Denali Borough: October 7, 2026 Finance Committee Meeting

We need to call the roll, I guess, or no? Uh, sure. David Alexander? Here. Walt Warner?

Here. Jeremy Sanfield? I'm also here. Okay. All right then, uh, I guess we're on to public comments.

Anybody, any public comments Comments to be had?

None submitted, and there's no public here. All right, enough of that then.

Uh, like to, I guess, accept a motion to approve the minutes of the previous meeting.

I'll make a motion to accept the minutes of the previous meeting. I'll second that. All right, so it's been motion to accept the minutes and seconded. Anybody not want to accept them? Seeing none, the motion passes.

The minutes are accepted. That brings us to item number 5. We're cruising here. Um, fee schedule considerations.

Right?

Yes. Do we have— I guess we'll start with land management. That's me. And I did kind of draft a user fee waiver that we've decided to put in place again for 2027. Kind of this draft of the summary to kind of preview, review before we have the meeting tonight.

So I just kind of wanted to be here and reiterate or answer any questions of the where, what, when, whys of how the commercial land use permit went, or is it still going.

And really my biggest statement would be, especially for the waiver, is that we really only had 5 commercial operators participate. But some good data, a lot of feedback. Just basically what it— the conclusion that we made is we still need some work. We still need to increase participation as much as we can. So we're going to work on that.

I will work on that this spring with more commercial operators, you know, come back for the season. And then also the biggest feedback we got was the user fee pricing structure and what that looks like. So they're kind of just kind of going back to the drawing board, giving us a little more time. They did communicate with us if we don't— if and when we do start charging those user fees, they really would like that year, year and a half, so that they can kind of build it into their fee structures. And then also, you know, how truly is our reporting going to look if we're going to stick with the quarterly or if we're just going to do it annually.

So We had some questions answered, but not as many as I would like to push forward this program in its entirety. So we're just taking baby steps.

We are going to waive the user fees again. So we'll have the application fee and we'll push it to more operators. And, um, hey, Trina, this is Jeremy. You mentioned 5 operators, you know, submitted out of an estimated how many? I would say I think there was 25 or 30 in our list at one point.

As potential? Potential. Yeah. Yeah. The ones that we know are doing outdoor activities that could potentially be in our, you know, on our lands, operating on our lands, but when there was never really a 100% Sure.

Well, I gotta tell you, I, I gotta push back on this a little. As I, you know, read through it, um, you know, it, it seems to me like this year was the learning year, uh, or I guess last year, however you want to look at it. Um, no fees, fees are waived, you help us get this program underway, and it feels like that didn't happen. And I know that— I don't know, it feels like giving another year.

I would rather push back the opposite way and put it together and, you know, get, get some buy-in, and we can get feedback that way. It just It seems like this program was established, you know, many years ago. We're just trying to get it underway. Like, I don't know, just seems like waiting another year is— well, it's not moving it forward. There's a lot of other details and backgrounds going into this, um, just to do a deeper dive.

Is that Well, we're going— just even going off of those 5 operators, 3 of them were hyper hiking operations, so the revenue we would have generated was pretty minimal. The other ones were— there are bigger operators that are, that are operating off of Bog Bay, um, and that alone brings its own can of worms that I really am trying to massage, especially because there's— all it did was magnify use of Bob Hole and all of the kind of what, not compensation necessarily, but just some of the issues that are going on. And I really want to separate commercial land use, you know, permit activity versus everyone microscoping what's happening with Bob Hole. That's a road reset. Issue that we really need to handle as well and separate the two.

So we, you know, the staff and I, we all got together, kind of all put our two cents in to come to this conclusion. I mean, I do agree with you, Jeremy. It would be great if we could just say, hey, we had— we did have our unit data, but let's go ahead and start collecting individual data. We really had to balance out what we did, information we did get, what feedback we did get, what participation we did get. And one couple things just keep coming back that are coming back unanswered.

The other one, the other question, the biggest one is where these monies are going to be spent. And so there's also a learning curve within that, especially between, uh, you know, bringing the monies in under land management, but it actually going back to the general fund and how those monies are going to be allowed to be spent. There's, there's some issues that you're going to need to resolve with that. So yes, we did have this in place for 10 years. I really don't feel like it was truly— even then, even sitting for 10 years, it sat for that long.

Now it's just putting both feet in, something that really didn't get swimmed. So I'm not prepared to push it just yet until I get some more. So first, I mean, just even my, my position alone, have some of these questions answered before I push it. And then, I mean, there's always that other caveat too of what we would have truly collected and how much is that— staff time and efforts and energies and, and what it's going to go into. It just really doesn't— it's just not an equitable program right now to do that, just jumping both feet first thing.

I think one other thing I'd add that we've heard from operators multiple times, and I just want to commend Tina, she's gotten, you know, the communication's been really strong with the operators that are participating, um, and even some who have chosen not to and have told us that they are not, um, which we obviously want compliance, we want to encourage compliance, uh, but one piece of feedback was the $5 per person or per user, it's not, it's maybe not accounting for the, it's maybe not fair, the best way to assess that fee when we have such a diversity of users like the hiking guy, the hiking client, for example, with minimal use on the land versus the client in a four-wheeler or ATV or in, you know, in a fat truck. Dramatically different impact on the land. And so that $5 flat rate per person— oh, throw in horseback riding too— it just doesn't necessarily fit in the way, though it is a model and it is in use in other municipalities. I think one thing we heard was there might be a better way and probably something that's more percentage-based. You know, in the park, the way the park does it is this percentage based on gross receipts.

And so whether it's, you know, again, we just need a little more time to assess what that alternative might look like.

And I feel like that $5 fee came from— I don't want to say out of nowhere. We tried to average on what other municipalities are doing around the state, but what we really keep coming to the conclusion is that We're not truly like the other municipalities around the state. They're at a bigger scale. They've got more designated true borough or municipality trail systems that they run off of and can collect from, you know, versus our one Antler Ridge. And so, and that also, you know, snowballs into the fact, okay, we've got our one Antler Ridge trailhead.

We're trying to get into, you know, the cork and development into more.

And it's just, I don't want to keep getting the chicken before the egg, but that's kind of what it looks like at this point. We really need a little bit more, a little more time, a little more finesse to this. And Chris, I appreciate that. I've had the ruling massage and develop some of the communications. We were really lacking on that.

There's some contention between the commercial operators within how they feel about us or how they feel about each other and where they're at. And so I, I want to, I want to make it— I've said this from the get-go— I want it to be fair. I don't want this to be a contentious between, you know, the borough and user fees and quote unquote, you know, everyone keeps calling it a tax. So I'm trying to finesse it a little bit so that it's a win-win and not have it be this contentious program between, you know, us and the operators. So it's just going to take a little time.

I mean, I understand that, but I also agree that it would be a shame to like let just another year go by Would there be a way that we could come up with a different fee scheme? That would be whether it be one fee for hiking, one fee for giant trucks, one fee for horses, something along—. We are going back on the design, one of it that way. And kind of right now our goal is let's work on this and then when we have our next what is it, also the next budget or finance meeting, we can put some more stuff on black and white to what we've decided. Um, but then again, like I said, the biggest feedback we're getting is that yes, they know and have been prepared that we're— this is in place.

They still have to have time to build that fee into their structure. So I have to be respectful of that.

Right, so that they would have enough time to set their, their prices for next year.

But it still seems like, you know, it's October. Couldn't we, you know, get that possibly done before next year? It just seems a shame to, I after all this time to be this close and then just keep putting it off. And then, you know, it— we're in the next year, we're at this time, we're going to be in the same position.

One thing I add, I— and I'm hearing you both, and I think one, maybe one thing we could maybe attempt to do is, you know, what they— what the operators have said is they're billing, you know, they, they open their books months, we know this, years in advance, potentially up to 2 years in advance. And they've got different arrangements with the larger operators, you know, so if they're providing these services as part of a package that they need to sell through a reseller like Holland America Princess, you know, they need time to build all this in. I think that the permit, the fee does need to be waived via the fee schedule, which the assembly usually sees in the January timeframe. Maybe we could have a revised model for consideration there so it would both waive and implement a change. That could be kind of a goal, but at the same time, those operators need time to build that in.

And I guess I'm going to say this one more time so that hopefully you'll be kind of more on the same page as us.

Again, out of those 5, 3 of them were hiking operations. The revenue still doesn't justify for those 3. And then the other portion is the other 2 and 3 commercial operators are really— I don't want to say pushing back, but I— we also have to keep in consideration they are doing a ton of work Granted, for their own benefit, but for some of the benefit of, of the community as well. And I, I, we have to figure out a better way to have them do work on the road and how that gets compensated versus us charging them, and then we turn around and use that money to go towards that. And what the work that's being done on that, that they're doing for free We are— they're gonna stop doing that.

We're charging them now. The money that we bring in is not even gonna come close to the work that's being put in out there by them. You know, for free. Well, I mean, that's part of it is we gotta make sure that the fee is enough to offset the costs that are gonna be, right? Right.

So then going back to the fee structure with these, you know, with these schedule structure, then we're just gonna have to talk about the higher impact, bigger dollar operators paying more and then being fair to the smaller operators that, you know, charge less. You can't, you can't find it on the same fee. Would we, I mean, so I'm looking at the, you know, your page here. Would we not waive the application fee? No, we'll still maintain the application fee.

And that's another thing that the operators also mentioned. Maybe we do a bigger lump sum annual application fee. I don't know. Right. But there's still only 5 operators.

What is that revenue? Well, I mean, we got to start somewhere. And we do. And we did start somewhere. We did charge them the application fee last year.

We did. We were fair enough and where we had continual talks. Obviously it's a busy summer season. They all came together. We had a roundtable.

They took their time out of, you know, the end of their closing, the end of their season, so that we could get more feedback. Again, Adam's, you know, kid grubbing our relationship so that this doesn't become something that it doesn't need to be, so that we're all I'm going to grade it on what we're doing.

The operators that didn't put in an application and didn't pay an application fee, if they put an application fee in or application for this year and a fee, are we going to charge them for last year's fee too?

I mean, they were using the— they should have put in an application, they were using the land. I'm also going to add into the point of those three, I don't want to call them out, but the activities that's going on out of the Lake Ish area, Baudville area, is they've all come around to that loophole of if they just use Baudville and take it all the way to Dry Creek, they're not using our land, so they're not going to, they're not going to apply for it because they're not even operating on, on borough land anymore. Now, we kind of disagree because we know they are. Then yes, that means Chris and I are going to have to go out there and start enforcing and flying some drones and seeing where those trails are really going and take, you know, keep it of where they're really at on a day-to-day basis. So there will be a whole, you know, list of to-dos for us to go out there and enforce that as well.

So if they want to say that they're only using bobble all the way to Dry Creek, so that they can circumvent our permit program, then that's probably what they're going to end up doing, right? Which is fine if that's what they're doing. True, true. But that's also another factor.

So a couple of thoughts here. Uh, first, I'm having a really hard time hearing the people in the room. Um, I don't know if that's the case for Jeremy and David as well. So, I answered a few of the questions I have already, and I just couldn't hear you. So I apologize for that.

But I know when we were having discussions about the land use fees, Jared Zimmerman had said something that kind of changed the way I was looking at it, because I was thinking, you know, they'd pay these fees for the commercial use of borough land, and then You know that the money that they paid would be used for, you know, maintaining the, the land that they were using. And Jared said, well, that does not have to be the case. You know, like, they, they are using borough land for commercial purposes to enrich themselves. And so, you know, we don't need to, to you know, exclusively use the— to maintain the land that they're using, you know, they're using their own resources, you know, providing— a borough really— for other residents of the borough. Um, so Part of them operating is maintaining the roads.

Like, they will not be able to continue doing their tours if they don't do some road maintenance. You know how much we charge for a use fee? Like, I'm 100% open to, you know, modifying the fee schedule. You know, if they're doing, you know, $50,000 of road maintenance and then they've got to pay us, you know, $35,000 in fees, um, you know, maybe that's excessive and maybe we should revisit like how much we're talking about. But I don't see a problem with them doing their own road maintenance as well as doing a, you know, paying the fee.

Um, and I, I'm with, um, my colleagues on this. I, I feel like we went into this year saying, hey, um, let's get this program going, we're going to waive the these with the understanding that, you know, we're going to start collecting these fees next year. And I, you know, it's what we've been asked to do by a pretty good portion of our constituency. And I think, you know, I understand that there are some complications and some problems. So I think we should figure out, you know, what we can do, and maybe, maybe we do a partial rollout or something, but I I think I'm with them.

I think it would be a mistake to just, you know, postpone it another year. And I understand that's complicated and difficult. I, I'm not minimizing the problems that you're facing, but I think we should try and find a way to do something.

I agree with you, and I still keep circling back a bit on the participation, right? You've got— I'm going to have to go through, and I guess we are going to have to scrub all of our commercial operators so that these 5 aren't the only ones participating. And then again, and, and you know what, I think what I would— I guess I should have probably prepared a little bit more for this meeting if that, if that's the case that you guys truly feel that way, I can show you the numbers of a true estimate, rough, what we would have potentially brought in. And I know you're like, oh, then we should do that. But I still have to weigh in the fact of how much of that money is going to— how much are we going to be able to use of that money towards what we think we're going to be able to use it for?

And that's why it's been helpful that Allison's been able to kind of keep us correct on the, the what we're going to be able to spend those funds on also.

But, but can't that be, uh, figured out as time moves on and we go through this process? It can, yes, that's what I'm saying. But right now, isn't all of the—. Of this what I keep telling, you know, what I'm saying, that I still need a little more time to figure out these and, and, ands It's not just one thing. It's, it's, it's, it's a multitude of issues that really needs to be ironed out.

And it takes time. So those issues—. I'm not pushing back totally. There's things I totally agree on. I just, I want a program that's going to be fair and work correctly without a ton of contention.

So between all of these, we've got some things to still figure out. At the end of the day. Can I jump in real quick and do a sound check? Is the sound coming through better?

Uh, I think for me, yes. Yeah, for me as well. I just—. Yeah, maybe the owl. You try turning it— I, I, I switched it to the owl.

It was trying to pick up to the TV, so I had to switch sources. Yeah.

Maybe I'd take a minute to jump in, and I think just one thing, I, you know, the goal really was like share information, no actions needed, I think, on any of this, right? It's just the— yeah, but I appreciate the feedback on this and the remaining topics too. And we— that was the idea, is bring it, bring it before the Finance Committee for feedback. So appreciate the discussion. I do, I really do.

I, and I've been trying to incorporate the staff, the operators, you know, treasury-wise, you know, treasurer-wise. Like, it's a lot of people that have opinions and, and how this should work and just bring it all together. So I do appreciate the feedback and, uh, you know, helping me through this process, helping us through this process.

Yeah, I would, I, you know, the, the, for this, you know, I'd like to at least, I mean, I feel like we have to get them used to a getting the people that are using it used to paying something and get the people that are should be paying to actually pay something. And whether that's not the user fee, but is the at least the application permit fee. Or the permit fee, I guess it's not an application permit fee, the permit fee, you know, maybe just boosting that up a little bit to make it be something.

The other part too, Chris, I guess I've been kind of meaning to raise the question of enforcement. There's some of them that refused to to participate. So now I've got to come up with some sort of enforcement or penalty or however that looks like, right? So then there's that side note to figure out too. And we face the same issue with the tax operators, but the difference is they, you know, they need a certificate to, you know, to operate.

So we don't have like a business license It's all— it's just, it gets sticky to try to enforce. And we know, we've known that. And part of it is we're just trying to focus on voluntary compliance and information sharing. And but there's what you— what's the stick? We can't take— what can we take away?

Or it's a civil action, I guess, is, you know, we'll have to have the lawyer, right? I mean, maybe, you know, that might— it might end up coming to that with maybe some operator. I mean, at the very least, they should be on the hook for the years that they didn't pay the application fee or the, you know, the whatever the initial fee is, the permit fee.

If I could just chime in, you know, Trina and I have had discussions about this in the office, and it's difficult to set a fee on a program that's not fully developed, we haven't answered all of the questions yet. You know, we've gotten feedback from operators about potentially changing the fee schedule. So how do you determine a fee when you don't have the structure established yet? And also, like, what's the purpose of the fee? Like, what is the goal of the fee?

What are we trying to accomplish with that fee? So as we kind of change things within the program, we, you know, get operator feedback and maybe this is a different idea, maybe we do it this way. The fee associated with that change might change.

So whether the benefit of rolling out a fully vetted program and not collecting 1 year of fee revenue is greater than the potential fee revenue that we would collect if we had a partial program and maybe an incorrect fee schedule, you know, I'm not sure that I have an answer if the benefit outweighs that. But that is one thing to consider of, do we want to roll out a full complete program or have it be a little bit clunky with operators as we're trying to juggle compliance issues and potential enforcement?

Yeah, I, I mean, I think those are all good points and it, it definitely seems like an uphill battle to get this program underway and going. But, you know, next on the docket is changing fee recommendations for solid waste. Like, there, things are gonna change and evolve, and I just would like to see it. I'd like to see us take a step forward, and this feels like taking a step back and charging the fee, the $5, a percent of whatever. I don't know that having the right mechanism in place or the right fee is the most important part of it right now.

To me, it feels like this has been a venture that has been asked for and has not been pushed forward until recently, and I just want to see it keep moving forward, and it feels to me like just starting with that fee next year, $5, whatever it is, is the right way to go with that. And all of those other things are going to exist a year from now if you postpone it for a year. They'll exist 5 years from now. You'll— I mean, not every operator is going to just become compliant. Yeah, you're going to have to figure that out.

It's going to be challenging, but I just would like to see us at least push that forward. And to me, it feels like starting to assess that fee and starting to collect it in is the way to go.

I mean, that truly is the number one question that we are— that we're going to have to answer. That's— once we answer that, the rest of this hopefully will start to fall more into place. And I guess I'd also have to say, I mean, with all due respect, That's part of all of these reasons are why it sat for 10 years. I truly believe that our administration, previous administration, kind of knew that this was going to be what it is and maybe procrastinated it. I don't know the right word.

But it's a harder program than you think it is. And I really truly have— I feel like I took it with gusto, and I'm trying to push it forward. I don't plan on taking steps back. I do plan on taking— continue to take steps forward. I just want to make sure that they're the right steps in the right order.

I guess what I'm saying is I truly am putting all of these considerations together and I don't plan on taking a step back or stopping it altogether. So I guess I'll give you that as my role in the land planner, right? Not just bringing this to you, go, oh, oh well, we're not going to charge them again this year and then let time go by. These are, these are true dealings that have to be decided and in, in a certain manner and a certain time frame. So again, I appreciate your feedback, and I also, I just ask for you to be patient, I guess, or give me a little support in that manner, right?

I don't—. I'm not taking it personally or anything, but this is my position, my department's, you know, program, and I, I need to be able to take the steps appropriately. So yeah, I mean, we certainly appreciate you, um, you know, asking for our input and all that. And we certainly appreciate your efforts on, you know, getting moving this forward. Thank you.

And I don't know, maybe we can come up with something that'll work. Yeah, it's a very difficult problem, and that's why it always was kicked down the road. Everybody knew it was going to be contentious and But I don't think that it's, you know, it's not getting better by waiting longer. You know what I mean? It's just one of those things.

And, you know, it's certainly whatever we do is not going to be perfect. You know, it's going to take a while. But I think that we've gone through this discussion. So why don't we move on to the solid waste? Annual review and fee recommendations.

Sound good? Go ahead. Yeah. Um, all right, I will go ahead and take this one. Um, there was a, uh, a review, a report that was uploaded, um, yesterday.

It was delayed, so if you haven't seen it yet, um, it is available online, but I'll kind of walk through and touch on the highlights of it, um, and kind of what we're proposing for SOLABIS fee schedule.

The fee schedule will go to the Assembly, you know, around January, February timeframe. So at this point, there's no action to be taken, but it's more of consensus guidance recommendations on what we should bring forward on the fee schedule.

Thank you.

So to start, we are required by code to do an annual review of fees for solid waste. So this is accomplishing that piece of code, so we're compliant with it.

And looking at FY26, the marker that we compared it to was the cost recovery goal that was established by the Finance Committee last year for each of the locations. So for the Campbell Transfer Station, we recovered 16% of operating costs and we had a goal of recovering 25% at the transfer stations. At Keeley Transfer Station, we recovered 28% of operating costs, so we met the goal at Keeley Transfer Station. At the landfill, our goal was to recover 50% of costs and we met that goal. We recovered 63% of the costs.

So we didn't meet the Campbell transfer station, the goal, but there are different factors for that. Campbell is a further distance, so that's additional fees for transport. And there were also unexpected repairs that happened within FY26. So that increased expenses, but more so one-time expenses rather than recurring.

The second page of the report, um, shows the comparison between FY25 and FY26. Um, both the landfill and the transfer station, um, increased in the, uh, percentage that they recovered, uh, charging fees for operating expenses. Uh, CAML decreased slightly.

The third page of the report shows a snapshot of the proportion of waste tonnage that's accepted at the landfill. So this helps us determine the customer base. Is it leaning more residential? Is it leaning more commercial?

And by our estimate, it's roughly split. About 50% residential, 46% commercial, and then there's 4% that was a no-fee waste that was accepted. So that's from community cleanup and disaster cleanup.

So knowing that about 50% is residential, the cost recovery goal of 50%, so subsidizing 50% of the landfill expenses, It makes sense. It makes sense to subsidize that residential service.

Uh, 1 second. So the, so the residential, that's so like the Alaska Waste is you're including that in the residential amount.

Correct. Alaska Waste is a commercial hauler and we don't have exact data to break out what portion of waste they deliver is commercial versus residential, so we make an estimate based off of the type of vehicle that they use. The type of vehicle depends on the type of waste container, and typically you'll see one type of waste container for commercial users, so that's where we get our estimate from. It's not an exact figure, but we don't have the data available to get that exact figure. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, on the next page, um, we do a market comparison and we look at Fairbanksboro and Mat-Su Borough, um, and we are just slightly above, um, our neighboring municipalities in the tipping fee rate. So our current fee is $1.50, Fairbanks is $1.48, and Mat-Su is $1.36.

However, Fairbanks Borough does subsidize their operations through property tax. Massou Borough doesn't clearly subsidize their services through taxes, but they do subsidize with transfers from the general fund. So they are more similar to us. So seeing that we are in line with MRRRB, On the next page is a history of our tipping fee rates and the amount of tonnage that's been accepted year over year. So the last tipping fee rate was increased in FY24, and the fee increased 20%.

It went from $125 to $150 per ton.

And the increase prior to that was in FY19. So we're seeing larger gaps of fee increases for the landfill tipping fees.

One thing to consider is with larger gaps, you're going to have larger increases in fee at one time, which can be impactful to residents rather than smaller incremental increases to the fees.

The tonnage accepted at the landfill does vary, you know, depending on projects, what's happening, implementation of different programs for recycling or other ways that we can divert waste from the landfill and thus extend out the life of the landfill. So there is a variance in that.

The next pages lay out our kind of a narrative of the recommended changes that we are proposing the Finance Committee to consider for the fee schedule change that will go to the Assembly.

So the first change that we're recommending is to keep the transfer station fees at their current rate. Healy Transfer Station did meet the operating cost recovery goal of 25%. Campbell didn't. However, when we increased the transfer station fees, that was in May, late May 2026. So we haven't seen a full year of that fee increase yet.

So the recommendation is to keep that at the current rate. The second recommendation is to increase the landfill tipping fees by 10% up to $165 per ton. So as we continue to see landfill operating costs increase, as we continue to do preventative maintenance, facility maintenance, and those much-needed ongoing repairs in there, we're just going to see the landfill operating expenses increase. So adjusting the fee upward will help to absorb those costs and continue to meet that 50% recovery fee. Um, when we look at a projection of what FY28 could look like for the landfill, um, if we don't change the fee and if we estimate the escalation of the operating costs as 5% per year, um, we would not be meeting that 50% operating cost recovery goal.

Um, if we increased the tipping fee 5%, so up to $157.50, we would— we're projecting that it would only recover, uh, 51%. Um, so the 10% increase to $165, the cost recovery would be, uh, 53%. So— oh, page 6. Page 6. I really think I'm on page 8.

I jumped ahead. That's right. I'm kind of Moving through it. Okay.

Yeah, so our recommendation is to increase the 10% to the $165.

And then also consider, you know, smaller, more frequent increases rather than waiting years to do a larger increase.

So that is our recommendation for the tipping fees.

The next recommendation is to increase the exception area waste, and this is on page 7. Okay. Number 3, so increase the exception area waste to $330, and this is following the same structure of our current fee schedule where it is the tipping fee rate essentially doubled, and that is accepting waste from outside of our solid waste boundaries. So it's taking in waste outside and putting it into our landfill, using up the landfill resource. So correspondingly charging a higher rate.

And is— I'm sorry. Are there a lot of— I'm assuming that that's commercial people that come here and use landfill in that way?

I don't believe we see too many, but I would suspect that it's mostly commercial. Looking at our neighboring boroughs, their fee schedule, it's common to have the exception waste be double or nearly double the regular rate. I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense. We want to give the break to our citizens. I can only think of one time over in my experience where that's even come up, and I'm not sure.

It may have been a negotiated rate between— yeah, because it was outside of Nunana, which is within our acceptance area. Anyways, it comes up very infrequently. Okay, I was just wondering. Sure. Okay, so the fourth recommendation for the fee schedule we have is to charge commercial disposal fees for dry vehicles and adjust the commercial fee for accepting wet vehicles.

So currently both commercial and residential dry vehicles are accepted at no charge, and it's $100 per vehicle if the vehicle is undrained of fluids and oils. That $100 helps recover the staff time used to drain the vehicle.

So we have received quite a few commercial dropped-off vehicles, so we are recommending to increase that fee. Again, it's a commercial operation using a public resource, so we want to recover that, that cost, that expense associated with that acceptance.

The next recommendation is increasing the fee for non-regulated asbestos containing material, increasing the fee to $250 per ton plus a flat rate fee of $75. So there are additional steps that the solid waste staff need to take to accept this waste. So the $75 will help cover those additional costs associated with accepting it. And the $250 per ton is in line with our neighboring boroughs on accepting that waste.

The next recommendation is to establish a fee for accepting commercial scrap metal at the landfill. Currently, all scrap metal is accepted at no charge for both commercial and residential. But again, charging a commercial fee will help recover some of that cost.

And another thing that we consider in talking about scrap metal and vehicles, there's a higher risk for residential vehicles to be abandoned improperly rather than disposed of at the landfill. So keeping those residential rates at no cost will help discourage any abandonment of those materials, but it's less of a risk for commercial.

The next recommendation is to increase the mattress fee disposal at the landfill and transfer stations. So depending on the type of mattress that's being disposed, there's different levels of work that needs to go into disposing of that. So the mattresses with the metal springs in it, it does require staff time to disassemble those mattresses to properly dispose of them. So the increase in the fee is to help cover that cost of staff time.

And finally, the last recommendation is to add a late penalty for solid waste charge accounts. So starting in next calendar year in 2027, we'll only be offering commercial charge accounts, which allows commercial operators to make disposals at the landfill and be billed on a monthly basis rather than paying at the time of disposal.

So to discourage late payments on that and to help recover administrative time in recovering delinquent payments, the late penalty fee will help to recover those costs.

On page 8 shows a, a visual with red and green of what the fee proposed fee schedule is. So it kind of lays out all of those narratives.

And the final page, page 9, shows 4-year year-to-date comparisons of revenues at each location by month. So as we look at each of the graphs, they are very much trending the same. Keeley, we see a bit of an uptick in 2026 in June.

And landfill, we see there was an uptick last year in, in the fall in 2025. We have not completed the full 2026 calendar year, so 2026 line is not yet complete.

So at this point, based on the proposed changes to the fee schedule, we're looking for guidance, any thoughts or input on if we should move forward this with the proposed schedule, if there are any changes, any other discussions.

Uh, well, I'll go first. Um, you know, I, I think all of them are just fine. I, I do think that evaluating these and adjusting on a more frequent basis is probably, uh, in everyone's best interest. It helps us stay ahead of the game. Um, you know, the, the 10% does kind of start putting a separation between us and the other areas that we kind of benchmarked, but, you know, we're, you know, in a different area.

Things cost a little more down here. Um, you know, I think, I think they're all good and moving it in the right direction.

I mean, I, I figured that the 10% is not enough to make them like haul the trash, you know, to Fairbanks or some somewhere else. And, you know, even if they did, you know, getting less trash in our landfill just allows it to last longer, you know. So that, that's in our best interest. You know, it's kind of a, you know, in a way, you know, we want to make, have enough fees to cover our costs, but, you know, discourage as much use of the landfill as possible. It's, it's kind of a weird balance.

The only thing that I would say, you know, all the fees sounded good to me. The only exception is the resident mattress fee part, which, you know, I understand the additional costs associated with separating the metal from, you know, on a traditional sort of mattress. But I was wondering if, you know, for the same reason that we want to encourage people not to keep junk cars in their, in their yard. Like, we don't want to keep the mattress in there either, or whatever. I was wondering, could we maybe just have that fee for non, like, foam mattresses, you know, and have the, like, a foam mattress that doesn't require any work?

Because I'm assuming that it's, it's just the metal. Yeah. So, we did try and clarify that in the fee schedule. I'm not sure that I put it in the narrative piece, but if it's a foam mattress, to my understanding, if it's a foam mattress at the landfill, it gets charged by the, the weight. So the per ton fee.

At the transfer station, if it's a foam one, then they charge it based on the cubic yard and I've been told that one mattress is about 1 cubic yard, so that would be $18.

If it's a spring one, that's where it requires to disassemble. So the transfer stations, the idea would be that if it's a spring mattress, you get charged the $25 per mattress, but if it's a foam one, you just get charged the cubic yardage rate, which would be $18. Okay. All right. That seems fine.

I mean, if it was more, then people would just drive them up and throw them in the trash in Fairbanks, potentially.

I had a, I had a resident stop by my place, I think it was yesterday, and he was talking about cleaning up his yard before winter and He was talking about how it costs as much as it does, but, you know, as it is, it's heavily subsidized. Um, you know, the, the, the tipping fees, you know, even adding the tipping fees, you know, we're still heavily subsidizing the the transfer stations. So, um, it's, it's, you know, just reality. Everything costs more, um, you know, and it costs more for us to operate the transfer station. And, you know, we can't subsidize it 100%.

That wouldn't be right to do it that way either. So I'm good with all the changes. I think they are prudent, and I like the idea of doing it you know, analyzing and making adjustments on a more regular basis, I think, is wise. But those are my thoughts.

One thing that I didn't add, I glanced over this, but it is important to know that any change to a tipping fee, our code does require that it takes an ordinance by the assembly to authorize the increase to the tipping fee. And then it also has to have a minimum effective date of 6 months. So for this fee change, we have it proposed that it would be May 1st, 2027, of when the fee would go into effect. But this is contingent on, you know, an ordinance going to the assembly and getting passed.

Okay. All right, does anyone have any more comments or questions or anything about the solid waste fees?

Thank you for the preparation and the nice reports. Lovely as always. Thank you. Um, not hearing any additional questions. Let's move on to the grant program considerations.

Okay. Um, similar with the, um, Solid Waste Fee report, uh, the grant report was also uploaded. Um, late. It was delayed. Uh, so apologies on that, but it is online.

Um, I do have a presentation to help kind of guide us through the, um, the conversation since this is a bit, uh, more lengthy of a discussion. Okay. Um, the goal of this topic is to revisit all of the various Assembly comments that we've received about the grant programs. Um, any feedback from grantees, any administrative thoughts on the grant programs, um, to try and consolidate it in one place and then help guide the administration on how we should change grant or potentially introduce, um, a code change for grants. Um, so we did look back on past assembly meetings, we recorded comments, um, and, and it consolidated all of that data into this recommendation for grants.

Um, is this the next page? Yeah. Okay. Um, so this is just an overview of our grant programs and what we funded for FY27. So there's 8 grant programs that we administer.

Um, looking at the total number of nonprofit entities in the borough, we've identified 31 that could potentially be eligible to participate in our grant programs. And 22 of those 31 eligible nonprofits participate in our programs. For FY27, all funding to nonprofit and municipalities accounted for 12% of the general fund budget.

So as we look at the individual programs and how we fund them as a whole, There are 4 recommendations for this. So our current system is on the left of the, on the graphic, and it shows that there are 4 programs that are administered under the nonprofit funding bucket. And that 9% is calculated as the funds available for budgetary purposes as of January 1st. The other grants The matching grant and the municipal assistance have their own set funding caps. The matching grant is currently $75,000 per year, and municipal assistance is 1% of budgetary funds available at January 1st.

Okay, so in FY '27, we were not able to fully fund all of the grant requests under the 9% cap. And we weren't able to fully fund the matching grant, and we were not able to fully fund the municipal assistance. So we're— it shows that we're running into the cap. The first recommendation when we look at the nonprofit funding as a whole is to establish 2 main nonprofit funding buckets with separate limitations. So we would call those the nonprofit operating bucket and the nonprofit capital bucket.

We separate them by the purpose of the funding, whether it's to support— whether the funding is going for operational expenses or if the funding is going for capital expenses. So the second request would be then to restructure the grant programs into their appropriate bucket of funding. So we would place the Public Safety Per Capita under the nonprofit operating. And we would place direct grant funding under the nonprofit operating, and then we would shift the road improvement to the nonprofit capital.

The third recommendation would be to increase the 9% nonprofit funding up to 12% of funds that are available for budgeting as of January 1. This increase would accommodate the addition of the 2 programs under that funding bucket.

And as we talk more about the individual grant programs, as we progress through this presentation, we have also accounted for any increases in individual funding caps. So the 12% would capture that.

Yeah. The final recommendation would be to establish a 2% cap for nonprofit capital. The matching grant as it currently is is roughly about 1%.

So changing it upward to 2% would provide funding for that road improvement grant as well. And the municipal assistance is unchanged.

The next slide shows what it could potentially look like for FY28 with a projection of grant, um, requests based on historic and what the different options would be for levels of funding if we adopted that restructure of the grant funding buckets and where and the bucket that each individual program was placed in. So we would be recommending Option C, which would be 15% total nonprofit funding and municipal funding, and it breaks down to the 12% operating, the 2% capital, and the 1% municipal. So based on the projection for FY28, the nonprofit operating would have capacity the nonprofit capital would not be able to fully fund and the municipal assistance would not be able to fully fund. But again, these are projections for grant requests. It is difficult to guess what a nonprofit is going to ask for, what they're going to need.

So these estimates are based on historic and are not necessarily completely accurate with what the needs are of the, nonprofit today.

But the goal would be incremental changes and adjust as needed.

So now as we move into the individual program recommendations, we'll start with the Community Nonprofit Grant. So this is a supplemental funding grant. It's currently capped at $25,000 per applicant. It's captured within that 9% nonprofit funding cap. There's no match and it's reimbursable.

Our recommendation would be to increase the per-applicant maximum to $30,000, up from $25,000. If so, the $25,000 cap was established in 2019, and if we adjusted that with Alaska Urban CPI, it would be just under the $30,000. Um, and the past 3 grant cycles, we have had over 50% of the grant applications requesting full funding. Um, but I do want to say, because we don't gather data from the applicants on the percentage that borough funding is covering their operations, um, it is hard for us to say if the number of applicants that are asking for the full amount, if there's a need of the operate, like of the organizations, or if it's just because our grant program is accessible and they could be successful getting that funding. So we, we do have a lack of data in that sense.

The increase to the $30,000, it was taken into consideration whenever we projected out the potential asks for funding for the FY '28, and the 15% was still able to accommodate that, taking into account the $30,000.

The next grant program is the Emergency Services and Public Safety. So this program doesn't have an application limit, and it's just limited to the 9% nonprofit funding cap. There's no match required. It's reimbursable. And the funding supports operations and programs for emergency response providers.

We are not recommending any changes to this current program. There were assembly comments regarding the Tri-Valley Summer Medic Program, which is funded under this grant. On—. The comments were regarding on if the if it should be direct funded or if it should remain under the grant. Um, and if we consider the restructure of the grants, the Emergency Services Grant would fall under the same nonprofit operating bucket as the direct funding.

Um, so they would still be essentially competing for the same money within that bucket. Um, and with the 15%, we did project that there would be capacity for it. So there's not a reason to directly fund it if it's still within the same funding bucket and we would be able to support it. Additionally, the Emergency Service and Public Safety Grant has always been— excuse me, not always, but historically to my knowledge has been the top priority for funding for nonprofits. So there's not a risk of it not being funded.

The next slide is not a, a program, but more so a mechanism that we can use, and it's the direct funding or the non-competitive grant funding.

So again, there's no application, there's no established program for it. The direct funding to nonprofits, it first started in FY25. And since then, there's only been 2 entities that have received direct funding. One entity was the Denali Visitor Center, and the second is Denali Preschool and Learning Center. So the assembly does award this amount through the budget process.

So looking at other municipalities that offer grant programs, there is a mix of both competitive grant programs such as the community nonprofit grant, and direct funding, such as we have done with Tenali Preschool and Learning Center in this budget year.

So then we need to make sure that we separate them out correctly and we apply procurement thresholds appropriately.

So in this case, there are examples at the bottom of what grant funding is, what direct funding would be, and then what contract funding would be.

So we are proposing within the, the restructure and the funding buckets that the direct funding of grants would fall within that 12% proposed nonprofit operating bucket. The recommendation for this is for administration to establish a policy for noncompetitive grant awards to better help us guide and have parameters on what entities are eligible for direct funding, when they would be eligible, when direct funding would be considered over one of the other grant programs, and just general information on when, when we can do the direct funding or recommend it to the Assembly for approval.

So that's a recommendation to have a policy for that.

The next grant is the Public Safety Per Capita Grant, and this is a formula-based grant that provides advanced funding. There's no match required. It's, again, advanced, so it's not reimbursable.

The formula amounts are set by administration, and currently we do review those amounts annually, and we have adjusted them. We don't have a formal documented policy to do this, so the recommendation would be to establish a formal policy to continue the annual review of the per capita formula payments to ensure that we're keeping up with inflation for these costs. As the costs do rise for the volunteer fire departments to offer these services.

The next grant is the Road Maintenance Grant. Um, this grant is also formula-based. Um, there's no match required. However, this one, um, is reimbursable funding, so it requires quarterly reporting. Along with expense receipts to receive the grant funding.

So this grant is just for road maintenance activities. It's not for capital improvements. So we have lumped this grant under the nonprofit operating capital percent.

The recommendation for this program would be to revise the program to to have it near the per capita, which would provide advanced funding to the nonprofits. So upon signing the grant award, we would issue them payment that they could then utilize to— for the expenses throughout the year. We would not require quarterly reporting. Instead, we would require an annual year-end report in which they would tell us how they've spent the money, provide receipts, um, showing the expense, and then any unused funds at the end of the year would be returned to the borough. Um, so moving away from quarterly reporting to annual reporting, um, it removes— it reduces both the administrative burden and the grantee burden of having to do quarterly reporting.

Um, so again, it's formula-based funding, so there's a lower risk and it would mirror the per capita grant, which we already have established and has worked well. The next policy for this grant would be again to establish a policy to review the per mile formula payments on a regular annual basis.

The next grant is the matching grant. This one's capped at $75,000 and has a minimum project of $5,000. It requires a 20% cash match, and it's reimbursable funding, reportedly reporting. So this project supports funding for capital projects and capital improvements. So this grant is lumped under the nonprofit capital funding bucket, which is 2%.

So that is our recommendation to remove the $75,000 limit and just have it be capped at that 2% nonprofit capital limit.

The next grant is the Road Improvement Grant.

This grant currently does not have an application maximum amount. It is limited at the 9% nonprofit funding cap. The grant requires a 20% cash or in-kind match, and it's reimbursable.

And this grant is for road capital improvements or construction, so not maintenance activities, but major repairs, improvements, or construction. Our first recommendation for this grant would be to remove the in-kind match and require a cash match only.

This would align the program with the matching grant in the Emergency Response Apparatus grant. Both those grants are capital grants. Additionally, the in-kind match has not been used in the 2 years that this road improvement grant has been funded. So it just hasn't been utilized. The second recommendation would be to establish a project minimum request of $5,000.

So this would be similar to the matching grant. And it also helps prevent low-cost projects being submitted and awarded in which the, the administrative burden and the grantee burden might be more than the actual cost of the project. So we want to limit the, the burden cost. So by setting a limit of the minimum project We can ensure that we're not funding highly administrative grants.

The next grant is the Emergency Response Apparatus Supplemental Grant. So this grant has a maximum of $200,000 or the balance of the reserve fund. So this grant isn't included in the funding buckets for nonprofits. It is completely separate from those. This grant does require a 50% cash match.

It's reimbursable funded, and it's just eligible for emergency response apparatus, um, for human or, um, the recommendation for this grant program would be to reduce the, uh, per application minimum from $10,000 to $5,000. This would align with the other capital grants, matching grant, and, um, That's a typo. The matching grant and the road improvement. So essentially all matching grants would have a project minimum, or all capital grants would have a project minimum of $5,000. And again, it helps to reduce the administrative burden on the cost.

Additionally, in FY27, there was a grant awarded that was below the $10,000 threshold. So we would be truing up our code with what practice has been.

The final grant program is the Municipal Assistance Program. So this is currently limited at 1% of budgetary funds available at January 1st. There's no match, it's advanced funding. The funding goes to the City of Anderson for providing public services.

So it is in its own separate bucket away from the nonprofits, but still captured within that proposed 15%.

We're not recommending any changes for this grant.

Um, so the final slide tries to give a visual of if all of these, um, proposed changes went into effect, what it would look like. So we have the funding buckets, the programs, um, that are contained within those buckets and any other detailed information that might apply to the programs within those buckets.

So it's a lot of information. Happy to talk about any— go back to any slides, review anything. It's a lot of changes to discuss.

We— again, there's no action to be taken, more for consideration and guidance. If there is one, some, or all proposals that we have the consensus from the Finance Committee that it would be a good idea to move those forward, then we could move them forward as an ordinance to the assembly to consider.

Yeah, there's a lot to process here. There is.

Allison, could you go to, uh, the page 4 of the document that got posted, not your slideshow, or at least just reference that one? Oh, in the report? Yeah, it just— it kind of late, and I think actually you have it on the slide. It's the one where you have options A, B, and C, and I think you I have kind of C highlighted. I just wanted to understand, there are a couple of things that stuck out to me.

I just want to, like, make sure I understand them. Number 1 is Municipal Assistance Program is currently not in the 9% bucket.

But is sort of included in this new 15% proposal. Do I understand that right? Correct. When we talk about nonprofit funding, we usually just reference the 9% and the municipal—. But it's really 11%.

Yeah, yeah, essentially. Okay. Yeah, yeah. The municipal assistance has always been 1% by itself, and normally we talk about it separate from the 9%. Yeah, yeah.

But when we look at the budget as a whole and we look at all of the funding that goes to other entities, nonprofits, municipalities, the 11% is what we're currently at if we kind of consider the matching grant as 1%. So we'd be proposing changing that 11% to 15%.

Yes. And then my second question is on that emergency response apparatus supplemental grant program. That is essentially outside of everything. You're just kind of referencing it and recommending lowering the threshold so that smaller things can get taken care of. Is that correct?

Correct. Yep. That one, the emergency response apparatus is, it has its own reserve fund within the general fund. So it is completely separate. We don't, it's not included in the budget.

Any award for that grant is a separate allocation from that reserve fund. Okay. Well, yeah, Aldo, it's a lot to take in. I'm glad I got to kind of look at it beforehand. I feel like it definitely is moving us in the right direction.

I think shifting some of these things around into the two buckets. Helps align things better. Um, you know, the— I'll obviously need to kind of sit on it. Um, at the end of the day, in a nutshell, it seems that in response to grant needs exceeding our ability to fund, the proposed, um, solution to that is to increase our ability to fund by an extra 4%. Or roughly $300,000 in order to keep up with the demand.

And, you know, since the budget is a little flush, you know, we have the money, you know, I think it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And I keep going, I'm like, I'm sitting there like, yeah, that's fine. Maybe now, but what about when it isn't? And are we just setting ourselves up for this to grow, grow, grow?

But I, I also kind of get grounded in the sense that these are annual decisions proposed by the borough, uh, discussed and approved by the assembly, and it will always remain discretionary in order to achieve whatever the goals are at the time. And I, I tend to And that makes me feel better about seeing increases and things like that. They're not as scary, right? Plus, you know, I mean, because of the forward funding and all, so if it's a percentage of the previous budget, if we were like at a giant shortfall the previous year, well, this would be shrunken as well.

Yeah, but just knowing the, the 15% cap is a like a maximum ceiling on the funding that we could give, but it doesn't inspire us to give all that funding out. It's just setting the total cap.

Totally. One thing, I forget which slide it was that I was, you know, just was, I was just kind of thinking about, it was, you know, having to do with the emergency services, and I'm forgetting which one. But I'm wondering if, um, you know, there's the potential for this coming year to have some sort of additional expense, you know, associated with Cantwell and whether or not we should kind of plan a little bit more ahead for that.

I'll take a go at that. I think this does increase. I mean, that's a great example for why we're kind of We're setting ourselves up for a future where we know that the current model is not working and probably the current level of funding is not working. It needs to be increased by some amount. And so, yeah, like that 3% increase from 9 to 12, that's part of it is those— there's going to be additional dollars available to bump up potentially, you know, to potentially hire a summer medic for Cantwell or a summer medic that's based in Healy but rotates through Cantwell, something like that.

So, right, I think this does, in my opinion, it does, it's like an incremental step forward. It does come at a, at the cost of, or a trade-off is we have less capacity to do other things, administrative things, transfers into our capital accounts, So, you know, so long as we recognize that, it's— I do think it's worthy. I think so much of what we do, or the services that are provided, or we've acknowledged this, are provided by nonprofits. And so this helps, it just helps, helps them do more. The other thing I'll point out is kind of an observation.

It does pair nicely with the 15% budget reserve. And so it's kind of maybe easier for the public and us to understand, you know, 15%. You know, it's that amount is always listed in our budget.

I will say, Jeremy already brought it up, you know, any kind of growth is difficult to come back from. You know, we grow attached to whatever programs get funded. You know, we care for the people who receive that funding. We care for the— and we appreciate the services they provide. So it's always difficult to come back from any kind of growth.

But as David pointed out, you know, and Jeremy too, the way that these nonprofits obtain their grants, you know, it's reviewed every year. So I'm not too worried about it, just so long as we, you know, just always keep it in mind that, you know, it is discretionary. We don't have to fund these, you know, every single year if it gets to the point where it's a struggle to. And I, more than the 4% increase, I'm looking at just, it seems to simplify quite a few things. Which, you know, I like simple is good, especially in government.

And a few of the things that, you know, the changes that we're making have already come up, you know, increasing the emergency response apparatus, you know, that came up just this year, you know, and it's not a big deal, but it's an extra step that we wouldn't have had to take if that was at already the minimum had already been what's being proposed right now. So I, I really like, I really like the simplification effort that's going in here. So thank you for the work that you put into making things simpler.

I had a question, I guess, maybe for you, Mayor Noll, in regards to, or at least I guess kind of one of my comments or takeaways from our last round of grant funding is the application requirements and things like that. When would be the appropriate time to talk through something like that?

As you guys are looking to revamp and make changes? That's a great question. And I think we, we talked about that, I think internally a little bit. And I kind of see it, and maybe my recommendation was not even included here, maybe at the detriment of this conversation, but I just felt like those— that type of feedback, I guess we welcome it anytime. And I also see it as something administration can make at any time.

We could change, request more information as far as total budgets of the nonprofits, if that's what I'm— if that's maybe what you're getting at. Like, or, or requesting different information, or—. Yeah, that's— that, that is what I was getting at. Yeah. Um, so now, now would be a great time.

I mean, I think if, if any of you have thoughts on that, we don't have a slide specifically, but we have talked about that, and now is a great time to bring it up. And okay, well then, I mean, not that we need to hash it out, I guess I just want to maybe throw it out there again. While this is coming up. And I think one thing that could be helpful for everyone involved, as we are— well, maybe this solves the problem by increasing the cap, but I just, I felt the constraint of wanting to support all of the nonprofits but not having a big enough bucket to do so. And then when changes are made, I just would want to feel better about at least my input on those decisions and sort of getting more information on the nonprofits that are requesting the funding as tough decisions maybe have to get made.

And so, yeah, I think my comment was, um, looking at balance sheets as part of the application process, at least for me, uh, I would— that would be helpful. In trying to analyze.

And it's all public information. It's stuff that has to get posted. It's just very difficult to go find, and it's not always up to date. And this seems like a good opportunity and a good mechanism to collect that in the application process. I'll leave it at that.

Those are my two 2 cents on that.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think when, you know, we, if we're collecting it, we just want to be very clear about how, how we collect it because there's such, there's varying levels of complexity for all these nonprofits. And so just making sure we're asking for that information in a way that's, we can compare apples to apples if we get it, you know what I mean? If we're, We want to get it in a uniform way, whatever that number is. Not all of them use QuickBooks, for example.

They don't— most of them don't have paid staff, finance staff. Yeah, but they all have to file the same IRS form every year. Mm-hmm. Yeah, right. So I don't think it would—.

Go ahead. I'll say, as Mayor Noll said, There were a lot of other recommendations that we identified through this process. The ones that we omitted from this report leaned more administrative changes rather than ones that would need Assembly action. It's already a really lengthy report and presentation, so we tried to pare it down a little bit. This is one of the points that we did identify, a potential The starting point for implementation on this particular one would be just requesting what the organization's annual operating budget would be, which would be useful in the— under the community nonprofit grant to be able to see how much of the operating budget that program is funding of the nonprofit.

So we haven't explored farther into requiring detailed documentation such as the balance sheet, but that'll be something that we continue to consider on this.

Yeah, I think this, this restructuring proposal helps set up the program better and for more longevity.

Yeah, it seems, it seems like a good idea to me too, but Yeah, I think I need to spend a little bit more time with it as well. You know, to— but overall, I like the structure.

Maybe a couple other things, if I could just like call it maybe as you're thinking about it moving forward, call your attention to, I think, couple changes. That I think directly help nonprofits is increasing the cap for the nonprofit operating from— well, the not— excuse me, the Community Nonprofit Grant Program within the operating bucket from $25,000 to $30,000. That's, you know, giving them the ability to ask for more, kind of in line with inflation. The other thing I'll just highlight is I see this like 1% matching to 2% and lumping in the matching grant and the road improvement in that document that's attached to the meeting, you can kind of compare, you know, the road improvement is new, but the matching grant, there's a trend of the last 5 years. And so I do think that, that, you know, what would be— what was the amount there?

About $150,000. I think that's a good that's a good number. It's a solid number that would— that covers us for the matching grants that we've seen over the last 5 years and the kind of road improvement we anticipate moving forward.

So again, it's a lot of information to take in all at once. Um, our goal would be for any changes, um, recommendations that the finance committee would like to see move forward would be for us to introduce to the assembly if it requires a code change at the November meeting to help it be effective, hopefully passed in December, and then it would be in place for the FY28 grant cycle.

So again, it's a lot of information. But you'll—. Any changes you'll see as the Assembly as a whole. So, right. I mean, are you planning to give this presentation as well to the meeting next week, or?

I was not planning on it, no. Yeah, okay.

But I think if there's no concerns, I think we'll put put together an ordinance that, that, you know, kind of covers the changes. And, um, maybe we could plan with the introduction of that a little bit of a presentation to kind of highlight what— for those members who haven't seen this, and it'll be a little more familiar for at least the three of you. And you would expect that to be in the November assembly meeting, correct? Yeah, not enough time to get it in, not for next week.

Okay, that's—. Should it be omitted from the Finance Committee report for the group next month or next week or whenever that one is, or does it matter? I think that's a good one. I mean, yeah, that's a good— I guess typically a member of the body has provided an update, right? I think.

And so, yeah, I think if one of you would speak to this and just kind of maybe give a high level. It certainly could be attached to the meeting if you wanted and wanted to speak to it. It is just a lot. No, no, no. Yeah, no, I agree with you guys.

I'm not in a rush to do that. I just wouldn't— I think it would be more impactful coming from you guys. And if that— if not including it in the notes, or at least in the report, gives opportunity for you. I just didn't want to take that away, is all. That's why I brought it up.

I think I'm indifferent to it. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I don't think— I mean, I think that, you know, any reporting on it that we do to these, it would just be like such a high-level kind of little summary that it would almost be Yeah, you know, it's— we're not going to be able to explain very much of what we discussed or whatever.

So if we have more comments or thoughts on this, as we go over these, this, we can just tell you guys. Right? Is that the story?

Yeah, any communication would be fine on it. Okay. Okay. Yeah, because I'd like to look it over more and digest it a little bit more.

It seems good, though.

You know, we get a lot of bang for a buck out of these grants and a lot of good work gets done and it sort of empowers the community to do the work and it's good, I think, overall.

All right, so if anyone— does anybody have any more comments on that or should we move on to The next item.

Everybody good? All right, let's move on to our, uh, forward funding discussion.

Okay, there is nothing attached to the meeting packet online. Um, I also don't have any presentation. Um, I'll share my screen, um, here in just a minute, but to give you, um, some overview of, um, what we'll be looking at. So the BRRR was forward funded. There is a formula, a calculation that's used currently for determining what that forward funding maximum is for the budget.

That calculation was established in FY '15, I believe. So it's been established for quite some time. However, From FY15 to current, there have been various changes in accounting practices, how the financial statement is presented, and even changes in borough budgeting practices. So that calculation for forward funding done in FY15 hasn't accounted for those changes as time has passed. So the goal of this is to look at a proposed revision of the formula to see if it better captures those changes that have happened and kind of get consensus of the Finance Committee on if we want to move forward with the proposed formula in the FY28 budget.

I don't have any history on the FY15 formula if it was ever formally adopted by the Finance Committee or the Assembly. So I'm not, I don't think we need action on this to adopt the formula, but just kind of providing information and getting consensus.

It's, I apologize if I get too deep in the conversation with it. It's kind of a lot to absorb and I just, you know, we just went over grants as well. So I'll do my best to keep it simple.

Let me go ahead and share my screen. So before you start, yes. So you're saying that the, that this formula is not in code anywhere? It's just something that we've come up with? Correct, to my understanding, yeah.

Huh. Yeah, there's specific language in code and it's actually on, I have our budget ordinance, Ordinance 26-08 in front of me. And so for those, you know, It's always highlighted on our budget ordinance, this language, some of, at least some of the language, but how that, that language is turned, you know, is executed in practice is a backend administrative formula that has shifted over time. Right. Hmm.

Thank you.

Okay. Can Can you see the screen and can you read it well enough, or should I zoom in?

Good. Okay. So this first box is the snippet from code which describes our forward funding requirements. So proposed expenditures cannot exceed total available reserves and revenues collected but not expended or allocated. So that, that's what we have to go by when we talk about forward funding and how you interpret it and make it into a calculation to get a number.

That is what was done in FY15 and what we are looking at revising. So I have notes in front of me. Bear with me as I go through it. So this first box right here is the current formula. So this number right here is the number that was used in the FY27 budget.

So we're using these as examples for FY27. So the current formula has FY25 unassigned fund balance right here. Oops.

And this unassigned fund balance comes from the FY25 balance sheet. And it pulls this unassigned fund balance right here.

That's within our audited financial statements. Within the audited financial statements. So this is the amount of money at the end of FY25 that we have available to use. It hasn't been dedicated or assigned or spent anywhere, so we have this money to use. So we start with that.

And the old form, the old method added FY25 revenues to bring it to the total amount of funds available to use. The old method then takes the FY26 budgeted expenditures, which is accounted for in the FY25 balance sheet right here. So it's already been removed from the fund balance. So the unassigned fund balance already captures the next year's budget.

The old method takes that amount, takes the actual expenditures that we've incurred to date, and it adds it back in. So the old formula doesn't account for funds that have been allocated from the general fund. So it doesn't say that it doesn't show that we've, we have this money and we've said we were going to spend this portion somewhere else. So it runs the risk of potentially double budgeting a single dollar.

So when we go to the new proposed formula, again, we start with the unassigned fund balance, which is from the audited financial statement.

And then we add FY26 revenues that we've earned to date. So if we look at this for FY27 and the date it was originally prepared, this would only be 2 quarters of tax revenues. So we're taking our— the amount that we had at the end of FY25 that we have at the beginning of FY26 that we can spend. We're adding in the revenues from FY26 because again, FY26 expenditures have been funded by FY25 revenues. So any revenues that we would earn in FY26, they haven't been spent yet.

So we can use those for budgeting.

So those two bring us to the total amount of funds that we have available. And then we need to remove any funds that we have allocated. So of this amount, if we've said we're going to spend a portion, we need to take that portion out. So anything that we encumbered at the end of FY25, there was nothing in this, in this example. And then we look at the original FY26 budget.

If we had a budget amendment that changed the original budget allocation, that would be accounted for right here. So if we decreased the FY26 budgeted expenditures, we would have more funds available to use for budgeting. But if we increased our original budget allocation, we would have less funds to budget with. And then we need to remove any funds that have been allocated through a separate ordinance from the general fund. So if it were a grant match requirement or a specific project, we've said we're going to spend that general fund money somewhere else.

So we can't use it for budgeting anymore.

So that brings us to our total general fund forward funding number for the next year. So there's a difference between the 2 amounts.

The previous formula had it about $13 million. The new formula would have it at about $9.6 million. And then our actual FY27 adopted expenditures were $8.9 million.

So this is a lot again to absorb and digest and understand. It is an administrative calculation formula, but being fully transparent and looking for feedback from the Finance Committee to fully understand how we get to this number.

Can you zoom out just a little so we can see the top and the bottom in one? Yeah, thanks. Uh, almost. Thanks.

So what's the goal for doing this? I mean, maybe I'm looking at it wrong, but it looks like it sort of lowers your available money to budget with by $4 million.

It—. The goal of this is to better align our calculation with current practices and accounting standards, but also understanding the previous method right here where it took FY26 budgeted expenditures, and then it removed the actual expenditures.

And getting to this number, it didn't account for that portion of the FY26 budget that was allocated but not yet spent. So it's saying you could use those same monies to budget with in FY27, but we've already said we're going to use those in FY26. Right, right. And that's where the $4 million is, correct? Yeah.

So it's better showing the reserves and revenues that have been said that they were going to be used somewhere else, whether it's through the budget allocation ordinance, a separate allocation ordinance. Um, the proposed formula accounts for those monies that we've said we're going to use. So they're no longer available for budgeting for use.

And in this exercise or example, is the March 24th date arbitrary, chosen for a certain reason, or the way it works? This is the actual— this, the current version is the actual formula that was used for the FY27 budget. So this is how we we got to that number. And then I tried to plug in the same numbers here for a better comparison. This one is a placeholder number just to show the impact that it would have on reducing the available reserves and revenues.

But essentially, it's a comparison of FY27 at the time the budget was introduced for passage.

Which is in— okay, I got you. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. And to your question, Mr. Stanfield, you know, I was looking at our budget ordinance, so it was introduced at the April meeting, and so it was, you know, it was— that was the date, March 24th, was when kind of the budget book was finalized. And so that's the point in time.

I mean, essentially you're using this formula when we come up with the actual budget? Like, we're, you know, like our budget was, wasn't the $13,000, I mean, $13,007,000, you know, it was, you're essentially using that same formula because you knew that this was in the background. Yeah, so although it's not required, when we prepare the budget, we look at it at both the forward funding maximum amount. But then we also consider it as a balanced budget. So while we're not— because we are forward funded, we don't follow the balanced budget method.

It's just a way for us to kind of set parameters and identify any potential red flags in the amount because the forward funding number has been higher than balanced budget number. It just, it helps guide us, um, when we compare both the forward funded and the balanced budget, right? Uh, but the—. But I mean, the forward are in line with a balanced budget, right? Because the forward funded, the previous formula was just out of whack by that amount every year, or some amount.

Yeah, it just didn't account fully for, um expenses that had been allocated.

Yeah, I mean, we would have never made a budget that would make full use of our forward funding at this $13.7 million amount, right? If we did budget up to that amount, it would have future budget implications because it would have reduced the unassigned fund balance, which is used in both calculations, right? Yeah, right.

Oh yeah, I think that makes sense more. It's more accurate to how you operate. Yeah, I agree.

And you know, it essentially is not changing anything in the amount of money that we're spending or budgeting, or really, it's just making it more accurate.

Correct. Yeah. In the past 3 years, I did go back and calculate the new proposed formula on all of them. And for the past 3 years, I didn't go further back than that. But, we never exceeded the new proposed forward funding number either.

So we've— had we adopted the proposed formula 3 years ago, we would have been compliant each year. Right. And, and, you know, that makes sense because, you know, you would— yeah, okay, I unders— sort of understand. I couldn't take a test. I couldn't pass a test, but I think at the moment I understand.

Okay, it's a lot of information and it did get very detailed, but just being aware of what, what goes like the inputs into the forward funding calculation, and if there were any, you know, kind of glaring concerns from the Finance Committee, like any reason not to move forward with using that in FY28 budget. That's kind of what I'm— what we're looking for in this, right? No, I don't see that. It, to my mind, it doesn't, you know, it's— I think it'd be fine to use it and go forward. And especially if you think that it more accurately reflects the, you know, the wording in the code.

You know, I mean, so we're actually— yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Well, and you know, the safety, the added safety of making it more difficult to, you know, count the same dollar twice, that's, that's good too. I, I like it. I think it's smart.

All right, Jeremy, any last Thoughts on that? No, I'm good, thanks. Okay, let's, uh, move on to, uh, committee comments. Um, I'll start, and, uh, thank you for all the hard work in doing all this, and, um, it's very helpful. That's it.

Uh, I'll go next then. Um, yeah, a lot to take in, uh, but, you know, very important to get out there and, and discuss. And yeah, it's— I know there's no— there's still a lot of kind of unanswered things there, but I appreciate being included, um, and, you know, to be partner with some of this stuff. And I found— I feel like there's— we just did like 2 meetings worth in a couple hours. Like, it was—.

I feel like we dominated. So thanks to everyone who put that together.

Um, Trina, Allison, I know Nicole helped and all of that, um, and Amber and Mr. or Mayor Null. I appreciate it.

Mr. Warner. I just had a moose run in front of me, so that was fun. I think, yeah, kind of echo what both of you said. You know, there's a lot of work that went into all of the presentations today. Thank you for that.

And it is nice to get a little glimpse behind the curtain sometimes. So thanks for including us. You know, with regard to the land use, you know, that, man, that is a can of worms. Thank you for tackling it. I do hope we can find a way to move forward because that's what we've been asked to do.

But yikes, that's a can of worms there. And everything else is looking good though.

Thanks for all your hard work, and I hope everybody Enjoy the rest of their evening.

Okay, thank you. I think that the next item is the, uh, next committee meeting date. I see the suggested April 7th. That's, uh, the whole winter away, uh, but seems fine. Anybody have any objections to that?

Works for me.

Okay, so we'll say that's all right, and we'll get to, uh, anybody volunteering to make a report to the assembly on our, uh, our meeting? Mr. Samfield?

I will do that, Mr. Alexander. Thanks for the nomination and vote of confidence and support.

Thank you for volunteering.

All right, um, I think that that concludes our meeting. All right, anything else that we want to go through? No? I'd like to— I'd take a motion to adjourn the meeting.

I'll move to adjourn the meeting.

Here we go. And Mr. Warner, I'm sure, seconded it. Meeting's adjourned. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys.

Have a great night. All right, thank you. Good night.