putting Band-Aids on a system that's not working? You can't remove the bear.

You're going to bring it over to Minashka, or excuse me, where did we bring the last one? To—. Fognac. Fognac. Did— but there was another one they brought to White Sands or something.

And it made its way back, right? We know they have that behavior. We know they're going to find their way back. So unless you're going to put it out on Shuyak or something, I, I, and even then I just don't see the point. But I, I feel it's unfair for DEC and ADFNG to hold the borough accountable when we're clearly trying, but giving us no recourse to be able to remove the problem.

It's a wild animal that is destroying the taxpayer's property.

Okay, uh, well then I might, I might ask Nate, is that something you would mind coming up and addressing? Um, what, uh, what, what would have to happen to get to that point, I suppose? Sure, a couple things. First off, you don't decide when a bear gets shot in defensive whether that's legal or not, right? That's very clearly established by the wildlife troopers.

A couple things just to address. One, keep in mind this is a problem of your own making, right? So the problems that we've had in the most recent couple years—. So I'm going to stop you there. I—.

We're not playing the blame game today. We're focused on solutions. So, uh, I'm really sorry to interrupt. That's what I would really want to focus on right now. No, that's a good point.

I appreciate that. But I guess My point is, you know, we had a landfill a couple years ago that was by and large bear resistant. You know, we haven't had the problems to the extent that we've had in the last couple years. And largely, again, nobody's fault, certainly not pointing the finger at anybody. It was just a matter of lack of resources, lack of time.

There was a couple years where the fence just wasn't kept up. We didn't have the staff in the engineers and Facilities Department to keep the fence cleared. The fence got dilapidated, bears started to get in. We went one year with bears getting regularly into the landfill. They actually den within the landfill.

A sow and cubs den within the landfill. Nothing— or limited progress was made on repairing the holes to the fence that year. The next year, the problem just exploded even worse. Now we have up to 14 or 15 bears in the landfill, family groups living in the landfill. This was not a problem this large 3 or 4 years ago, right?

And again, it's not anybody's fault. It's not Cody's, not Amy's, nobody's fault. It was just a matter of circumstance that the fence got dilapidated and wasn't repaired. And again, kudos to Cody and his staff and Amy and the Bureau for doing the best that they can to get the fence up to speed. And Cody's right, we gave him a checklist of things that we thought should be improved.

They did that. They did it well. The guys that put up the fence did a great job. But this is adaptive management. You know, this is what we live in wildlife all the time.

You don't just solve a problem, wash your hands, and walk away, right? Particularly when you're dealing with wildlife, because they're— you have to be adaptable. They're gonna— and, and we tried to explain this before, you know, we patch a hole, we patch this hole, we patch that hole, we patch that hole. It's bear resistant. Bears are going to find somewhere else to go in.

Then we got to patch that hole. Then we got to patch that hole. And we got to keep doing that until bears no longer get in the landfill. And that's the goal that we're trying to do here. Another thing that I think it's worth mentioning is this is a violation of state regulation as well.

I talked to Lieutenant Boyle today at length about this, and he apologizes that he couldn't come. But basically what he said is we're in agreement that the borough could be getting fined for negligently feeding wildlife. I mean, it's a known issue. You guys know it's a problem. Granted, you're trying to address it, but it's still— it's a violation of state regulation.

92-230 Clearly states you cannot negligently feed wildlife.

So those— that's a little bit more of the background, um, with regard to dispatching bears that become quote, problem bears, although we don't like to use that in our field because it's not problem bears, it's problem people. That's something that we work very closely with the troopers on. We'll make that decision when the time comes. If we have a bear that we feel is, is, uh, you know, we can't, uh, change its behavior, you know, these bears unfortunately are strongly food-conditioned bears. They've been into the landfill, some of them more than 2 years now.

We have a family group that lives in the landfill. They're conditioned on these high-caloric, low nutritional value foods that they enjoy. It's really hard to break that. And we at Fish and Game understand that, but we are also not going to go out and shoot every bear just because it's in the landfill. You know, it's, it's not fair to the bears and it doesn't do anything, right?

You shoot 20 bears in landfill, next week there's going to be 20 more. Next week there's going to be 20 more. It doesn't do anything. It just keeps, keeps going. So what we need to do is come up with a solution to prevent bears from getting these non-natural foods.

And this— the municipal solid waste is the most probably strongest attractant in the landfill. So as long as we can do our best to keep bears off the MSW, I think a lot of these problems will take care of themselves. And of course, and we know this, troopers know this, there's undoubtedly going to be bears now and in the future that have to be dispatched just because we can't change that behavior. It's so ingrained in them at this point that no matter what we do, it might not be successful at all. We're fine with that.

We're prepared for that. We have— we shoot bears on occasion where it's part of the job. We don't like to do it, but we're prepared to do it and we We can do it, but we're not going to do it when this just constant feeding is going on and there's no effort from the Bureau— and not saying those are not, because there is— to address the issue. You know, we treat the members of the public the same. You know, we don't have people putting their— when people put their trash out on the porch and a bear gets into it, they get a ticket.

You know, this is no different than that. It's a violation of state regulations. If you don't abide by the law, you get pinged for it. And this is no different than that.

Yeah. Adaptive management is an important concept that is difficult for some people to address.

Thank you so much for that clarification, Nate. Appreciate it. Yeah. Answer any other—. Yeah.

Have a seat. I'm sure there will be more questions. Larry, did you have anything to add to that? Sure.

You've laid down the gauntlet, Jeremiah.

Just—. Where to start? First of all, 99% of the island is not a refuge. Only half the archipelago is a refuge and it's a long way away from us. It doesn't start until you get past Vaikota and so forth.

But we do have a bear sanctuary here in town. We have liberal hunting regulations in the spring and fall, registration hunt, everything else is drawing. But here, if you are within half mile of the landfill, you can't shoot a bear. If you are in the Menasha drainage or the Pillar drainage, you can't go hunting. If you're in city limits or near city limits, you're in people's backyards, so you really don't do much hunting.

If you're on the Coast Guard base, it's pretty tough to hunt. So this area that we're dealing with here is not going to be easily solved by hunters like we kind of hoped it would, unless there's some change in regulation. And that's something you might consider in those watersheds. I know that that's another one of your permits, but perhaps within the watersheds with some master hunter type of program, you can allow some bear hunting in there. And that would take care of some of these animals that normally would be in this bear sanctuary around town.

So that's something to think about with regard to that. Another thing to think about is, I agree with, with Nate that this problem has gotten worse each year because we were victims of our own success. We did so well with that perimeter fence that kind of didn't pay attention to it because there were other issues that needed to come up. And just like everything else, you know, my boiler went out yesterday and I hadn't thought about my boiler for 10 years. But all of a sudden that was the most important thing in my life is to pay for that and I don't care what it costs, I had to get hot water so I could take a shower.

That's kind of the way I think it was with the electric fence around there is we got a little bit complacent, to be honest. When I was in Fish and Game, I retired 10 years ago, but yeah, I didn't pay much attention to it because things were so much better than they were in the '90s when we first built that. I mean, you recall what it was. Some of you may recall in the '90s, a great place to go hunt rats and a wonderful place to watch bears. I mean, the rats, you could see them moving like the whole ground was moving.

But times have changed in the past 40 years. It used to be, you know, if it's brown, it's down. If it comes near town, it gets shot. And Wanda Fields wrote a really good book called Now It Can Be Told about how many bears the ranchers shot. They were shooting like 20, 30 to bears on these ranches.

And that's what it takes to kill enough bears to stop the problems. I don't think our community is ready to have that happen again. I think it's a different kind of society— excuse me— a different kind of society now. But what we have learned through bear research is the bears on Kodiak have a fairly small home range. They live within a drainage or two.

They don't go from one end of the island to the next. They kind of are homebodies. And the mamas are teaching their cubs either good habits or bad habits. And what we've had the past 20 years or so is we've taught the mamas and their cubs pretty good habits. We've kept them out of the landfill.

We've done an awful lot with the solid waste collection and the bear-resistant dumpsters and so forth. Yeah, we've had to kill a few bears, but for the most part, the number of bears shot has gone down. The number of bears in the road system has stabilized. People can go out and look at bears now if they want to, and that— people love doing that. But most importantly to me, we as a community are proving to folks around the world that we can live with these biggest bears in the world.

And that's what it comes down to with our landfill, I think. How can we prove that we as a community can continue to live with these bears and show other places that you don't have to shoot every one of them? Plus the fact that each one of these bears is potentially worth $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 for a hunter or whatever else for a bear viewer. So that's something to keep in the back of your mind. The other thing to keep in your mind is what's happened this year as far as bear food is concerned.

This is probably the worst year that I've seen in many of berries. I mean, look how many blueberries there are. Nothing. Look how many salmonberries, you know, maybe you catch a handful and you feel lucky. It's horrible for berries.

It's really bad. The spring was late. Thank God though, all of a sudden we've got 87,000 humpies in the Muscong. I just looked at the weir count. We were supposed to have about 6,000.

This is a low year. So we got a heck of a lot of humpies coming in. Probably Pillar's getting some too. They don't have a weir. But we may have an opportunity now that if we can keep the bears out of this food source, they do have other natural foods that I didn't think they were going to have this year.

So we might have some advantage to that. Um, I guess the last thing I want to impress on you guys is the best way to think of these bears is like great big dogs. And if you got a dog that's really a good dog, but he smells that steak bone in the garbage can underneath the sink and you go away, he's going to find a way to get in there. I don't care how good a dog he is, he's going to find it. If he's hungry, he's really going to find a way way to get in there, and he's going to be sneaky to do it.

And if he goes in there over and over again, it's going to take a lot to train him not to go in there. But the first thing you're going to do is you're going to take that food source away from him so he doesn't have a reason to get in there, or make it not worth his while to get in there. And that's kind of what we're trying to do with the bears. We're trying to say, you know what, guys, this ain't worth it to you, and you're going to get zapped really hard if you go in there. Yeah, you may chew on a plastic tote, you may try to go into the baler.

We're going to harass you away from that, but we're going to make it not worth your while. And by the way, there's grocery store just one ridge over, and that's within your home range. It's called the Buskin, or it's called the Pillar, right down the road from where you're at now. So that's the way I perceive it right now. We could go out, we can shoot every dog that gets into our garbage can because he's going after steak and keep getting new dogs, or we can train the one that we have that's a good dog and take that food source away.

And with the bears, not only you're going to train that one, but she's going to train her cubs and we're going to get back to where we were years ago. So that's kind of my take on it. Any thoughts or questions or—. Thanks, Larry. I think we'll have you have a seat because we do have other people in line.

And so, Mr. Whiteside, I'll get you after Um, after Jeff, but, um, don't get comfy.

Mr. Woods. I've got a number of concerns with this. On the one hand, how many bites at the apple to dictate policy has Fish and Game had? They had the bite at the apple with the original application with the landfill. They had the bite with the bear management plan, and now those goalposts are changing.

I absolutely see Cody's concern. Additionally, with reference to negligent feeding of game, that would actually require negligence. I don't think that threshold is met when you actively take measures to avoid feeding game. So for example, by taking the recommendations made by Fish and Game to fix these certain problems, much like if somebody has a bear-proof container in front of their house there and the bear then rips into that bear-proof container. So much so that I think if any ticket like that were to be written, it would be extremely unlikely to prevail.

That said, letting it get to this point was not a great idea, but at this point, what real options do we have? We're looking at millions of dollars of investment and really no super clear path forward with no really straightforward goals. Okay, the goal is get the bears out of the landfill. Super cool. How do we get there?

How do we get in compliance? Um, well, you do this. Well, we did that now. Now, and that was insufficient. I understand Mr. Garner's point there about, can we— at one point, do we just shoot them?

That will never be a decision made by this body. That will only ever and always be Fish and Game and the troopers that makes that call. Um, that said, does something need to be done? Absolutely. Uh, what are our options for actually hazing them out?

Do we have an option for training staff to haze them? Hazing works until it doesn't. We've all experienced that. Hell, I experience of the police department, we feel like we're running 10 to 12 bear calls a night, every night in town. Um, there's got to be a path forward, and I'm not entirely sure that a public meeting with the threats of fines and, uh, potential legal action with relation to closing the landfill is an appropriate place to do it.

And I would suggest that this should probably become a topic for an executive session at some point.

Mr. Whiteside. Thank you. If, uh, last part of Fish and Game can come back up to the podium, I have a follow-up. Sure. Yes.

Thank you, Nate. Sure.

So, uh, appreciate the information you provided a few minutes ago. My follow-up to you is, so it seems from what you stated that previously, prior to the past, you know, several years, this wasn't a largely an issue that we weren't seeing a lot of bears entering the landfill. So my follow-up to you is, what in your opinion has changed? Is it strictly an infrastructure issue that we need to address through additional fencing, you know, electrifying, you know, all of those types of projects? Or are there any other variables that have, I guess, increased the presence of bears in And that's kind of why we're not necessarily behind the curve, but just kind of compounding the issue.

So one was noted, you know, this year, I agree, there's no berries anywhere. There's bears cruising around town and, you know, Abercrombie. So are there other factors at play or variables at play? And then if you don't mind, I'm throwing a lot at you now. What is your opinion on how do we gain compliance?

And I view compliance not just an agency signing off, you're good, but our borough staff are safe at the landfill. I don't have any expectation for any of them to chase bears around with shotguns, um, that our staff are safe, they can perform their duties without worrying about a bear cruising up behind them. Bears aren't going to have to get shot every year. So in your opinion, a bit long-winded question, what does success look like? Sure, thank you.

Um, to get to the first part of your question. I think it's a combination of factors. Certainly, uh, the, the dilapidated fence I think is kind of the driving factor, right? I mean, that's when bears really started to get into the landfill regularly. They started to bring their cubs in there, they started to raise families in there, they den in there, and that has now become a generational problem, right?

So not only now do we have a sow in there but her cubs in there. And now her cubs are getting old and they're going to soon have cubs of their own. And as Larry pointed out, they're going to train their cubs to do what they know how to do. And that, unfortunately, now is foraging in the landfill. And so I think that's one of the main driving problems.

And then, you know, it's just— it's exacerbated by the fact that we have low natural foods available this year. You know, that just brings more bears into the landfill. It brings bears into the community as they're searching for other means of food. So I think those two combined are kind of like the perfect storm that we're dealing with right now. But I think the driving factor is just the fact that they've had a couple years of just kind of going into the landfill at whenever they want at their own will.

Yeah. And the second— what was the second What does success look like? Right. And how can we, I guess, to just add context, getting away from just we are in compliance, how the goal, ultimately the goal of being in compliance, keeping our people safe, keeping our community safe as well, is how do we, aside from just, you know, patching a fence, what would your, if you had the resources at your disposal, What would get us back into long-term stability as far as keeping the bears out? Sure, thank you for that.

I think in my opinion, and again, if resources were not an issue, I think the ideal scenario would be bring that exterior fence up to par as best as we can. And I know again, Cody and them have spent an exorbitant amount of time in there and, and in done as best that they could. There's still holes that need to be fixed. And again, this is part of that adaptive management, right? We gave them a checklist of things to do, they checked off the boxes, but then new things arise.

And this is where I understand his frustration, you know, what are these measurable goals? And the, the bar does change, the goalposts do change, because they're— that, that wherever that goalpost is, is determined by the bears. Is It's not determined by us. It's not determined by the department. It's not determined by DEC.

It's determined by the bears, and that's where this whole adaptive management strategy has to be implemented. You know, we have to— if the bears tell us what— the bears will tell us what we need to do, right? And so I think for starters, fixing that exterior fence the best we can would be great. Putting up a more fortified interior fence around the MSW I think would be— wise idea. I think we also need to prevent them from digging.

We know that they can dig under this fence. They've done it a bunch of times. So burying a fence underneath the primary— or excuse me, the secondary interior fence— I think is a good start. Getting bears out of the landfill completely after, after these other two measures have been taken would be, but would be a third step. And then continuing to monitor that until, you know, this is the unfortunate part too, is now because this is a generational problem, it might take a while to convince these younger bears that this is no longer a good food source.

You're gonna pay, so to speak, for getting into the landfill, even though you were raised this way, your mom taught you this way. It's no longer appropriate, and that's going to be an extremely difficult challenge. But I think that's, that's where we need to go. You know, there's more, um, things to think about. You know, you mentioned this, or somebody mentioned safety of the staff.

There's also safety of the public who goes in there to drop off their, their whatever, fishnets or their construction waste. You know, if we have bears wandering around in the landfill with an attractant food source with cubs, um, that is a potentially dangerous scenario for not only staff but for members of the public as well. So keeping bears out of the landfill— and I know this frustrates Cody because it is a moving goal, but, but you want a measurable objective— that is the measurable objective. If there's one bear in the landfill, that objective is not met.

Great, thank you.

Sure. Ms. James, did you have a question for—.

Could I make a few remarks? Yes, actually, DEC has been brought up, so I think it might be appropriate to let DEC pop in with their response to both questions. Thank you. Yeah, I can't see who's standing, so I didn't want to interrupt anyone, but I would like to respond to it. Yeah, can you please introduce yourself for everyone here?

Yeah. My name is Anamika Powers, and I work for DEC in the Solid Waste Group, and I am the landfill specialist covering Southcentral Alaska. So that includes the Kodiak landfill. I'm also the one who has, for the past 4 or 5 years, done the— our annual landfill inspection. So I would like to just talk a little bit about last year's inspection because, um, the gentleman who brought it up is absolutely correct.

The landfill does an excellent job of their general operations, and they've had very good scores throughout the years. Um, if you look at our checklist, there's 300-some points, and there's only 10 points that pertain to wildlife. So even though I took off pretty much all of the points for wildlife, they still end up with an overall high score. But I don't want that to create the impression that we're not very, very concerned about the bear situation at the landfill.

In the Alaska Solid Waste Regulations, there are a couple of citations that pertain specifically to wildlife. And I can give you those citations, but what it boils down to is basically bears must be kept out of the trash, period. And we're talking the trash more so than the landfill in general. So I think that's a little bit what is guiding our looking to next steps to really focus on the cell number 1, which is where the household trash goes into, as opposed to putting all our efforts into the landfill as a whole. Because the idea is that if the bears cannot get into that trash, then they no longer have a really good food source.

And even though bears might in the future be passing through that area, they're not going to be attracted to the landfill specifically if they cannot get at that food. So that's kind of what the, the goal and expectations are.

Currently, The landfill is out of compliance with those wildlife regulations. And as the permit holder, the borough is responsible for following the regulations. So we, you know, want to have the landfill moving towards compliance. I would reiterate what Nate said earlier when he was introducing himself, and that is that Amy, Cody, the landfill staff, they have really made a good faith effort to enhance and repair the fence since it fell into a bit of disrepair a few years ago. But the problem is that the bears dig under, as you've been told, and every time they go to fix that hole, the bears just dig under another one.

So basically, It's just not working. It's not because anyone is doing anything wrong. It's just the situation is such that it just isn't working. And so we need to see a new approach for keeping the bears out. And that's why, you know, we've kind of shifted gears to really focus on where the food is, that Cell 1, and rather than trying to deal with the landfill as a whole because it's a huge property, just deal with that area that is attracting the bears.

And hopefully, if you can keep them out of there, you can keep them out of the rest of the landfill.

So as far as DEC, we are completely on board with the idea of concentrating efforts at Cell 1 at this time. We do have some concerns One is that we are skeptical, and Nate, I think Nate mentioned this earlier, that just having a fence completely above ground will be effective because the bears have been digging under. And, you know, I know that in the Cell 1 area you have different terrain. You probably have soils that are better compacted because there has been, you know, construction infrastructure and so on put there. But My guess is that those bears have a pretty incentive to try to get in.

And so they may try to dig under. And so without having any kind of an underground structure along with that fence, we're concerned that it won't be that effective. And the other thing we are concerned about is that any fence alone at this point will not keep the bears out because they are so habituated to that food that we feel there needs to be a hazing component alongside of fixing or putting in this new fence. And hazing has been successful. We do have other landfills in the state that have bear issues, and hazing has helped.

To over time keep the bears out. So I guess that's pretty much what I'd like to say right now. Oh, okay. Thank you, Annemiekke, for coming in and sharing DEC's perspective. I have Mr. Ames next.

Okay, from what I've read and heard tonight, Things were pretty much under control a while back, and then unfortunately, for whatever reason, things got a little laxed and bears started going in there, and then it became more and more a problem. And now we have bears that are used to it as a food source. If we put money into it and are trying to eliminate this with whatever's needed, Is it realistic that we will teach the young bears that this is not a good plan? And is it to, I guess, unteach them that trash is a good food source or the landfill is a good food source? Do you have any sort of an idea of whether that is realistic?

And if so, how long? Because I'm thinking this is years. Sure. Just to clarify, you're asking Nate, not Anamika? Correct.

Okay, all right. I'm asking whoever feels most knowledgeable about this. They can all weigh in. Thank you. No, that's a super good question, and it's tough to answer, right?

I mean, bears are very individualistic, so it might take one bear one time of getting hazed and they'll be like, eh, it's not worth it. You might have bears that you just can't, and they're so far habituated to these non-natural foods that nothing's going to change their behavior. And those are some of those circumstances where we're— we know that we might have to go dispatch a bear. And we're, we're ready to do that. I think what we'll see, assuming, you know, we can bring this issue up to par where bears aren't getting in there, is You know, as soon as we start this generation of bears that is hooked on these non-natural foods starts to get weeded out of the population one way or another, and we start to train, for lack of a better word, the bears that are in the area that this is not worth it.

You know, this is not a food source for you and you're going to get punished, so to speak, if you come in here. Then I think eventually start to see the problem go away, hopefully to the point where, uh, it's a non-issue or it's very far and few between. But we're at the point now where we have a generational problem where we have sows and cubs, uh, at this point that are all hooked on these non-natural foods, you know, uh, food conditioned for this trash. So, um, it is a long-term solution and, you know, it's not going to happen overnight. You know, as the years go on, I would imagine a couple years later we'll see— or, you know, as the years go on, each year I think we'll see drastic improvements, you know.

But first we got to get to that point where we're no longer rewarding bears for getting these non-natural foods.

Thanks, Nate. Real quick, so Anamika, Nate just said that this is, you know, long-term solution, so I guess my question is then about, right, compliance. If this is long-term, then we will technically be out of compliance until the last bear leaves, but this could take years.

That's correct. And, you know, our approach in the Solid Waste Group has always been that if, if our landfills are working towards compliance, that's what we're looking for. And obviously, we want them to reach that point at some point. So we do want to see that, you know, there is active movement towards reaching that goal of no bears in the trash. And they have been attempting to do that, but as I said, it's not working.

So we want to see a different approach so that we can eventually get to that goal.

Well, yeah, and it seems that based on the documentation that we've had that we have been moving in that direction anyway. I have Mr. Woods next and then Mr. Gardner. I guess I've got kind of a multi-part question for Mr. Sabota. Am I saying your name even close to right? I never know.

You nailed it. Good job. Good job. Okay. That makes me feel better.

Thank you. How well did the attempts at hazing work for those trash-acclimated bears through city limits? Excuse me, did you say within city limits? Yeah, remember I was a part of that hazing at one point, and it didn't seem like it worked terribly well from my perspective. It kind of depends.

It depends on— again, bears are very individualistic. It depends on the bear. It also depends on the method of hazing, right? So, you know, one of the more common practices that KPD uses is pepper ball guns and noisemakers. Those work great.

They might have limited effect on some animals. They are now entertaining using other methods of hazing that, in my opinion, are going to be more effective. That's something we just met with them the other day, as well as the wildlife troopers and everybody involved. And so it varies, it depends on what you do. You know, some things are really useful and have a big impact, some not so much.

But again, it's all dependent on the individual bear. It depends how food conditioned they are. There's a lot of variables there. I think our ultimate goal as a community should be have bears not access any food. And that's why we've been taking these steps, like with the high school welding students and working with Alaska Waste to bring bear-resistant roll carts into town.

You know, we've— and that's the thing that's a little frustrating for me, is we spend a lot of time bringing the community up to speed with, you know, encouraging proper waste management and doing all this. And we preach constantly to the community. And I like to think that our community is is one of the leaders. I mean, I know we are because people call me and we talk about it. They're like, well, how do you guys do it?

You live with the biggest bears on earth. How do you guys manage to live peacefully with bears? And it's like, because we have a community that cares and we have a community that responds when needed. And I think that's what it takes. You know, nobody's going to— we're not going to solve this problem.

Cody's not going to be able to solve this problem. The borough's not going to be able to solve this problem. It's got to be kind of a joint effort. And I think we've been moving in the right direction for numerous years. I think we still are moving in the right direction.

You know, this is one of those hiccups in the system that we just need to address. And I'm convinced that as soon as we address this issue with bears getting into the landfill, we're going to be back to where we were or even better when we don't have to worry about walking outside and going to the landfill or doing whatever. I really feel like we can be there. Do you have a follow-up? Yeah, kind of the second part to the question.

Have you ever seen a set of physical controls that has worked after you've already had acclimated bears over a large area of multiple acres? I know I can't think of one off the top of my head I've ever seen, but can you provide an example and what worked? Like a hazing technique that worked? No, I'm more talking physical controls. Controls, so physical barriers.

So we're talking about keeping bears— we're talking about excluding animals out of an area at this point. Electric fences, and there's a ton of literature to support that. Yeah, working electric fences that don't allow bears to dig underneath them and that provide a sufficient— that are provided with a sufficient charge. There's—. It's been studied many, many times with good results.

I have Mr. Garner and then Mr. Weisheiten.

So first, Larry, I just want to thank you. Every single time you talk, you really make me think, and I just appreciate your eloquence in your speech. I want to clarify something. At no point in time did I say shoot the bears. I asked a very specific question, and I mean it And I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

The state is basically going to ask us to put up another fence. Okay. So let me give you an example. I have a meat freezer in my garage. If the bear breaks down my garage door to get into my meat freezer, I consider that defense of my property.

I'm probably going to dispatch that bear. I don't want to, I don't want to take care of it and have to surrender it to the state. That's not something I want to do, but it's what would happen. So at what point is a bear damaging the borough's property, and at what point do we have the authority to euthanize? Because we are going to have some problem bears, and if we're going to move the goalposts and, as you put it, uh, adaptive, um, management problem solving.

I find that more reactive, and we need to be proactive in this scenario, and we need to be ready and prepared for what's going to be the next solution. So at what point do we call it a problem animal and we say, oh, they just broke the new million-dollar fence and got in again? Do we need to put up a third fence because we're no longer in compliance, or is it time for us to take care of a problem bear remove them from the area and start fresh and find a path forward. For starters, we need to have one working fence, right? That would be a good first step because right now we have none.

So right now, uh, that's—. I, we've, we've worked hard on that fence. Working, you're right, you're working, just not bear resistant, right? So, and to get to your main question there, that is would ultimately up to the troopers. And if you want to go out there and shoot a bear and claim it's defense of life, property for the borough, more power to you.

But ultimately, the troopers will decide whether you did that legally or not. So it's not up to Fish and Game. Mm-hmm. Um, and like I said before, you know, we, we, we fully understand that there's more than likely bears within landfill now at this point. That no matter what we do, um, they're gonna— they're, they're determined enough and food conditioned enough that they're going to do whatever they have to do to get in there, whether you have 10 fences or not.

And that's something that we take on a case-by-case basis with the troopers. You know, we go out there, we've been out there a few different times, as we do in, in many of these scenarios, and we go and we assess the situation, we discuss it, we look at the history, and then we determine based on our knowledge and the facts that we have, whether this bear needs to be dispatched or not. And we know that that happens, and we know that this will probably happen in this circumstance. But what we aren't going to do is go out there and just shoot every bear that's in the landfill and start with a clean slate, because that's not how we operate. And that's— that's never anything I ever suggested.

I asked a pointed question. At what point do we get to defend the borough's property? At no point in time am I condoning us going on some sort of killing spree. I understand this is a multi-phase, multi-year approach, but we've got to work towards a solution. And growing up in Alaska as long as I have, I've met and seen many problem bears.

And so I really love one of the things that Mr. Van Dale said, you know, thinking forward, if the borough has the power to loosen some regulations under a master hunter program, which is something I've always been in support of for somewhere around city limits. And we do have problem bears, and it takes forever to get troopers to actually dispatch a very bad problem bear. I'd love to see a scenario where we have somebody like one of the ROARs have to supervise somebody else that has their bear tag, and they can be allowed into that zone during a regulatory hunting season. We have to come up with a multi-phased approach. But what I really don't appreciate from multiple comments in here is people saying that I am advocating to go in there and just shoot all the bears.

I've asked a question: at what point do we get to defend our property? That's all I've asked. I never said let's kill the bears. What do you mean by defend your property? Well, okay, so we're getting way— we're getting a little off topic.

This sounds like more for a question for for the troopers than I think for Fish and Game. So I want to relieve you of that burden, Nate. Really quick before we move on, Amy, do we have a bear-resistant electric fencing around the perimeter of the landfill? We do. We absolutely have a working electric fence, but there are— bears dig, right?

And so when Nate says that we don't have that below-grade fence, that's also true. And where they have dug, we have We've tried that, laying chain link down and having it electrified. In the past, we had a— and Cody will have to come tell me the jewels and the mega gigs. But the fence that we have out there, when we told the other agencies that we've been asking questions about, like, how energized is your electric fence, they were like, whoa. Like, we're above and beyond where it is recommended that we would be.

The problem is, like Nate said, is we— they dig a hole, we fix the hole, 15 yards down they dig another hole, and it's just over and over and over. And at the beginning of the year when there's a few bears in there, our— we send out our staff out and they fix it. But now there are lots of bears, too many bears, right? And so we're sending our staff out and the fence goes through bear habitat where there's trees and alders and So there's lots of reasons for us to move that perimeter fence in closer to the maintenance road, and I think that that's a good solution, but that's a, um, that's going to be a multi-million dollar project, especially if we try to do a subgrade fence. And then we're going to have to work with our engineers.

We— our cells are lined, so when we put a fence in and we're next to our lined cell, I'm very worried about the liner where we're putting the fence now is going through a temporary closed cell, so there's a rain sheet through there. So we're going to have to put posts in through a rain sheet now. And the reason the rain sheet is there is so we can meet our other landfill requirements on not having leachate show up in stormwater and all the other problems that we have. So it's a multifaceted problem. This electric fence that we're proposing, the smaller interior one, at that $250,000 price point, that not subgrade at all.

That is 7-wire electric fence, just like the majority of the perimeter fence, just closer into the cell. And so at that price point, like, we already know that that's not going to keep all the bears out. And so our hope is we keep the non-habituated bears out, or that, that some of the bears would be phased by that. But we're still going to have digging. And, and now we're getting closer to where the liner is and where that rain sheet is.

And so while there is a lot of positive that could come because it could keep some bears out, the damage of digging is a lot more costly at the interior part than it is on the perimeter. I have Mr. Whiteside, then Mr. Vizcocho.

Thank you. As each minute passes, incinerating our solid waste sounds better and better, but to stay on Stay on task here. To me, given the information shared, that there was deferred maintenance that was the cause of this snowball effect, that now we have generations of habituated bears in the landfill and we are playing the whack-a-mole game with repairing the exterior. Similar to deferred maintenance on a home, if you were to use an analogy, You know, the roof's leaking, I'll get to it next year, I'll get to it next year. 3 Years goes by, there's so much water intrusion it's now in your walls.

Okay, I put a patch on the roof, but now the walls have— are full of black mold. So now we're tearing walls out. I think that's where we're at with this problem is if we clearly can't play the whack-a-mole game and just chase these patches around, we're gonna have to do something a little more substantial to to slow the frequency of bears making it to the trash. But one point remains that we don't have any authority to dictate what compliance looks like. We have the authority to find solutions to work towards compliance.

So I really, really would like to see us steer the conversation towards what are our options available. So I do have a question through the mayor to the Manager, with this option we are looking at of an interior fence, understanding that it will not be built to the standard that will completely eliminate digging, but it would be something in heading in the right direction. And I view it as a smaller perimeter, hopefully easier to monitor and easier to stay on top of patching holes to buy us time to keep that going, getting away from deferred maintenance to regular maintenance on that new interior fence, keep the bears out long enough to where we get back into a period of stability. So my question, Madam Manager, is the cost of this fence, it appears to be in the, you know, rough order of magnitude of $250,000. Thank you, Cody, for getting us a grant for the materials, so at least we're not paying for the materials.

So we have to pay for installation. Where is that money coming from, and is it— is that fund source— is it a sustainable source of revenue or spending to handle annual maintenance year to year?

So many questions. Oh, so first of all, funding, because that was the most recent one. Um, everything that happens at the landfill, it comes out of the Enterprise Fund where leachate treatment plant or the Baylor or fence maintenance, it's all out of that one fund. We do track like which, um, costs are for leachate treatment plant and which costs are for the Baylor building. Like we do track that, but all, all of the maintenance is coming out of that fund.

That fund cannot handle a $250,000 installation, and so what happens when we go upside down in an enterprise fund, it's covered by our fund balance from the general fund. So if you remember when we went through the budget this year, I said, oh, we have this much money in our fund balance, but this much money is ARPA money, and this much money is covering the deficit of the landfill fund. So those couple of years when we made a lot of little rock out of a lot of big rock, we really set ourselves up for the future, making cover for the landfill and following DEC regulations to keep our solid waste covered. But we went into massive debt doing it. And so, um, we have years of stockpile, but we have no money for anything else.

And so those were just unfortunate situations or decisions that were made at the time. Um, so we do have several things that we do. Our solid waste face where we're actually putting bales is covered with rock every night, and that's supposed to limit the exposure. But the whole vertical face is always open. And so DEC gives us very strict parameters on how wide that face can be, but there's no way to actually cover that vertical face at night.

So that's where the bears are getting in. So we're doing several things. One, we're looking at that interior fence. Two, Cody talked to some folks, I think British Columbia, I know it's Canada, British Columbia, that had success with motion deterrents that a bear comes up, it senses motion. You can do dogs bark.

I think there's 13 sounds on the ones we bought, but we bought 4 of them. They're not that expensive. I think the whole thing was under $200. They do gunshots. They do dogs barking.

And we can roll through the sounds and move where they are. The chances of them being scared by a sound might last for a while, but we're trying those things. The other thing that we're doing right now is because we have like almost bear tourism at the landfill. We have vans of people and cars stopping, looking at the bears from the road. So today we started the installation of black fabric that's made for this kind of stuff on our wind barriers that prevent trash from blowing.

So Cody has pictures of that getting installed today that will prevent the public safety issue from the road because you won't be able to see it. It's not going to stop the bears, but it's going to prevent some of that stuff that's out on the road by the landfill. So with the motion detectors, the stopping the bear viewing hopefully, and then the Defenders of Wildlife helping us out with sending that stuff, I think those are the 3 fastest things that we can do right now. Would it be nice if we could bury a fence all around. We could— I think that if we did that whole perimeter fence, we'd be in the millions to do it that way.

Everything would have to be dug out, and we're not sitting on some nice squishy dirt. We're a rock. And so, you know, I don't know how far that stuff has to be dug down. And then we have to worry about snow and ice control, and if the fence is near our access roads, you know, we have to worry about plows and graders and all the stuff and keeping that up and energized. So I think the best first step— and Cody has talked to every landfill in Alaska that will talk to us that have bears about what they're doing and what works— is I think that interior electric fence is a great first step.

Um, I— we're not going to be able to stop the digging from the perimeter or the inside, and so that's going to continue to be a problem. So the best we can do is put those wires as close to the ground as practical. So we make it uncomfortable for them to be near the ground. Sure. Yes.

Thank you. Appreciate that detailed information. So I think to keep us on track here, it's— you know, we have a— this will come up again this evening under packet review for a contract for that fence. So I think in the near term, based on the information we have and the regulatory requirement we cannot avoid, We pay now or pay twice later through installation, which will probably cost more money than— fines potentially, adding more to that bill. We can't escape this bill.

I really wish we could. And so with that in mind, I'm done asking questions. I appreciate the information. I think we have an option we need to pursue in the near term because we're already in August. Knocking pretty hard on fall.

Once winter comes around, those options are going to shrink pretty quickly. And if we have more den— more bears denning in the landfill, we're going to just keep adding to the snowball every year. So I think we need to decide something in the relative near future that we can provide clear direction for our ENF department so they can get to work. I'm going to take Mr. Vizcocho because he hasn't spoken yet, and then I just was Clarification on the manager comment there. I'll wait.

Okay, Mr. Vizcocho. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I don't know who can answer my question, but I'm trying to think of the issues that we're having right now with this bear. I'm thinking of a ceiling from a house that you find leaking, right? Is—.

Do you guys have a statistic on what side of the fence that they keep on coming? Like, are they coming from the water side or they're coming from the mountainside? Does that make sense? We have 2 miles of fence and they come in all directions. Oh, so they just—.

Yes, 3 miles of fence and, um, we'll repair and they'll be— because it's 100 acres of property, they'll be actively digging elsewhere, um, and then sometimes they will come through the electrified chain link fence that we have as well, or over it. Okay, so basically— oh, all right, so I guess my— I guess you answered my question. And I guess the— I was trying to figure out a solution to help you guys out with compliance, but if they're just coming from all sides, then it's kind of hard to make a decision on which one you're going to structure more thicker than the other side because I guess they know.

I was going to suggest, you know, trying to figure that out, but I guess if you guys already figured that out, then you guys already answered my question. But with that sound, that 14-sound noisemaker, how much is that? They were like, what, $50 apiece? And they are water-resistant. So—.

We will see how long that lasts. But British Columbia said that they had some success with it, and we, you know, if one thing Kodiak has is we know how to make things waterproof. Kodiak Canvas Company, I think, could help us out. We have covers for our outdoor speakers at my house that they made, and those speakers make it year after year. So I mean, we're ready to try to make it work if it provides a deterrent.

So we're— if the solution is something that's not overly outrageously expensive, we definitely want to try anything that we can get our hands on. Mr. Smiley.

I once had the opportunity to watch bears for about 6 hours in a row. These are remarkable creatures, and they're smarter than you can imagine. And trying to dissuade them from eating food that they like is just— it's an impossible job. We're not going to offer them hamburgers down at Pillar Creek or pink salmon or whatever down there and drive them away from the landfill. I mean, that's where they found good food.

And we have to respect these intelligent creatures ourselves. Because they really are part of the world that we live in and they enrich our lives. So I think we have to find a way to solve this. It sounds like the only choice we have is the electric fences unless somebody wants to go out there with paintball guns filled with cinnamon or something like that and shoot them that way. I think you could find a way to dissuade them with various kinds of chemicals that were not toxic but were annoying, I guess.

So it's my two cents worth. Ms. Roberts. In the packet, there is an option for dogs, bear dogs. Would that be in addition to doing the fence, or is that its own separate option? So the bear dogs proposal, Nils said that he wouldn't even consider— like, well, he'll consider coming because who doesn't want to come to Kodiak?

But he thought if there was any chance of it being effective, it would be after that secondary or smaller electric fence was in place, because then his dogs could concentrate in that small area instead of over 100 acres. My concern there, and I think everyone's concern, is going to be it's $40,000 for 14 days. And so unless we think that we can haze for 14 days and that's going to work, I don't know. And it's $12,500 a week after that, so I don't know how long we would try. And that's if we give them a car and they stay at our apartment.

And, you know, that, that's not the cost of being— that's just the dog portion. Um, and so Cody, if you have more information to add to that— Cody spent a lot of time talking to Nils about the effectiveness of that. Um, would now be appropriate time to go back for that clarification? Uh, so a few points that came up in this, and this is great, I'm really happy, uh, it's all good information, but a few points clarification. I heard many times, um, deferred maintenance, neglect, disrepair as labeling the fence.

I just want to remind the mayor, the assembly, and the manager, um, as a whole that when we did the fence repair in 2025, those terms should have been null and void because we spent a great deal of money and time to bring it back up to the baseline where it was signed off on. So the past, when you're reflecting on the years, uh, that Dr. Spoto referenced, um, the fence, we tried to re-baseline it in 2025. So I did want to clarify that point. We're not considering all those years as part of the problem because we realigned major sections of the fence, hired a professional fencing contractor to do all that work. So that fence was considered new at that point.

Another clarification, and Amica referenced it in her goals discussed, Larry touched on it His goals and Nate's as well, the goals are keep the bears out of municipal solid waste and/or bears out of the landfill as the ultimate goal. The landfill is 100 acres entirely. That's something to consider, 2.9+ miles of fence that goes through some pretty treacherous terrain, which is that larger goal of relocating the fence still by like 5,000 linear feet up adjacent to the utility roads so it's more accessible for staff to inspect and repair. That's a big goal. However, when Annemiek hit the note about her goal of no bears and trash, extremely vague and slightly ambiguous in my opinion.

27.9 Acres roughly of the landfill are a temporary closed cell that have very minimal rock cover with a rain sheet. Only 2 acres are the section that we are talking about protecting, only which 1 acre of is municipal solid waste. And so when you look at the residential perspective of that, to translate to the layman that's not familiar with big property like that, residential Kodiak property, most of which are about 1 acre or less, right? And so we're only looking at 1 acre or less of municipal solid waste with roughly 100+ feet of municipal solid waste exposed to the bears to eat on in an area that it is being, I guess, open to their food consumption without effort, other than getting through the fence. Elsewhere in the landfill though, we've had bears dig through the rock to get to the municipal solid waste that are buried.

And so when we look at bears in the landfill, I listen to the history of that, and that's great because I'm, I'm new to this position. I've only been here for a couple years. Uh, ADEC inspections go back all the way to 2022. I went back all the way to 2017 2017, bears, bears, bears, bears, bears. 2023, Bears, holes in range sheet.

So you kind of get double-edged sword there. If the bears are digging, they're damaging your range sheet, you're also going to get a citation, have another problem, which the manager alluded to. And then lastly, I wanted to touch on the timeline of the fence because I think this is kind of informational. And Dr. Subota actually shared an article when I first started at the Bureau and started looking at the fence whole, as a whole project, the, the fence in the landfill has a long history of bears, really long history of bears. 1998 Roughly is when the first fence attempt installation was there.

2006, There was an expansion due to the future expansion of LTP, which we have the fence that we have today. 2021, We have a major commercial repair. 2024, We have a major commercial repair. 2025, We have a major commercial repair, all of in the tens of thousands of dollars. And so, not to defend— be defensive, because I'm trying— I'm just presenting facts here.

There is a long history of this issue at the landfill, and we look at narrowing it down to such a small area, roughly 1 acre of municipal solid waste, with the option to extend it for the additional acre for Cell 2. That's a relatively small footprint to where we're going to have roughly 29— 27.9 acres of trash that the bears can access under a very thin layer of rock and a very thin layer of plastic.

Thanks, Cody. I really want to wrap this up. Mr. Woods, you have something pertinent and important to say. It's pretty quick, actually, and I should be able to answer it pretty quick. Uh, how long do we anticipate that working face in Cells 1 and 2 being the only working face, and how long do we anticipate this fencing project in this area actually being useful?

So this fence is— if we move forward with the proposition for the materials that we've already gathered from the grant, that's for Cell 1 and Cell 2. Cell 1, I think, at our last closure— post-closure was somewhere in the 45-46%, so we're coming up on filling up that cell quickly. We're now working on a different part of the face to fill up a void that we hadn't had in the past. So the other face is considered temporary closed. So it's within the ADC recommendations, but it's just got a layer of plastic over that vertical face.

And so that would be included in that. And then an acre, the future acre, would be Cell 2 plus all that airspace. I think it goes up to 170 feet, somewhere around there. About, like, months, years? 15 Years.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thanks for everybody for kind of tempering this, these difficult conversations. I just want to give maybe Mr. Van Dale maybe 1 minute to just wrap this up with some wisdom and moderation. Good luck with that.

Just a couple things. I think the one component that hasn't been addressed completely was this idea of problem bears. Sorry, Nate, but there are some bears that are going to be problem bears. There are bears that you are not going to be able to train. When you were with KPD, you hazed enough of them, and then there got to be a point where it had to be shot.

When we had these bears out in Minashk area, they were getting into cars and learning how to open doors. There was one that had to be shot. And I think that in all transparency, We tell the public that some of these bears are not going to make it because they have just been too habituated for this. Most of them will be fine. In fact, in experience, it appears if you kill one bear, other bears learn from dead bears.

They really do because they are smart. Somewhere between a monkey and a dog in their level of intelligence, best we can tell. So you let the public know that some bears are going to have to die and you work with Fishing Game and the troopers and say, okay, at what point does this become a bear that we're going to put out? And get protocols with them so we know which bears will die and not tell the public everyone's going to die, but some bears can't be retrained. And that's what I would suggest be the other component of this, is recognize that not every bear can be untrained.

And if it's the same bear that's getting in all the time, Whether you mark it or whether you just know who it is or however you decide to do that with the professionals, that's what I would recommend on top of what you are already suggesting. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks again.

And also thank Bill and Anthony who are here with Fish and Game too. We are going to take a 5-minute break.

Thank you. Yes, and you too, Anamika.

Thanks. Thanks for slowing me down a little. You were getting—. You're going.

Alright, let's round them up.

I'm ready too. All right, our next agenda item is a review of Service Area Number 1 lease with Fields Rentals. Madam Manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Service Area 1 identified an area to store materials for their service area.

A rental agreement was signed for a lot located at 3523 East Bresenoff Drive. The agreement was signed on November 24th, to 2025 after the assembly approved the manager to sign it. At that meeting, there were assembly members that commented that their approval was not for a 5-year timeframe, timeframe that is outlined in the agreement. Instead, they wanted the lease to end and for Service Area 1 to find a different area to store any materials that they might need. The Service Area 1 board would like to continue the lease so they would not have to spend additional funds to move the stored materials to a new location and have asked for a chance to to discuss their wishes with the assembly.

Service Area 1 chair Mr. Scott Arndt is here tonight to speak on behalf of Service Area 1. As you can see, the lease, um, has a clause in it that if we want to end the lease, we need to give a certain amount of notice. And if we're going to do that and we're expecting those materials to be moved, I would like to be able to do that in the summer months. Last year when we looked at ending the lease and we did it, it— everything was frozen. So I want to talk about it while it's even a possibility.

Last time we discussed this, we actually talked about different areas that the borough owned for where Service Area 1 could put those materials. One of them was the Canna Ball Field area, but now that is something that we're talking about at the Lands Committee about potentially selling. So that's probably not a good solution. The other place that we talked about was the lot next to the North Star complex that the Borough owns. And before I talk anymore, we will let Mr. Arndt come up and— or if you have questions of me first, happy to answer them.

Just a couple things really quick and then, yeah, if Mr. Arndt wants to come up and talk. So this is clearly a contract that falls under his jurisdiction. Your threshold as a manager. So, uh, one, maybe just clarify to the assembly again why, um, why you're bringing this up. And then two, I don't see it— there's not a note under the fiscal impact, um, but there is, there is a fiscal impact to the Service Area 1, uh, budget, but not, but not to—.

Absolutely right. So it's, so it's the Service Area 1 taxpayers that are paying for that out of their mill rate. Uh, the first year was 6 $12,000 a year, and then there's, um, it increases every year. So this year for 2026, it was $12,600. And so 2020, it just goes up a percentage every year.

Why did I bring this? I brought this because it's just something that's out of the ordinary. That's why I brought the lease to the assembly in the beginning. The service area isn't able to sign a lease on their own. They can't obligate the borough to anything.

It has to be me. And so I, I brought this to the assembly to begin with because this isn't something that we normally do. And when it's something that's out of the ordinary, I like the assembly's backing on making those decisions. And so that's why you got it. And when I talked to the Service Area 1 board and chair about wanting to end this lease, they were like, well, that's ridiculous.

And I would like to talk to the Assembly about it. So that's why we're here tonight. Questions before we invite Mr. Arndt? Yeah, Mr. Whiteside. I think— so I remember this quite a bit differently as far as the timeline of events.

So last winter when this was first brought forth— brought forward in front of the— to the Assembly, I believe there was consensus to no longer to pursue this lease or to end this lease. I do reach it at minimum majority, if not consensus. I suggested we wait a period of time to not pull the rug out from under the contractor, give them enough time for winter to pass— or no, this was, excuse me, fall, because winter was coming. Sorry if that's triggering show thoughts, but winter was approaching. So this was actually further in the past.

This was in the fall. I suggest delaying cancellation of the lease because our contractors had materials in place. They needed to focus on snow removal, gravel work, sanding, etc., or salting. And the Assembly agreed. I can't remember if it was at minimum majority, if not consensus, to hold off until springtime.

Springtime comes around. Our feedback from the service area was that materials were frozen into the ground, and this was late spring, if I remember correctly, and that they could not be moved yet. We're now in August. Since springtime and that statement was made, we can go back into the YouTube minutes if we have to, or meetings video or meeting minutes. These all were statements that were made since spring.

A—. I'm just trying to understand what the reasoning is to keep the lease, but this is the information I'm just sharing as I know it. Since that statement was made that everything's— or some items are frozen to the ground, we can't move them yet, a substantial amount of gravel has been added to that property, to those piles, and very recently a substantial amount of, of super sacks of salt have been added to the property. So I'm unsure if if based on the information in front of us, if the service area wants to maintain the lease because they don't want to move those items, I can't support that because they just keep adding to it and we've already provided flexibility in the timeline to move what was already there. And now we're in August and nothing has been moved.

So that's my recollection of the events. Very easy for us to go back and watch video to confirm that if we need to.

Mr. Gardner. I recall this coming up shortly after getting elected myself, and I do remember there being somewhat of a consensus on moving that material. I wanted to put out my opinion as a resident of the service district. Our service district gets taken care of immediately, and it's done very well. And part of that is the proximity of those materials.

So when we're looking at locations to move it, um, I'm not— to be honest, I'm not opposed to keeping the lease. I'm not opposed to getting rid of the lease. But I also floated this idea in the past as well, and I thought we could kill two birds with one stone where people are always putting all of that that slash pile over by the dumpsters by the Dark Lake ball field. We own the land. You put it there.

They can't put all that crap there anymore. It's right there in the middle of the service district, centrally located everything. And the argument for having this land in the first place was that they didn't have to go all the way to Near Island every single trip and get back out to the service district. District. So, um, it's, it's a drop in the bucket money-wise, um, and I think it would be hoovas to lean on the expertise of the service district chair and find out, you know, the reasoning there.

But also, I'm willing to push on him and ask him why isn't the Dark Lake ball field an acceptable spot. Uh, go ahead, Amy. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, uh, thank you.

Uh, Dark Lake is a pretty big area, but that is our area where we are allowed to take excess snow. So when we move snow from the parking lots, if we have a really big snow year, it does go there. So I want to make sure that we leave room for that. That's actually a part of our facilities contract that we were— they, the contractors that came to the pre-bid meetings want to know, hey, where is the snow going? So that they know that they have somewhere to take it.

So I don't want to take up that— I don't know how much area they would need, but I just want to keep that in mind that that is being used for something else.

Okay. Mr. Arndt, do you mind coming down and speaking your piece?

Good evening. Thanks for coming in. Yeah. My name is Scott Arndt. And the first thing— we got to go back a lot longer as far as the history on Service District 1.

Brecken Enterprises used to be the main contractor that the service district had. And their piles were there at the batch plant. And so the Chip pile and the D1 pile, that's where it came to. And so we had quick response. When we got away from that, it was MK.

MK refused to stockpile even though they had a place they could do it. Then when we switched and went back out to bid, A Maintenance had it. They didn't have any property. Mr. Fields had the property, and with the friendship with the Fields family that the Arndt family has since 1964. I met DeWitt Fields and got to know him before I got to know his sons, and I asked Duncan if we could use the property there, and he said yes.

He had been trying to clear part of it and starting to prepare it for, for some kind of future use. For between 5 and 6 years, he did not charge us a dime for the property. Service District didn't pay a dime to him for it. And then as the assessments kept going up, the— he felt that he needed to get payment, as the letter says, that you received, and I think in October of '24. So it was fair.

So we are leasing approximately 20,000 square feet at roughly 5 cents a square foot, and anybody with any sense in the construction business or in business of any sort where you've got to pay for storage, 5 cents a square foot is unheard of. Now, we had some theft going on from people getting into the piles, so we ended up putting a streetlight there, and that helped, and people weren't in the dark, and we could see them. The other advantage of this location is that the contractor leases area adjacent and then also over at Napa. So the equipment is very close. We don't pay a mobilization fee.

In our contract, they could charge us a minimum of 2 hours for the loader every time we go out. And when you're spending an hour on sanding the— putting chips on the paved roads, we don't do all the roads at the same time. We're selective in trying to take care of the problem and only spend what we need to. So it's very cost-effective for us. Now, I heard mention tonight of Northstar.

Northstar is not an option. The reason that doesn't work is it's going to cost us far more than what we're paying in the lease to move a loader up there every day because the contractor is not going to leave it there because of his other obligations. The other problem is that In getting up to North Star, there are times where we have to send a grader out with ice blades in order to clear it before we can run the sanders. No, it doesn't work on there. This is centrally located.

Is it always going to be available? No. But when he comes up, when Mr. Fields comes up with a better use for that property, we're going to have to look elsewhere. I do have some ideas, got some contingency plans, but they all cost more money. Than what we're spending now.

This is the best option we got.

Any questions? I have Mr. Gardner first. I'll be quick. Is there a scenario where we can exempt— obviously he's not here, but is there a scenario where we could just exempt Mr. Fields on the property tax at that location in exchange for storing our stuff there? No, not that I'm aware of.

Mr. Weisheit. Thank you. This is a question for Madam Manager. Is the— you know, given that— first, let me rewind. Thank you for that very detailed information.

That's what I was looking for as far as what are the benefits of paying for that lease to the Service Area and why it's cost-effective. That's very helpful. But I guess to Mr. Gardner's suggestion, it does seem like a relatively small footprint as far as the number of square feet. Madam Manager, the Dark Lake area, is that— you know, I understand you probably don't have that right in front of you right now, but do you think that would be the suitable amount of square footage to be comparable to that leased site? That might be, uh, that site doesn't have a light and there, there's not very much traffic, and I think that's why so many people bring trash there.

So I would also— I, I don't know about what the concern would be about if people were stealing it right from that main road without a light. I don't—. I'd be— that's up to— I don't know if the service area feels comfortable with that. I, I mean, that's a really big space and we could move dumpsters around and we own the fence area behind that. If that's where we wanted to put it, I think we could put that there for sure, but we don't have that up right now.

We don't have a light out there. So you may follow up. But the— yeah, go ahead. So as far as just the footprint, spatial footprint, we have adequate space to equal what— equal or exceed what the least amount of space would be, you know, barring any lighting or security I'm going to have my assessor who is looking at her laptop look at that lot and she's going to tell us.

Will you look at the Dark Lake lot and tell me the lot size?

Yeah. Mr. Woods.

I have a question for Mr. Arnett about what would the 2 hours of time and the mobilization fee run us? Well, not us. Well, run the service district. Yeah, depends upon the, the weather, of course, what our winter conditions are. This, this last year we did a lot of sanding on there, so you'd be moving it.

There's times on the pavement where you'd end up moving it every day on there because we were having somebody out by between 6:00 and 6:30 in the morning putting chips on paved intersections, and that after I went out between 5:30 and 6:00 to call the contractor based on the conditions. And you're gonna, you're gonna spend more than what we're spending on the lease because you're looking at $200 an hour, and that's— you're paying the mobilization time to get there and and then the loader's tied up during the period, and then them bringing it back to the other will pay more than what the lease is on it. There is enough room over at the Dark Lake area, but once again, like I said, the problem is the mobilization on there. There isn't a loader over there for everybody to use, and so that's where the problem comes in. We have a unique— the other thing is because of the close proximity of our contractor, AIM Maintenance, to this area, we don't get charged anything for the mobilization on the loader.

In fact, I've told him he can, he can keep it there. So as you'll notice, there's two loaders there on it, and we have that. The other reason there's a forklift typically that's been there And the reason stuff moves in and out as far as the White Saks go, we moved 40,000 pounds of calcium chloride for dust control. And we've gotten half of that down. We also purchased some for Menasha Bay and Bayview Service Districts.

So we all try to work together, but they have that part to do. Been raining too much or too dry. It's a matter of finding the right conditions on there. So does that help you?

Kind of, but mostly it does. I was looking for a ballpark number, what would it actually take for somebody to— for the mobilization fee. Well, a loader at, uh, one loader I think is $150 an hour and the other one's $200 an hour, so depending upon which one would move over. It slows down the response time if it's over there on it because they also use it. They use the loaders to clear the hospital too.

So it's one of the reasons why our contractor is out early, sometimes at 4 in the morning, even before the city and the state is out. That's one of the things that helps us get our roads opened up early in the morning because we— because of the contractor we have and the access to the equipment. So it's just— it really varies. I feel it will far exceed the $12,000 we're paying for the property. Mr.

Ames, from what I can understand what you've said, and the $12,000, any other location would cost the district as much or more. So one way or the— one way or another, the money is going to be spent. It's just a matter of who gets it. Is that correct? That's one way of looking at it, yeah.

And Whatever anyone thinks about any person, anything else, we should not let personality get into this. We should work on economics. And so it's really going to cost more to put it anywhere else, even Dark Lake, that the borough owns the land, but by the time you get mobilization and everything else, our job is to take care of our constituents, and in this case, the district. So as long as it can be shown that they're saving money by paying the lease, I'd be in favor of that.

Um, and that's the reason the Service District Board did this. They—. These—. All this information was provided to them on there, and I disclose the relationship that I have with Mr. Fields and have had for— what the heck is it— I've lived in Kodiak for 62 years now. So it's because of those friendships that we got a break on it for many years, and we're still getting a break on it, because if you tell me where else somebody can rent 20,000 square feet for 5 cents a square foot on there.

So it's a good deal, and we know it. And it's not always going to last, and we'll have to make some other arrangements when they find a higher and better use for the property. But at this time, it's been a very good working relationship for approximately the last 8 years.

Mr. Gardner. I'm fairly certain I'm the only person up here on the dais that actually lives in the service district. The one—. Scott Smiley does. Scott does as well.

Okay, we got several. Okay, I apologize. I was wrong. Info. The one time that I was dissatisfied with the road conditions, I called and Mr. Arndt called me back within the hour.

The problem was taken care of and fixed. I've gotten extraordinarily good service. I don't always see eye to eye with Mr. Arndt, but I would recommend that we defer to the expertise of the Service Areas Chair. It seems like it's a good deal.

Mr. Weisheit. Yeah, you know, I'm indifferent, meaning that If it truly is in the best benefit of the service district, obviously that would be what I would support, but we still don't know that yet. We have no idea. This is based on coming from the person who I agree is very good at managing that service area. We have fantastic winter service without question.

But we don't know what the alternative looks like. We are hearing what the benefit would be from the person who supports reporting it. We haven't heard the other side of— for what our other options are. Would Darks— would Dark Lake be a suitable option, and what would that cost actually look like? Would— if the contract expired, or when the contract expires, goes up to bid, another contractor is awarded that, would they have that same need or access based on the information we know that the current contractor benefits from that access because they have other services that they render nearby.

There's a lot of variables that we're not factoring in yet. I guess full circle, a bit long-winded, but I want to just end with my last bite here. I would like to know at some point in the future— we don't have to crunch everything now— what space we have available at Dark Lake. How much would it cost to add a light there?

And what the benefit— how much would it actually cost to Mobilize based on historical invoicing for winter removals from those machines that could not be stored there. I would love to see all that. So that sounds like a request of staff is there. I don't think we necessarily have to have consensus on that, but is there someone else who agrees? Okay.

I am seeing some heads nod. Does that direction— is that clear, Manager Williams? Did you see 4 heads nod? Nod? I saw 4.

I saw— well, I mean, this is a— I guess this is just a policy thing. This is just a fact-finding thing which anyone can ask for. We can find that information. My question for tonight is, are we going to continue in this lease or not so much? Because while before it freezes, I need to have direction on—.

I think there is consensus to yes, unless I am hearing strong differently. But then to know what a price idea would be if we were to switch it to Dark Lake. Or another site. Okay.

I think— oh, gosh. Okay. We'll just go down the line. Woods, Ames, Gardner. I mean, as Mr. Arntz said, we are going to have to move it eventually.

Having a ballpark idea of what it is going to cost us when we eventually have to move it. I mean, not assuming— eventually Mr. Fields is going to find a better use for that property and if we don't have an understanding of what we are actually paying, more info, mo' better. As far as I'm concerned. Mr. Ames.

The present lease, has it expired or when does it expire? No, it hasn't expired. It's good through the end of 2029. We're in year 2 right now. Okay, so it's not pressing for this winter to make it decision?

No, but I didn't want to ignore the sentiment. We— I didn't sign this until November of 2025, even though we were like a year into the lease. And so at that point, it was too late to tell them that we didn't want to do it in '26. So I wanted to talk about it in '26 before it was too late to tell them that we didn't want to do it for '27. So that's why I didn't want to— like, I remember that sentiment too.

There was sentiment like, yes, we're going to do this, but— and so I wanted to address that second part of that before it got too late. If the assembly was like, no, the direction is we're not doing this lease, then they need time to move their stuff. And so I wanted to make sure that we were telling them with plenty of time. So no, I don't need a decision this year before this winter unless you're saying this lease is done, and then I need it. But otherwise we have a couple of years Unless Mr. Fields finds a different use for his land.

But would we be canceling a lease we've already agreed to, or is this a year-by-year lease? This is a lease for one year with multiple extensions, and so that's— we have so many days before the end of the lease to tell them that we're not going to do it, but that time period is in the winter, and so I don't want to wait until the winter because then asking them to move frozen materials is really hard. So if we were going to ask them to move, we want to do it while it is still possible to do.

Mr. Garner and then Mr. Whiteside. I will echo Jeff a little bit. It would be wise for us to have an idea of where we need to put this eventually. But I will also— as someone who occasionally drives heavy equipment, Mr. Arntz is right. You are, and I'm talking about myself, I occasionally get to drive the big fun toys, but you know, you are talking about a big time commitment if we were to move this right now.

It seems like he's negotiated us a pretty sweet deal, and as long as we do have AIM Maintenance as the contractor for that service district, it seems like, um, let's, uh, let's squeeze the deal for as long as we can is what it kind of seems like to me. We're saving money, but Let's prepare ourselves for the future, but let's also not put crazy effort into it because maybe, you know, after 2029, there's going to be an almost entirely new assembly up here and they're going to go looking for the exact same information and all the prices are going to have changed again. So let's not waste a lot of time. If we're going to use the deal, let's use the deal. But let's come up with a plan for the future.

Mr. Weisheit. Commissioner DIXON. Thank you, Mr. Gardner. And that's where I was going to head with, I guess, my closing thoughts on this one. I don't think it's— I think it would be premature.

Again, I think we waited too long to take this up again this year, but I have no, I guess, desire to terminate the lease this calendar year. As I understand it, it's a calendar year lease. I will not be on the Assembly next year. This year, but I encourage folks to find out what information is available as to what Plan B would look like because I agree with Mr. Gardner, whether— even if it's not a cost-effective solution versus paying for a lease, at some point there's several reasons why that land could no longer be available. So that work won't be wasted.

It could prepare us for— prepare the borough for, well, where are we going to put the pile next? So I guess I am not looking to— but get us back on track. Thank you, Madam Manager, for doing that. For our agenda item, I don't want to personally pursue cancelling the lease just yet. So Madam Manager, Mr. Arndt, I am hearing squeeze the deal and mo' info, mo' better.

Okay. If I may inform—. Yes, absolutely, Mr. Arndt. Basically, the Service District will be looking at what it is going to cost. On there as we come.

We have basically— it's a 2-year contract with our contractor with 2 1-year extensions. It's our anticipation we will go the entire 4 years. So we got 3 years left on it. And that's very similar to what we have here. And we will have an idea on what we need to do.

So—. And we'll be looking at many things, not just moving over to the Burroughs site. Because of the problems I've seen over there, I'm not really interested in being over there. Also, when you're dumping snow there on it, the— and I remember the problems with people getting into piles before and trying to police that, and the borough doesn't have a police force. So we will be looking at that.

And like I said, if you— one One quick thing is you can— there are times when we are— if we're sanding the gravel roads, there's times when we're working anywhere from 4 to 12 hours on sanding the gravel roads because after we get done, we got to go do them again because of the weather conditions. And then you're going to pay $200 an hour for that. So we could go through and look at what the sand trucks are on the hours, and you can take each one of those times 200, and you can put another half hour into mobilization there and half hour demobilization. That'll give you a real good idea, and I guarantee you it's going to be far more than what we're paying. But I don't think it's worth wasting the time for that at this point here.

This works very well. The service district is aware that it won't last forever, and we will be looking into what options we would be coming forward to, to recommend, because there is other borough property that would potentially be better. So thank you very much for your consideration. Thanks for continuing allowing this to go the way it is. It's a great deal for the service district.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Arndt. And any questions about the direction from the Assembly? Okay. Moving on to Item Number 3.

Look at us go. We are just tearing through this thing today, aren't we? So draft ordinance to remove limitations on electronic participation by Assembly members. And this one was Mr. Woods, Ms. Roberts, and Mr. Whiteside. But the name I see at the top is Mr. Woods.

So as we're discussing the structure of allowable assembly member absences, this— I took that as a good opportunity to bring this up, principally because I was concerned that if we were to go from 50% to 25%, it would make it functionally impossible for any member of our community, of the borough, that lived in one of our remote communities to participate as part of this body. Um, ultimately, we're the Kodiak Island Borough. We're not the Kodiak Road System Association. We're the Kodiak Island Borough. Uh, as such, representation for the members of the different communities, I think, is highly valuable.

I know we've had different village representatives in the past. However, issue with that is it incurred a substantial amount of cost flying people to and from. Um, I don't think it's terribly unreasonable that if you're going to run for a seat like this that you should frequently travel into town. However, to give people the opportunity for that level of representation, I think, is highly desirable. So that's why this is where this came from.

I think this kind of makes a happy medium too, especially as most people up here at different times are ultimately still working professionals. Um, having the limitations that we currently do in electronic participation, I think, is cumbersome in a time when Literally even commercial fishing boats have good electronic communication. Um, an additional issue is seasonal work here. I understand the concern of members of the community of not being able to directly address their representatives. That said, electronics and different meeting applications have gotten dramatically better over the last 15 years and have become far less cumbersome to use, more available.

I think if ever there was a good time to look at this, it is now. Thank you. Thanks. I have a lot of comments on— I mean, I guess— so thanks for bringing this up, Jeff. Before, I just want to say that in the things in the questionnaire, I'm a no on everything except maybe the virtual emergency meetings.

We can— that's something that we can discuss. But it looks like the way the discussion is going is based on member access and member convenience without even considering institutional and public consequences of having a remote and virtual Assembly. And so I respect the comments that were made during the citizens' comments today about that presence itself has a democratic value. And I can soapbox that for a long time, but I'm not. And I'm going to hand it off to Mr. Gardner.

I like this and I don't like this.

I think there need to be a lot more rails on this if I could get behind it, because what Mr. Rohr said earlier was kind of moving. He's right, it's nice when you come in here to be able to look somebody in the eye, and I feel like we're all pretty respectful people up here. You know, we like something, we nod. We don't like something, we shake her head and you can see that and participate with your community member. I think that's important.

But if we put some big rails on this so that you could apply or qualify for this because you do live in Karluk or wherever you are, I would like to see village participation. But, you know, things like a quorum, that must be for people present in the main chambers, and that's not a question. You know, another thing is, like Jeff said as well, even a fishing boat has a pretty good suite of technical capabilities. And I know some brilliant guys that fish in the summer that would do really well up here, and I'd love for them to be able to participate electronically. But me, I live 7 minutes down the road.

I should not be allowed to participate electronically. But if I was a Salmon Sainer and I needed to go to Bristol Bay, If that guy can come to every meeting on his computer, I'm okay with that. So big rails, I don't like this the way it is. Mr. Whiteside. Thank you.

I agree. I think this— and I co-sponsored this because it's just starting, you know, beginning the discussion. I advocated support for the— in principle for something like this 2.5 years ago, but my support is extremely limited. Solely for Village representation. They are severely underrepresented in our Borough.

So I would support a full electronic participation excluding executive sessions for anyone who ran for office in one of our Villages off of the road system and that was elected. I don't support I appreciate that there are people who have employment that— and I'll touch on this here when we move down the agenda a bit, but I appreciate that there are— I know some really brilliant fishermen, respect a lot of them, and friends with a handful as well that would excel up here, no doubt. Very, very talented business people. However, I have sat through countless virtual meetings with harvesters of various types, and I have never— and I'm not exaggerating, I'm not saying it's an exaggeration, I appreciate the public comment— you cannot multitask and expect to have a positive outcome as an assembly member. I have never sat in a virtual meeting with a harvester and had their undivided attention for more than a few minutes at a time.

That's just the nature of that line of work. It doesn't matter what type of harvesting it is at sea here in Alaska, I would be really surprised if someone were able to carve out a dedicated time every single week where they could sit down with the Assembly and the public and have their undivided attention, especially if you're a vessel operator. They— those folks have so much responsibility and going on at all times of the day and night. I think I mean, that would be really challenging for them to keep up with. I—.

So that said, a bit long-winded, but I do support this with limitations, and that's strictly for Village, if anyone were to get elected in one of the Villages off the road system, I think that's a good idea.

Ms. Roberts. Keep it short. Pretty much echo everything that Mr. Whiteside said, supported this because I want to open to, you know, remove some barriers for Village community members that might want to be part of the assembly, and they currently aren't able to unless they have endless flight miles available on Island Air, which doesn't even exist. So I think the way that I would support this, echoing what he said, limit it to people who live in the Villages and are able to come into town every now and then at least to make that physical connection with the constituents who come here so you can look them in the eye. There are a lot of questions in here that kind of threw me off that I would also say no to, but I think if we are limiting it to Village members, I would be open to supporting that.

Mr. Woods. So just kind of where we are in the process of this, we are at the conceptual and discussion ways. Um, hence the questionnaire. We can tailor this to look however we want it to look. The point being, and I think the concern that's being brought up, is one, I think there's no doubt that our villages are underrepresented in this body.

Uh, there's no doubt at all. Additionally, in a time where we historically have had issues with getting enough people to run, having professionals be excluded from that due to frequent out-of-town travel, when we— every other workplace in the state, for the most part, especially at least inside the state itself, allows for a degree of electronic participation, is frankly a bit behind the times. Workplaces all over the place make it work. That said, we can kind of tailor this to look however we want it to look. I think the current way we have our policy is rigid to— Jesus— too fixed, and there's room for improvement there.

Um, but yeah, like, more discussion needed, obviously. And I would absolutely be in support of not having more than, say, 2, uh, in a row that a member participate in, for it to keep those sequential meetings. So you can't participate in more than 2 electronically in a row. I think would be an absolute good first step. That way you're forcing people to show up whether you live in the Village or not.

Going to— essentially going to town once a month, I don't think is a terribly onerous task.

There's a lot that we can do here. I just think that the work needs done, and it's kind of why we're here.

Mr. Gardner. I think we're making some progress here. This is something Mr. Rohr said about, you know, looking people in the eye and whatnot. And for me personally, whenever we do have somebody on the video screen, when one of you guys are gone, I'm almost completely deaf. I read lips.

I work really hard to listen to you. That's why you see me lean in and my ears sometimes because people are soft-spoken on that microphone, and it's worse for me on the TV. So if we were to do this for somebody in the village, it would help me personally, and I think people like Mr. Rohr as well. If we— not spending money at it, but if we upgrade our communications a little bit, turn up the volume, work on having a better picture of that person in the screen where we can really see them. That would mean a lot to me personally.

Anyone else? Mr. Ames.

I am not against participation electronically, but I do think it needs very strict regulations.

And yes, it could be varied for people who live in the village. They should still come in a certain amount. I spent most of a year in Old Harbor and missed a few more meetings than I wanted, but that was due to the fact of weather, not trying to get here. Every voting session, I at least tried to get here and pay for a ticket on my own. Um, the meetings I missed were no plan, there's not a lot you can do.

Um, so yes, I do think, and I did do some work sessions and listen to some meetings when I couldn't make it.

Um, if someone from a village gets elected, it's kind of weird, and I don't even know if legally we can have two sets of rules between someone who's on the road— roads and someone who's not.

And that's a question that needs to be answered before we can have any serious discussion on this because it may be declared discriminating.

But I would say no to a lot of these things on this questionnaire. It should be an emergency thing, and if what we're trying to do is get some village participation, then we need to look into whether they can have an exception or what legally Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Mr. Witts. I really think the most fruitful way to move forward here would be for us all to basically fill this out, uh, provide it to the clerks or whoever, and then take a stab at drafting this just with as much information as we possibly can.

And then we can tweak whatever language. We don't even have language right now. This is well and truly the conceptual phase, right? Um, I think that is a pretty good way to get an idea of where we're going with something.

Um, and unless I'm off base there, but I, I do think that there's at least a group, enough of us here that think that we got to do something, but even though we may not necessarily agree or know what that looks like. Um, once a draft is there, we can tweak it however we want as long as it's legal. Big caveat there.

I mean, we do. It's 2.30.025, electronic participation in meetings. So we do have something here. So we are not creating anything ex nihilo or anything. Ms. Roberts.

I think I would feel more comfortable moving forward if we could ask for legal opinion on if we specify whether we can single out Village community members versus in-town participants, just to make sure we're legal. I wrote that down too. My gut says no. My gut thinks it's a 14th Amendment violation, equal protection.

That's my gut, but I'm not a constitutional lawyer.

And I just also want to point out, yes, workplaces do this all the time. Workplaces do do not have what I believe is a constitutional obligation to be available to receive petitions from their citizenry. So they can do whatever they want. You know, we— I think we have a higher obligation. Mr. Smiley.

I want to second Mr. Rohr's speech about this. I really think the presence of people on the dais is crucial to having good government. I think the citizens expect to see us up here. I think there's dialogue amongst us that's really important, and I think that's totally diluted by running it through media of various kinds. Yeah, in addition, the, the green sheet that we received doesn't have places to say no.

In many cases. So I guess we can just write no in and vote on that. But that's my two cents worth. Oh, I see what you're saying.

Anyone else? Mr. Vizcalcho. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm just going to piggyback off what Mr. Rohr said too. I think we are elected by the people And I think we need to represent the people by showing personally, physically in this board assembly.

I like—. I mean, my—. The company I work for, we do a lot of video teleconference, but I'm a person that I like to do face-to-face because one, not that I'm reading everybody's gesture But I have a tendency to think, okay, that's the best way for me to get an idea, especially if you're new to the assembly on how to figure out on what to do things. You kind of read body language. And yeah, I just like, I think it's better to keep it the way it is.

Only use it if you have an emergency. Thank you. And, um, I'm glad that this was brought up though, because I started thinking about other things that the status quo doesn't address. Like, what happens when the internet connection to a member drops during a debate or during a vote? You know, we don't have, you know, a policy for that.

Do we immediately recess or— right? How long do we wait to attempt reconnection before we pick up the vote or debate? I think in our code, in that same place, 2.30.030, the legal place of a regular meeting is the Assembly Chambers. That's like, you know, that's what we've established. So that will have to be, you know, redefined.

How can public access be guaranteed if the online platform fails? What are the minimum technical standards? That we expect that establish that a remote member is actually present and attentive. It's a rabbit hole. I'm not that interested in going down into these things, but there are some things that I think the questionnaire does bring up that we could judge.

Mr. Viscoccia. I just want to say that it— Running your own company or other companies that does video call, that is okay because that's how you gotta do to reach out to other people. But like I said, we are elected officials, so I think it's very important that we are reminded that we have to be physically in this setup right here, not because we're trying to read each other's mind, but it just shows to the people that we care for every time that they voice out their concerns. Oh, thank you. So what I am hearing, uh, from Mr. Woods is, um, and it's okay with the clerk to collect the questionnaires, see which, which of these have like a majority support, and then bring that forward to work on amendments, or what is your point of work?

I think actually an Open Meetings Violation Act. I don't think you can actually vote privately.

That's— thank you for that, Mr. Rohr.

Madam Clerk, do you have an opinion on that? So I think what we're doing here is that we have a set of questionnaires that we provided in the packet. They can fill those out, return those to the clerk. They are not having discussions. They are going to come back to a public meeting with a compilation and we discuss.

I think that is what you are trying to say. That is what I am—. Just to get an idea where everybody is at. This isn't the mayor polling. I am not polling.

So once the— just communicate your wishes to the clerk afterwards.

Any other comments?

Okay. I think one— if I may, Mr. Mayor, the question or the agenda item request that was provided to me It's to amend an ordinance language for electronic participation, to expand electronic participation, and then crossed out by village community members to not limit participation as an assembly member. So I want to narrow down what we're trying to do. Are we, are we doing it for everybody, or are we doing it just for community— village community members. Yeah, Jeff.

Uh, I also came up with the same conclusion that Mr. Mayor did with relation to the potential 14th Amendment issue. Um, I think if you make it for just village members, you, you're potentially putting yourself in a sticky wicket. I think if you're going to do it, you need to make it for everybody. Also, when we have a kind of large— that would be why I lined through it, potentially due to the legal challenges there. I think if you're going to do it, do it.

Put strict bumper rails on it and do it. If you don't want to do it, don't do it.

Okay, thank you, Mr. May. Thank you for that clarification. I just want to know what what, you know, the marching orders are once I have your questionnaires back. And just to warn everybody, please don't discuss them with fellow assembly members. Strictly return the questionnaires to the clerk and I will compile them.

Thank you.

Okay. We ready for packet review? All right. Let's do it.

Okay. PAC Review for August 20th. The first thing up is a public hearing on Ordinance No. FY2027, Amending Code Title II, Administrative Administration Personnel, amending Section 2.30.020, General Rules, to establish procedures for Assemblymember absences. And there we go.

Mr. Whiteside. Thank you. Talk about perfect timing. Piggybacking on that last topic, it sounds like there should be, based on public testimony and Assemblymember comments, overwhelming support for this ordinance. So this is nothing new to update from previous— from last week's meeting.

There is that, you know, updated language to consolidate multiple meetings in one day into one single absence if someone is absent during one day. But everything else remains the same. Oh, and the updated medical language as well as far as excused absences. But everything else remains the same, and it sounds like we— We should have overwhelming support for this one. Any additional comments or questions for Mr. Whiteside?

Okay. Oh, Ms. Roberts. Just thanks for putting it all together and making those corrections. This will have my support.

Okay. Next item for public hearing is Ordinance Number FY2027-07, rezoning Cliff Point Estates.

Several lots to see Conservation District, and those will correspond to lots created by preliminary subdivision cases S27-001 through -004. And I think our Madam Manager— oh, okay. Thank you, Seema.

I have asked 3 times. It's the Cliff Point Estates.

Let's see. Let me see if I can— so the Planning and Zoning Commission had a public hearing at its regular meeting on July 15, 2026. The Commission voted 4-2 with 1 seat vacant to forward a recommendation of the approval to the Assembly. A Planning and Zoning Commission resolution is attached to this agenda item. This month they have the 4 other big ones going forward for that rezone.

Also, part of these lots are for sale, and the reason that they did it was because they are more marketable. People wanted bigger lots. To change to that zone also, they had to be a 5-acre minimum.

Thank you, Sima. Any, uh, additional questions or Comments about this one? Okay. Oh, Mr. Gardner. I kind of hate these huge lots on this plat map, but it looks like there's gonna be a disgusting mansion on that huge plot on the east.

But I'm also very much of the Alaskan way— don't tell me what to do with my land— and it is their land, and I plan to defer to people Mr. Smiley. Well, the Planning and Zoning voted 4-2 with one absence on this. What we don't have is what the two thought. Yeah, actually we do. We do?

Yeah. We do. So the two that said no, it was because they didn't understand why the other big ones were still not— they were going to stay right where they were. Rural residential and not being zoned over. They did not know that those cases were going forward this month.

So as soon as she found out, and it was the chair and the vice chair, as soon as they found out that those were also being zoned over, they were like, oh, we would have never voted no if they knew that. Well, thanks for the clarification. Absolutely. Okay.

Thank you, Seema. Moving on to the next one, some unfinished business. Ordinance number FY 2026-17, amending various sections in Title II, Administration and Personnel, Title IV, Service Areas, and Title VII, Elections, to prohibit holding multiple elected offices.

So, Bo, this was originally from former Assemblymember Johnson and current Assemblymember Johnson. I don't remember. Whiteside, this is one that we identified that was still out there. And so I'm glad this was brought back up because I would like to clean this up before— sooner rather than later. Thank you.

Yeah, this fits very neatly into unfinished business. So this was discussed at length with the original author of this draft ordinance. I co-sponsored it. So a very, hopefully concise summary of this item is if someone were to hold multiple elective offices, for example, sit on the Assembly and then sit on a service area or anything else that would create a potential conflict of interest, so if you are up here and making decisions or swing decisions that could affect other elected positions that you also hold, particularly when it also overlaps with staff. That's a potential area for conflict.

We ended the discussion with— I would say I don't believe we had consensus, but I think the majority of us agreed that there was room for that scenario to have discussion with those people. I do still strongly feel that if we put this— postpone indefinitely or just remove this from our plates, which I'm totally fine with, I think anyone who does hold multiple elected offices, if an item is being discussed and you're on the assembly, item comes up from that other office, you should recuse yourself or declare a potential conflict of interest every single time one of those topics come up if you have direct influence on an action. But whether or not that fits cleanly under the definition of conflict of interest, I'm unsure. But recusal, I believe, is a totally different way of removing yourself from discussion, if I understand that correctly. Anyhow, unfinished business, I don't feel strongly one way or another on this one.

This is just something we need to either keep discussing as an assembly or postpone indefinitely. And we can make that motion— anyone can make that motion, yeah, next week if they want to. Any questions or discussion for— let's go Ames, Woods, and Gardner. Well, you brought up either discussing it or— Postponing it indefinitely.

If we discuss it, then can we have a vote and have it just gone? Mm-hmm. Yeah, because that— I don't like things postponed indefinitely. I would rather see it settled. I personally don't see a problem per se because several things are— places are having trouble getting people to volunteer or run for an office.

And yes, maybe they should declare a possible conflict of interest, but other than that, I don't see a problem with them holding more than one. I do think, though, that this needs to be settled and not— and put to bed, done. I don't like the idea of postponing things, and I don't like the term postponing indefinitely.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Woods.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of this. It's not a surprise. I think if you can meet the time obligations and can participate in various different capacities, more power to you if that's what you want to do with your time. And thank you for your service, moreover. Second aspect to that, though, is, yeah, if you have a conflict, whether it be real or apparent in any way— or real or imagined in any way, shape, or form, form, just disclosing that, it will only ever be in my mind an integrity move from you.

Um, if you— whether or not you have a direct financial benefit from it is kind of notwithstanding. Uh, people do things for all kinds of reasons. Uh, money is only one of the many motivating factors amongst others. Uh, status, ego, whatever that might be. So, and it hurts us not at all.

To disclose that. Um, hell, we've— I think different members of this board have actually done it when we didn't have actual conflicts.

Uh, I know myself included. Uh, so yeah, I think this needs to die personally. And, uh, yeah, I think we can just all be straightforward and upright in our dealings. Mr. Gardner? Yeah, I'm vehemently against this the way it is.

I'm not going to say sit up here and talk about it for a long time, beat the dead horse. But if somebody, you know, number one, it's the electorate's decision. Um, who are we to let somebody not do this? Um, and why wouldn't we want the expertise and the knowledge of somebody that's holding a service board or something, um, similar to be right up here with us to be able to inform us quickly so we don't have to wait for them to get back to us for the next week. So yeah, I'm super against this.

Can't wait to vote against it. Anyone else?

Okay. Oh, Ms. Roberts. Just thinking back to when we originally started talking about this, it was talking about the— I don't want to say hierarchy, but just the structure of employment and the Borough and how we are technically the boss of the Borough Manager and how that might be an awkward interaction between the two if one served on a Service Area Board and there might— I don't know. But that is kind of how I remembered discussing this originally. And I do think there is a lack of volunteers to put their name on the ballot for the Service Area Board, so I totally understand not wanting to block that someone from being able to serve on both.

But just remembering why this was really brought up to start with, um, that's kind of how I remembered it originally discussed. Yeah, because, um, we see that kind of conflict in the hierarchy. That's why no one on the Borough Assembly can run for school board. So they're already precedent for limitations like that, for just like what you said.

So it's not just a matter of if you want to run and let the voters decide. We actually have guardrails in there to kind of prevent those things anyway. I think it's, yeah, a matter of scale perhaps. Mr. Woods. Yeah.

And just— I made the motion to postpone to a specific date initially because that topic of discussion came up. And I wanted to give the sponsoring member an opportunity to more narrowly tailor his language to specifically address that. Due to unforeseen circumstances, that member is no longer here. So, yeah, I think the intent was to allow an opportunity for not necessarily a correction, but for a modification of the language. And that no longer seems necessary.

So the issue of several members have mentioned that you would expect someone who serves dual— serves on dual elected offices to raise a conflict of interest, that language is not in our code. The conflict of interest is direct financial, you know, implication.

And so I think if that's something that you're going to expect of a dual office holder, then you need to probably, I think, make that more clear. In the code, because as the code sits right now, as Mayor, I don't think I could rule on the direct financial implication if they were to raise that. But I'd have to think about that anymore, but— or some more. But as what I'm thinking right now, I don't think I could rule on that unless the language is a little bit more clear. In code.

I just thought I'd put that out there. That's something that you're expecting. It's always good to put it in code.

Okay. All right. Moving on. Yes, Nova. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the assembly.

Procedure-wise, I just want to go over real quick what happened with this ordinance. It was introduced. It was advanced to public hearing. We already held public hearing on this item, so we don't have to open public hearing at the next meeting. The motion is already on the floor, so you don't need to make a motion to adopt.

Uh, we're just going to pick it up and then have assembly discussion, and then you can either vote it up or down or postpone it indefinitely. For those who are new on the assembly, postponing the indefinitely kills the motion. It—. The assembly does not take a stand on the motion. We're not going to say yes, we favor it, no, we don't favor it.

It just goes away completely if you make a motion to postpone it indefinitely. Okay, just to clarify for everyone. Thank you. Thank you.

Um, okay, let's see. Uh, next up are— we have one contract, uh, next week, uh, FY 2027-18 installation services for an interior electric fence around the active Municipal Cell Away Cell and future Cell 2. Do we need to talk about this some more? We do, just for a second though. Thank you.

Um, so you'll notice there's nothing in your packet because we don't actually have a contract for you to look at. And given the price point of what this could cost, our normal procurement procedures require us to advertise this for 3 weeks and have people, you know, make their bids, and then we pick the lowest cost. And so we were debating on whether or not the assembly would see this as an emergency and you wanted to do an emerg— request for quotes quotes and let the numbers come in and fall as they may, which I think is a little bit dangerous as far as overpaying. And also, when you look at State Procurement Code, this wouldn't really qualify as an emergency because it's not something that has to be done within 24 hours. But as you've seen from our bear management discussion, we're serving a lot of stakeholders.

If you were to ask one agency, they might say this is an emergency. If you were to ask another agency, agency, they would say it was not. If you were to ask the ratepayers of the landfill, they would definitely say it's not because they're the ones that have to pay it. And so, um, normally if we think it's going to be under $50,000, we would just rock and roll and I would go. But I don't think that this is going to be under $50,000 and it's not going to be within my spending authority.

So it's going to be something that comes to the assembly. And so Cody is here if you have any like procurement questions or engineering side questions. Um, this is not something we're having designed by the engineers. This is something we had Travis, our GIS analyst, draw on the map. So we got the length.

Um, this is the materials that we're getting from the Defenders of Wildlife. So this will be, um, an installation of owner-furnished goods type of situation. Um, and so we're looking for direction on Do you want to go for a request for quotes, or do you want us to put out the regular 3 weeks of advertising, or anywhere there in the middle?

Thank you. Additional questions? Mr. Ames.

Not really a question, but I will voice my opinion that it should go out for bid in the 3-week procedure.

I think the agencies will still see we are moving forward, we are putting out a good faith effort, and we have a better shot of getting a good price for the project. Mr. Smiley and then Mr. Whiteside. I just think we have to follow our rules. If that is what our procurement rules are, then do it that way. Mr. Whiteside.

I think I would like to see this go it should go out for bid as well. I would lean on, I guess, the recommendation from our ENF Director as to whether it is an ITB or an RFP. You know, whether we want it to be very highly prescriptive or allow some flexibility for the awardee to determine what that looked like. But I do clearly think it should go out to bid. Mr. Gardner.

Okay.

Mr. Woods. I think we're all on the same page with the procurement process. I, I don't think there's any universe where we could call this an emergency, especially when the different agencies in charge here have given us instruction. We followed that instruction, then the instruction changed. Uh, for that same reason, I think it's extremely unlikely that they would prevail in any type of finding situation.

Oh, I, I'll just also add that we're also going to have to have electricity moved from either the from the Wastewater Treatment Plant or the Baylor Building down to this area in order to have electricity. This isn't going to be one of those double D battery situations, right? And so that's going to take some time as well. So we're going to have our contract electrician do that. I think that's going to be the easiest way for this.

And so that'll take some time too. So even if we did do this emergency, we still wouldn't be able to electrify it until we— NODAC is able to actually move the electricity for us, so that is going to build in a little bit of time too. But again, I don't know what the price point is, and because we are having the bear management discussion anyways, it makes sense for the assembly to— yeah, I don't think this is an emergency, but some of the emails and conversations we have definitely would make you think it was. And so I don't want to downplay the severity of the situation out there, but we also have a set of rules that we're supposed to follow. And so I wanted to put that on there in the event that tonight went in an emergent direction.

But I think for next week we'll take that contract off until we follow our regular procurement process. And we put a lot of work— it's not too far from being ready to roll, so it won't be long before that's out on the street. Mr. Gardner, um, we really need to get an idea of what it would cost to do the buried section on this as well? We met with our architect and engineer earlier in the week, and for Juno, just for a standard chain-link fence, it was $130 a foot. $130 A foot?

Without electricity, without buried. So yes. Well, I mean, we might just be shooting ourselves in the shot in the foot and having DEC come right back at us a couple months later if we don't bury this section?

If we were to bury it, we have a— we're going right over a temporary closed cell with our rain sheet, and so we'd have to go through our own rain sheet. And the reason that's there is to get us closer to compliance for other parts of the landfill. Plus, if we bury, we're right along the road where we're going to have to grate and take care of snow and ice. And so, um, I think we would be damaging our own equipment with our snow and ice removal operations when it comes to the wintertime. So, um, yeah, that's a—.

It's something we have to think about because if we don't bury it and the bear decides to go under it, then it's going to damage our rain sheet anyways. That's an engineered solution that we're going to have to wait and design. Including moving an electric pedestal over, like, to be able to power that. Like, they're looking for a chain link fence with a buried, like, subgrade chain link fence, one horizontal, one vertical. So we have, like, a T scenario of electricity and it's rock.

And so we're not, they're looking for us to go in a different direction with something quick that is not, not that. And so I don't think you're wrong. I think eventually we're probably going to be asked to do that, but I, I don't think we're, we're moving away from, um, being held in fault or non-compliance by just going towards that solution. All I'm saying is it would behoove us at this point in time to get a handle on what that number looks like. We started design this week on moving that perimeter fence in towards—.

But the buried section on the new fence, we should get an idea of what that number looks like. I just feel like it is going to come right back at us from DEC in 6 months and we are going to be sitting right here in the same spot having the same conversation.

That—. I am not going to argue with you. I think we might end up there too, but then that is us doing nothing very quick. I mean, that is an engineered solution. Where it's going to take months just to get a design, and then an injury— like, we're— and then nothing will happen this year at all.

And so that's, that's the risk we take with that. Thank you. That, that's like that rock and hard place situation, literally. So I don't—. And we're on a pendulum.

There's no— yeah, there's no good answer there. And the Bears are gonna dig, and if they're acclimated to that food source, they're gonna— you heard Nate say it doesn't matter if there's 10 fences there. And so what you guys didn't hear is, and the reason I ruined my first break was because I talked to the other Alaska Department of Fish and Game staff about how are we tracking the bears and how are we monitoring who's going where and which bears will be problem bears. And a lot of the recommendations that they're getting from other agencies is radio collars and paintballs and like having, ooh, that's the yellow butt bear and that's the orange butt bear, you know, and being able to track them. So it'll help us identify which bears are actually problem bears.

So you're gonna see some changes from all of the different organizations, I think, on how we deal with this. If we get, if we do this 3-week and it comes back and it's $400,000 for this interior fence with nothing below ground, I think we'll talk about it then. Like, let's figure out what this cost really is. This is just owner-furnished electric fence with posts being put into the ground. And so if that comes out at that high of an amount, $250,000 is $83 a square foot.

So, or not a square foot, but just a foot. And so, well, let's see what those numbers come back with and then make a decision that's an educated decision on the value of spending that money and if we think it's going to do any good.

That, that would be my recommendation. But for next week, I won't have a contract for you, so we'll definitely take that off. Mr. Woods, we're talking about creatures that routinely chew through high voltage cable in the, in the antenna field. There's no food there. I am highly skeptical logical that any engineered solution is going to ultimately prove successful.

And I am also reasonably certain that the agencies, through their conduct up to this point, have put themselves in a largely legally indefensible position, which is likely going to end up with us in litigation at some point. So really strongly, I would urge us to consider an executive session with our attorney present about what our options and our path moving forward is, because I do not see a universe, a future, a way, or the way these different agencies are pursuing this forward, where we can ever truly be in compliance.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. And now, finally, Chief Ellis, thank you so much.

Two other items, authorization for two purchases, one portable mobile radios for Bayside and purchase of two staff vehicles for Bayside.

You were invited down to the podium.

Do you want me to do the state? Yeah. Chief, you've been here for so long, do you want to talk more? It will be shorter if I talk.

Okay. You didn't even— screw it. Okay, Fire Protection Area 1, Um, which is Bayside Fire Department, is requesting to replace their current inventory of outdated and professionally incompatible portable and mobile radios. The current inventory of portable radios is not able to be reprogrammed, nor are they compatible with mutual aid partners, inclusive of but not limited to Kodiak Fire and Coast Guard Fire. The current inventory lacks basic characteristics necessary to safely operate for immediately dangerous to life and health environments such as structure fires and hazardous materials special operation incidents.

Since the assembly approved the use of Sourcewell at the June 25th work session, they were— they looked into Sourcewell and they found 24 portable radios, 24 spare batteries, and 24 charging units, along with 6 mobile radios for the apparatus, for a total of $146,399.68.

In the packet tonight, you'll see those numbers, and you will also see see the minutes from the meetings in which the Fire Protection Area 1 board approved those. This can be very familiar to our conversation on the next agenda item. And also the Fire Protection Area 1 chair is here if you happen to have questions of Mr. Carsten's as well.

Any questions?

Mr. Gardner. First off, thank you very much for your service. Really appreciate you. I'm asking out of genuine curiosity because I'm ignorant. Why do these radios come to the tune of $6,000 a radio?

I'm just doing a quick search. I know nothing on the topic, and I'm finding that CAL FIRE uses a radio that costs about half as much. So, excellent question. Um, sorry, excellent question. Um, the The simple answer is in two parts.

One is the actual fully compliant NFPA 1820 radio, which is only sourced through L3Harris and Motorola, is about $12,000 a portable.

We are engineering a fix where we get a robust and very useful radio, but by bypassing some of that need. Um, the radios that we have, the currently— I'm actually wearing one of our older ones. Um, they range in age from 2005 to 2015. Um, they're unable to be programmed to handle things such as, uh, digital and encrypted, uh, communications, which is Kodiak Fire and Coast Guard. Um, the prices all around are the minute that you start doing things such as intrinsically sound.

So like CAL FIRE, when you're talking wildland firefighting, you know, they're not dealing with structures generally. They may be, and they have their two separate— well, they will run structural stations and apparatus. But we have intrinsically safe, which was the notation for hazardous materials and special operations. The other then is the robustness for either damage or flame or thermal impingement. Which brings me to why can we get them for— actually, the— with the Sourcewell price per unit, the Sourcewell price per unit is for the portables is— I apologize— $4,712.

That's with the Sourcewell contract. We've been going through this for about 17 months, um, to try to get to this point. There's been a lot of demos and research and whatnot. We want to do it right and get it done and over with. Um, so the fix that we came into is something I brought from my previous life where we had the same stumbling block in the city I retired from where it was exorbitantly expensive to replace 100 portable radios.

At the time, $9,000 apiece. So what we do is we make a simple engineering change. You'll notice firefighters, Coast Guard or city, they're wearing their Motorola portables. They have a pouch on the outside of their turnout gear. They put it in here and they have the radio mic over here.

That little pouch only has a thin amount of outer layer, whereas the overall package of our PPE, We wear it in a strap, so it goes underneath our PPE, so the protection for the radio, the entire thermal protection, is from our turnout gear. The only piece that sticks out is this. So what we do is instead of spending the $10,000 to $11,000 to $12,000 on the whole radio for that thermal 500 degrees for 5 minutes, we spend it on the mic and the cord. So Kenwood will put the NFPA-rated mic, thermal mic, on the radio, and that's what we pay for. So that is only about a $200 difference.

So we can still gain the safety, the robustness on the thermal part of it that these do not have at all without spending $6,000 more per radio. Sounds like you thoroughly did your research. Thank you for the education. I appreciate it.

Mr. Weinstein. Thank you. Two questions, if I may lump them, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Chief, for your outstanding patience in sitting here with us all night listening to us discuss these items. You guys have to do this all the time.

I only had to do it once. So I have just one hopefully brief question for you and then one for Madam Manager. The first one for you, Chief, is How much lifespan can you expect from these items? It sounds like these radios you're replacing have been around for a good couple decades. Can we expect that kind of life out of these new ones?

Absolutely. And I think the differentiation to make too is the lifespan that we're going to get is actual functional lifespan. So some of the issues we've had with these current— they're wonderful radios, just not for firefighting. They weren't designed for that. We've had them fail on our members in structure fires, we've had them fail on them in live training.

So with the newer ones, we get a 3-year warranty out of the gate. We are also, if you notice in the specifications, we have some cabling and some programming pieces to it where we will be able to then program if frequencies change, if we move, if let's say there's a move a few years down the road with ALMR, so we're on board with with, you know, at the state level. These are, will be capable of just basically having a switch, and I'm going to show my ignorance on it, but basically an internal switch that will allow us to then utilize ALMR. So with CARE, with the level of, I hate using the same term over and over again, but just robustness, they're just really designed for firefighting. We should be able to without a problem, 20 years for sure, and 20 years of solid use, not, oh my goodness, it didn't work again kind of use.

Great, thank you. Mr. Woods. Do you guys have the capacity at Fire Hall to rekey these, and, or do you have to send somebody out to go get training for these specific radios? No, and again, that's, and thank you for that question. It absolutely is with the purchase of the hardware and the proprietary granting of access for the software.

If we need to change frequencies, that kind of thing, we can absolutely do that in-house. You know, but I'll go one step further. If there is some sort of either warranty work or if there is something that fails on them where we need to have repair work done, that has to be sent off island. Um, every vendor, no matter who it is, uh, would have to be sent off island to have repair work done. So the upside with Kenwood is their dealer is, uh, who we will be, uh, interacting with is in Anchorage.

Yeah, Amy, uh, through the mayor, Chief, are these in your budget for this year? Uh, they are not. Aha. So is this the question you're going to ask? I was—.

This is my question too, because there's again no language under fiscal impact on the memo. I was trying to answer Assemblymember Whitesides' question. So, um, the Bayside currently has $828,914 left in their fiscal year '27 budget. If they were to spend every single penny of that that was budgeted, they would still have over $903,000 left in their fund balance. So they have the money to pay for these, and I think it's because of the deal they're getting through SourceWell that is making them move so quickly when they found a good deal.

Well, it's that and the fact that we've been holding on this for getting close on 2 years, and amongst other things, it keeps me up at night because our firefighters are firefighters. They're not volunteers. They're not amateurs. These are professional firefighters who are not compensated on a full-time basis, and they go in, they're aggressive, they're well trained, and having them have substandard safety equipment— if you look at any line of duty death report from NIST, guaranteed every single one of them, because I read them all, comes out that communication failure was one of the leading causes. So, Amy, can we— what you just said, can we add that to the memo here under fiscal impact for next week's meeting?

Because I think it's on the next one with the vehicles.

But—. And if I may, Mr. Mayor, just with those numbers being put out to the public, we have a long-term fiscal and strategic plan. And those numbers are not just rainy day numbers or we're not burying those in mason jars behind the fire station. We have very specific long-term goals to either achieve current service status or increase service as necessary. Yeah.

I think that's an important note to include that even though it's not budgeted, that there's still the plan. Yeah. I think that makes sense. Mr. Gardner. Why is the subtotal on this invoice or, uh, this sheet you have here approximately $40,000 more than the grand total below it?

Uh, because that is reflective of the Sourcewell, uh, it's like a discount, correct? Awesome. So by going through Sourcewell, it's a 20% reduction. Starting to make a lot more sense now. Thank you.

Um, all right, thank you. Next is the vehicles.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, the fire department is requesting to add a duty officer vehicle to their existing fleet of staff and operational response capabilities. This would allow chief and company officers and prevention staff to perform shift or duty officer operations and prevention duties in a safe and professionally appropriate apparatus. Current members use their own personal vehicles or share the 2004 F-350 with the chief and other department personnel. XL.

The quoted source, well, National Auto Fleet Group price for a 2027 Ford F-250 XL 4-wheel drive SuperCab 6.75-foot bed is $56,687.72.

They're requesting a second vehicle to replace that 2004 F-350 crew cab with a 2026 Ford Ranger Xtra-L, and the price for that is $41,000. $1,170.10, Also through SourceWell. The Fire Protection Area 1 actually has funds allocated for these purchases in the fiscal year '27 budget. Any questions or discussion? Mr. Whiteside.

I'm just going to jump right in on this one and support it if it's already in the fiscal year allocation. This has been discussed internally, I imagine, at length. I'm reminded that the value that the borough gets from this fire department far exceeds expenditures in so many different ways. I drove by you several times in the past week, and they're always outside training. I believe—.

I don't remember the term for the, for the building, but the burn building where folks— I saw two firefighters charging in there while smoke, black smoke was billowing out of that thing.

Whatever you need, Chief, as long as it's been thoroughly vetted by your crew and it's allocated, I'm going to support it. Thank you. Mr. Woods, Mr. Gardner. I mean, their current truck could drink if it was a person.

Uh, a replacement is obviously necessary. Just to kind of jump on the bandwagon and praise you guys, I am unaware of a volunteer fire department anywhere in the country that does the training hours or the outreach or has the level of professionalism that you guys have. You are an absolute asset to our community, and I thank you greatly for all that you do. Mr. Gardner. Um, yeah, I literally just wanted to say thanks, Chief.

Um, you guys are amazing, and it's not just the firefighting. I mean, you guys doing Santa Claus, and anytime I'm down there, uh, somebody always always welcomes my son in to go check out the fire trucks. And love you guys. I'm happy to support you. Thank you.

Are you sick of the compliments? Because I mean, these guys, geez. Well, so long as I can just defer them to the people I work with. The members are the ones who do all this. Yeah, totally deserved.

Mr. Vizcocha. So here's another one. Um, thank you. No, but, uh, I just want to say thank you for what you do to the community, especially to the youth. I know that you just opened the cadet program about, I want to say, 2 years ago?

Yes. So I just want to say thank you for doing that because, as you may know, like, I really support when it comes to youth, especially in our place. And you guys have been busy, and I support this request that you guys are doing, especially for the work that you do for the community. And thank you for that.

All right, thank you, Chief. Thank you, we appreciate you. No worries. Um, the other day when I was, I was walking a visiting artist and you, you pulled up and we had a chat and she was just amazed that the fire chief just pulls up and just talks to citizens on the sidewalk. Sometimes too much.

Yeah, thanks. No, no, it's awesome. Thank you guys very much. All right. That brings us back to the work session agenda with Clerk's comments.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the assembly. In the interest of time, I'm going to focus on elections only. You have the rest of my report. I just want to let everyone know that absentee voting in person will continue until Monday. I have a typo there.

It says Monday, August August 3, but it's actually Monday, August 17. So absentee voting will be— is open from 10 AM to 4 PM. So Monday is the last day to absentee vote here in the Assembly chambers. The primary election will be held on Tuesday, August 18. The polls will open at 7 AM and they will close at 8 PM.

So my staff and I will be in and out that day. We'll have an early day. We'll start probably around 6:30, and then we'll be here until almost midnight on Tuesday. Staff is collaborating with the Division of Elections. They will be— the election workers will be picking up their election materials on Monday, so they will be in and out here in the upper hallway.

For the local municipal election, the local municipal election scheduled on Tuesday, October 6th. Nominating packets are available online and in the clerk's office. The candidates list is attached to your report, and the filing period will close strictly at 3 PM on Monday— not 4 PM, but 3 PM. And the borough currently lacks sufficient candidates to fill the position positions on several service area boards. So we are actively preparing for the local election.

So we're in knee-deep in elections. So that's all we've been doing the past few weeks. The election pamphlet mailing list has been sorted. The pamphlet itself is being produced and translated into the Filipino language. We're doing an in-house Filipino translation.

Irene and I are, are doing it with the help of Google Translate, and we're finding it very— of course, it's free. We're not sending it out to a translator anymore. We're just doing it in-house. The two of us are cross-checking each other with the translation. So precinct chairpersons for all local precincts have been successfully secured.

Election workers training sessions will be held on Monday, September 14th, and Friday, September 18th. The canvas team for the local municipal election is fully assembled and they're ready to go. And then our last election for this year will happen on November 3rd, which is the general election. Um, miscellaneous things. We are currently working on two ordinances that we'll be presenting to you shortly.

One of them would be— probably it would be good for the assembly to take a look at the recess code section and revise that a little bit so that it's clearer and it gives the assembly the— with consensus, of course, or for majority, uh, for you to make a motion and take a recess for any reason. Okay, so, uh, and then I provided you a little Jurassic Parliament thing attached to my report which says, vote cast without a second, is this okay? So a little reading material for you, and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Any questions for Nova?

All right, thank you. And thanks to the election crew, I early voted today, so it was fast and easy. All right, Assemblymember comments. We'll start down at the end with Mr. Woods. No comment.

Let's go home. Ms. Roberts. No comment. Mr. Weisheit. Nothing to add.

Thank you. Mr. Ames. I'd like to thank all the guests that came and spoke, especially about the bear problem. It did give me some insights. And other than that, no comment.

Mr. Smiley? No comment. Mr. Vizcocho? Thank you to everyone's work from the staff, from the borough manager and the madam clerk. Thank you for all the guest speakers that spoke as well.

And can I talk about football? First game of football for the high school is going to be tomorrow, so if you have an account at NFHS, go and support the Kodiak Bears. They're going to be playing at Seward. Thank you. Mr. Gardner.

Just really want to thank staff, especially Nova and your team. I know how hard you guys are working on elections, and I really appreciate it. You guys are kicking butt. And then especially Amy and Cody.

Feel like we all got a little chastised by DEC and some others today, and I know how hard you guys have been at work out there, and it's not fair. You deserve a pat on the back, not a shaking finger in your face. So I appreciate you. Let's go home. Have a good night.

Thank you, everyone. Mayor's comments. Just a couple of things. There is a seat open on SWAB. I've been receiving a lot of— some interest about that seat, but that seat is kind of not firmly reserved as a construction/business seat, but I'm getting interest from people not in that industry or that sector.

But the language in the code says that I may, you know, appoint someone. I would really like to have somebody on SWAB in that industry or in that sector, but there are a couple people like in the wings waiting, waiting for that. So if you know of anybody that you'd like to encourage to throw their name into, into SWAB, I will be absent next week, so Mr. Whiteside will be chairing the meeting. I'll be at the Aerospace States Association conference hobnobbing with Rocket Lab and SpaceX and trying to get some money out of Rocket Lab and SpaceX and, and, and whoever. But those are, I think, important connections for us to maintain because a lot of big changes and they're coming in fast.

And so, so I just want to cultivate those, those relationships and talk to other communities and what they've been doing with their aerospace relationships. I think there's— we can learn a lot from, learn a lot from them.

Let's see. I think I'll keep it short. I can bring up other stuff later. Okay. And with that, we're adjourned.

Welcome to your first real work.