Worksession re General Government Cont’d, Enterprise & Utilities Operating & Capital Budgets-Part 1

Now we are unmuted. Weird.

Should be good. Okay. All right, I'm going to call this work session to order. Today is Friday, October 24th. We are noticed from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

We know it's a long day, so we'll see, um, How fast we can move here. So we'll do—. And this is the second work session on the FY26 proposed budget. So we'll cover portions of the general government operating budget, we'll cover the capital budget, and then we will also be hearing about utilities enterprises and Anchorage Community Development Authority. So, and we— I also will note we are upstairs in the mayor's conference room, so it looks a little different, and we are all just getting settled in.

Took a little bit to get there, but we will continue to move forward. So we'll start with member introductions. So let's start in the room and then we'll go to Teams. So go ahead. Chair Kirkpatrick.

Jack Johnson. Cameron Perez-Rodilla. Anna Brawley. And then on Teams, or actually on the phone, sorry, we have Member Voland.

I'm here. Member Martinez. Present. Thank you. Member Baldwandé?

Present. Thank you. Member Silvers?

Uh, I'm—. Okay. Yeah, you're here. Anybody I missed on the phone? I'm here.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Any members on the other— members on the phone that I missed?

Okay. Yeah. And we'll recognize folks as they join. We also know Mr. Constant is traveling and Mr. McCormick I believe has work, so we will proceed.

And, oh, and I believe Mr. Myers is also traveling, so we will proceed. We have members of the administration, so I'll ask you guys just to introduce yourselves as you speak, and then we will also have Assembly Council shortly, as well as members of the public. So I will just set very brief expectations as far as timing. We are continuing the briefing that we started 2 weeks ago on Friday, October 10th. We will start with going through, and we have a number of department directors in the back, so we will start with running through those.

And then I know Ms. Sprouse will note some member— or some directors are not present today because they're not in the office, but so we won't necessarily have them in the room, but we can follow up as needed. And then I'll note also we're intending to go through the alcohol tax and the ACE Fund or marijuana tax budgets before lunch, but if we are moving a little bit later, then we'll take lunch before that because we know those are going to be topics of interest for sure. And then definitely after lunch, we'll go through utilities, enterprises, and then we'll also spend some time on the Capital Budget. So I'll try to keep an eye on timing for members. Please flag me down in the room or text me if you would like to be in the queue, and we will proceed.

So go ahead, Ms. Brouse. Thank you, Chair Brawley. Ona Brouse, Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Thanks to everybody for being here today to follow on what Chair Brawley said. This is the continuation of our 2026 proposed budget work session, and we'll be working through more general government departments today and As we do that, our points of reference in the room for information are: we have our budget books, we have our general government capital budget books, our municipal and enterprise and utility budget books, and the capital listing.

We also have for later in the day— oh, we have Vanna over here showing us what these things are— the 120-day memo, which we can use as a point of reference when we get into the capital budget discussion, and the AM support for the general government budget, which shows all the changes as you may need to look at them on a single page as opposed to 1,000 pages. And the actual presentation slide deck there, that's over, I think, 90 pages long with all the department detail in it. As we go through, we'll bring the directors up, and any questions on their budgets we can discuss. For the directors who are not present here today, I have detail from some of them for explanation on anything that may be interesting or curious about their budget, but we can also take questions and schedule follow-up time for them, either at the work session on November 7th or in a different conversation or written. So however that needs to be achieved, let us know.

And because we are here for a considerable amount of time today, if there's information that is asked for at the beginning of the meeting that we're able to get throughout the day, we can provide that towards the end. Um, are there any questions before we invite our first department? I feel, yes, we should do a drum roll for the library. Come on, library. Yeah, they're going to tell us all good stuff.

Which slide we're on? Yes. Skipping through the slides in order to stay on the non-English.

Oh, it'll go on to the news is what it'll do. And then while we're doing that as well, I'll just note, um, our Deputy Clerk Jasmine Acres emailed it out to members, so please look for it there or on the website. So we will start with the library and their operating budget changes. If you look at the summary page up on the screen, but also on slide 7 in your behemoth packet, this is the library summary page that shows us between '24 and '26 proposed You'll see that there's a small increase between '25 and '26, and there is one position count change rolled up at the bottom. When we get to the next page, which is the reconciliation information, you'll see that the library started the 2025 revised budget with $10 million, almost even, and then we did some benefit adjustments and position moves and some fleet transitions, as well as the library had Library has determined a slightly new operating proposal for the 2026 year that involves some position transitions, and Director Harrison can explain that for us.

But for the most part, the library rolls all of that up into $10.3 million for their total operating changes. And Marjorie's here for questions. Any questions from members? Mr. Johnson. What's the new position?

Oh, so we're, um, it would be a youth services position, associate librarian position. So we actually are looking at when we moved the teen collection, the second floor, which is adjacent to the youth collection, and the Youth Department, that this position would now be able to serve that area as well as the floor surrounding it. So it actually, it helps us in our goals of increasing the capacity for safety and security as well as improving customer service. And I will say that the administration, you know, put the request out to directors in their budget proposals to contemplate a flat budget, so absorbing any new costs or changing their operating costs to meet a flat budget. And the library was, was very creative in coming up with the idea to make this transition, but in order to accommodate the finance gap or the funding gap, to increase their room rental revenue, you know.

So they're going to be more proactive about what that looks like in educating and communicating to the community that they can rent these spaces and use them for public events. And hopefully we'll get more revenue, but also more positive activity and community engagement through that process. And I'll just briefly note before we move on, we are not streaming on YouTube right now. We are recording and then we are on Teams. And so obviously anybody here is already aware of that, but if you get communication from anybody else, direct them to log into Teams, it's in the public notice, or they can call in on the phone.

So next we have—. Oh, do you have another question, Mr. Bell? I guess just kind of follow up. So I'm glad you guys are looking for opportunities for 81 Avenue. Expectation that that increased revenue will offset the increase in the budget for library for '26?

Yes, it is. Yes. And actually, we have seen a steady increase in revenue. So we're, we're pretty optimistic that we'll be able to meet that. So, I mean, what's '25?

What's the ballpark revenue? What's your target for '26, I guess, in terms of revenue generation? So we're looking at increasing around $45,000. In revenue, and our target this year was $100,000. So, thank you.

Yeah, that was my question. Thank you for that answer. What is your current vacancy rate? Do you have positions available now, or are you fully staffed? So we have, I believe, 4 open positions right now, and 3 of them are in the process of actually being filled.

So they, um, positions have been offered, and we're just waiting for start dates. Okay, great. And just one other question. Um, are there, are there organizational, departmental, structural changes that are not reflected in the budget you think that we should be aware of? Oh, um,.

Not— I'm trying to think, not necessarily. I mean, the additional position would be in youth services, and then we're also looking at an increase in security. But we have a strategic plan and we're moving forward in that direction. So we haven't made any— we'll definitely this year be looking at organizational structure, but we haven't made any definitive decisions for that. Great.

Thanks. I don't see any questions online, and I guess, Mr. Green, if anybody raises their hand on Teams, just let me know. Yeah, I'm watching. I have Teams up here too for anything. Okay, perfect.

And I will— we'll add the capital portion. So the library has a small capital inclusion in the bond request this year for the 2nd floor youth area renovation, and they're using— I think it's private funding for the 3rd floor. Is that right? Yes. That would be right.

Other questions from members? I'm not seeing any, so I think we can move on. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much.

Appreciate it. Oh, and look, Mr. Stafford walked in just in time for public transportation.

Okay, so now we have Director Rudolph, and we'll go through transit. Detail.

On slide 10, our public transportation operating. So we'll have both the summary and also transit has a capital request included in the bond this year. So the divisions of— I'll let Bart take this because there's specific good information that's included in here. But the divisions under public transportation, you'll see that the public safety division is proposed in the 2026 budget specifically, and that has to do with aligning new positions and operating changes that BART has been making over the last year or so. And the roll-up at the bottom shows an additional 4 staff people with an overall impact about— about $1 million in changes.

So we start 2025 revised at $32.9 million and remove the Fairview shuttle amendment that was put in at first quarter, some bond obligation debt, and then the $1 million changes between the positions, the horticulture services as a direct service as opposed to IGCs, which means they don't pay for landscaping anymore, or they pay for landscaping giving now as opposed to coming through the muni. And other than that, there are no proposed budget changes within their operating column, and their capital request includes the bond dollar amounts that go along with the federal funding shown here on these capital pages. But Bart can give much more specifics in detail.

And just a reminder, as you start, please just introduce yourself for the record. Thank you. First, or share whatever you want to share, and then we can ask. I don't have anything.

Director Rudolph, you don't want to tell us all about the amazing, fantastic things that are happening? Um, okay, questions. So, Mr. Gerker, and then—. Yes, really quickly, how, uh, how do you utilize this Compare View? Shuttle?

Uh, Barbara Rudolph, Public Transit Director. Um, it was— there was about 20 to 30 people per weekend on it. Um, I don't know off the top of my head how many weekends it ran. So would you say that's utilized? Um, yeah, for providing the service that it did, where these 20 to 30 people had literally no other option, I would assume, um, for the price.

Uh, But yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I'm curious about— there's been discussion about the sort of the revenue that comes directly from paying for the bus, right? So I'm curious about that in here. Is it broken out so we have a sense of like, what is the revenue each year from just that? Yeah, I believe it is broken out in here.

It's certainly broken out in the revenue pages of the entire budget book. I need to look specifically at transit, but outside of the fare revenue, we also get marketing expenses, and those are in here. Revenue, sorry. Oh, I see. Good.

Um, yeah, so on BT-13 is our fare sales, um, So transit bus pass sales and fare box receipts. Fare box is when you pay at the bus and then the pass is when you buy something in advance. Yes.

And then, um, okay, so, and then do you have data that I don't know if you have a sense of who these people are. I mean, do you have a sense of like the difference between, um, I don't know, at this point we have, uh, so your, uh, child under— is it under 18? 18 And under. 18 And under is, is free, is that right? Yep.

Okay. And then we don't have anything if you're elderly at this point, do we? Uh, they ride free on Wednesdays and they have a half fare cost, so they pay $1 instead of $2. Okay, okay. And then, and then, do we have data on, we have data on like who's riding the bus and in terms of who's buying passes and who's riding the bus?

Are we able to collect anything on that so we have a sense of generally the, the ages and the, and the, and the sort of the nature of folks? On a day-to-day basis, no, unless they're using the mobile ticketing app. But we did just complete last year, um, an onboard survey, which is a statistically valid survey where we have people get on the bus and interview a certain percentage of riders to get that information. We can kind of glean information from that. So, We have recent data for that.

Okay, and then the past sales, you would have data on, for instance, an organization that's buying those and then giving them out? Right. So you'd have a sense of that. So we would know, for instance, if you're— if I'm a service organization and I'm giving them out to folks that I serve, you'd be able to collect that? Oh, yes.

What I'm trying to get a sense of— there's two things that I've been tracking. One is that I know there's a conversation about what would be the impact if we made this particular group of people free, right? Elderly people, that sort of thing, and trying to get a sense of what the impact of that would be. And then just the conversation about people using bus passes as currency and the challenge around that. And so I'm just wondering if those are conversations you're having with your— in your own department.

And generally, what— this isn't the time to have a full discussion, but what do you think the impact would be to the budget if we were to, for instance, make rides free for those over the age of, say, 65? Yes, I sent this email out this morning. So, it would be about $700,000 a year loss in fare revenues to make seniors free. And there'd be about a $200,000 cost savings on the Anchor Rides side. So we would anticipate instead of Anchor Rides, we charge $3.50 a ride to just one way.

So if PeopleMover were free, we would anticipate that would incentivize some of the people from Anchor Rides to ride the bus. Okay. Because Anchor Rides is very expensive per trip. And do you anticipate that being impacted, the passes being sold as well? Does that include that?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I would love at some point just to get the numbers of the number of organizations buying passes, like, in bulk, and maybe some information around that. We can do that later. Thanks.

And we have Ms. Chau.

Actually, Mr. Perez-Rodilla asked the questions that I was interested in, so I'm good. Thank you. Mr. Johnson. Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't bring my big binder, but, um, we have owners, we have owners if you need them. I, I, I, hopefully this isn't an easy question.

I'm looking at the, uh, the revenues between 2024 and 2025, and there's a drop of around $700,000, like 20-something percent. What, what accounts for that fairly sizable decrease in revenues coming in?

Uh, most likely it is a shift of people from buying single ride tickets to, like, monthly passes or yearly passes. We had an increase of those, so those are heavily discounted. And we also increased our U-Pass program to allow Providence Hospital employees to also ride free, so they pay a smaller amount too. So between those two, because ridership actually went up Um, but yeah, the fair revenue went down a little bit, and I think one of the other differences there—. You're looking at PT 13, or, or the whichever page.

Yeah, and the part of the difference is that one is actuals and the other is still just the budgeted number that was included for revenue. Okay.

Thank you. Yeah, okay. Uh, Mr. Prince, ready to go? Yeah, uh, just a couple of, um, vacancy rate.

Number of positions vacant at this point, where are you at with that? At the end of last quarter, we were at 17 positions, but we have since hired 10 of those. So we are now fully staffed on bus operators. They're going through the process, so they're not actually here yet, but hopefully they will be. And so we've got about 7 admin maintenance staff positions open.

Great, great. And then for this coming fiscal year, change— just general changes in routes, do you anticipate increasing routes, reducing routes? What is the general sense for that? No, trying to maintain routes. On Monday, we're changing the Route 11 to supplement what the Fairview shuttle was doing.

That's the only change that we propose to make this year.

Um, thanks.

I don't see anyone online right now. I guess my one question is more operations, but I know, and that's good to hear that you've got more operators now. I know there's been some, um, missed routes, or basically, you know, a bus can't run because you don't have the staff. How frequent was that in the last maybe 30 to 90 days? And is that, is that getting resolved with these new hires?

Yes, every day it's getting better. We're not like the police academy where we bring everybody in and then train them. So we get like 1 operator this week, 2 operators the next week. And so they're being rolled out on that effort as well. So I would say the last month we missed maybe like 5 or 6 trips a day.

Hundreds. Just one more. Yeah, I'm just looking through just some of the variances. You may have already talked through some of this, but debt service, can you tell me more about that, the reduction in debt service? Um, which page are you referring to?

Page 6, the debt service reduction of 17%.

Um, did you, did you pay off anything in particular? I am not sure. Okay, you can look into that. This seems like a larger than normal variance. Yeah, we will write that as a question to answer.

And then just, just generally speaking, I think you spoke this already, but just the, the reduction in PTB administration, the 10, 10, 10% drop. Is that— now you're, you're hiring more staff, but if you're, you're seeing a 10% drop in administration, which, which page are you looking at? PT6. Go to the operating slide. It's slide 10.

That's what I'm looking at. I mean, I see a 6% increase in salaries and benefits, but I see a 10% reduction in administration. Oh, Bart, did you move humans around? Yeah, we moved them around and some now are grant-funded that were not. Oh, okay.

It was moving those humans around. That's right, right. Well, and you'll— right, the divisions as they're aligned, if public safety, if the transit safety didn't used to include people, but they came from the admin, then you're going to see that shift happen there. So, so it's sort of like how much changed in the whole thing and then did, where did they shift within the, within the categories? At least I think that's right.

Yeah. And what, what general percentage of your budget is grant funded? Do you, is it, is it a fair amount or is it a small question? Um, that is a good question. Um, I would have to get those exact numbers.

We get about probably $10 million in grant funding each year. It's, it's significantly grant-funded in terms of operating compared to our other departments. It is, it is. And so, you know, we— you saw the farebox receipts and the bus passes, and that's about $3 million plus total. And so I think there's this perception that if we could replace $3 million in cash that we would have free buses.

And the reality is that that could potentially make ridership free, but it does not make operations free at all. So there's, you know, a $33, $34 million budget in front of us. The $3 million revenue swap doesn't make it free, it just offsets the costs associated with those two revenue streams. And are these, are these competitive annual, multi-year— I mean, generally, are these things you, you can depend on, or are these things that you're, you're flexible Um, well, depend on is a tough word with the state of the federal government right now, but, um, some of them are—. We are direct recipient.

We get them every year, probably between $7 million if we're a direct recipient. So as long as that program continues, we should— and then the rest are discretionary grants or grant funding that we get through AMATS. Thanks. Okay, any other questions for our members? Okay, I will just briefly state, since no one else did, it sounds like PeopleMover is moving people in the budget right there.

Okay, so I think we're done with public transit. So let's move on to community development. And I know there's community development and then a few other related departments. I don't know if we want to take them all up at once. I think it's fine.

I think we can have community. I mean, if you guys all want to come up and then we can start with Lance and then go through who's— Right after Lance, Greg Dub Services, and then Mayalisa, or, you know, I think it's— Yeah, we can crowd everybody around here and have a family picture. I know. Okay, so we're on slide 13 now. So go ahead, Mr. Wilbur.

Former Budget Director Wilbur, you want to do your own slide? I'll let you handle it. Um, community development. So, um, there is some transition between community development and public works and the roll-up in the org chart that we discussed at the last meeting. And now instead of, uh, planning development and public works, we have community development and public works.

And community development now includes Development Services, Planning, Real Estate, GDIC, anything else? That's it. So this is a slight adjustment from the last budget, but the Community Development Administration budget starts at, let's see, $3.5 million in the revised, and then we make some tiny adjustments for salary and benefits and fleets, and we make one Girdwood Board of Supervisors increase and land at 3.5.

No personnel changes reflected, and operationally, I think that Lance can answer any questions related to Community Development and GDIC, who is included in there.

Just a reconciliation of these two documents that— so change from what's in the, in the big book. The book reflects this current proposal. It changed from the 2025 big book, if that makes sense. If you look at the org chart at the beginning, um, you'll see the transition from the sort of single stack of Planning, Development, and Public Works into Community Development and Public Works. I'm just thinking on this, like, literally the Community Development Department sub-submarine in this one is not the same as the slide.

Oh, it's not? Those two documents are not the same. This, this is a— this is showing that The, uh, okay, Lance, Lance can explain it. Is that the administration, the book print? Yeah, so I think, um, through the chair, uh, members, one of the changes that was made, I believe that your assessment is correct, the budget book is correct, the slide is not.

And here's the change. The change is, is that under Community Development right now, Public Works Administration reports to me as a Community Development Director, which is basically finance team. So it's Courtney Peterson and all of the admin team that supports Public Works. That team will not be reporting to Community Development. It will stay with Public Works.

So the position count that you have in there, the difference between the two is, um, uh, public administration, the folks that help the finances of Public Works, that stay with Public Works. Got it. So yeah, so the, so the 8 staff Is the correct one. Okay, got it. Yeah, perfect.

That slide. Um, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Okay. Um, and so, uh, still trying to try to reconcile this so that, um, can you just go over one more time what's under community development?

Yeah, thank you, through the chair. So, um, under the proposed '26 budget currently, and that will be proposed under community development, will be the real estate department. Okay, will be the Planning Department, Development Services Department, and the geographical data information system. So our GIS team, um, will report to— will remain under me. Um, the things that will not be reporting to this position anymore will be the Public Works Department and all of those departments that report to Public Works.

They will not through.

Roll through my chain of command anymore, but roll through Mr. Kohayes. We will both continue to report to the municipal manager. And so, um, that's the basic difference. The, the, the curator for 1% of art, does that still fall onto you, or— I believe that one's going to stay inside Public Works Administration. Public Works?

Yep. Great.

Um, and then just standard question of like vacancy? Are you all, are you all filled? Or in the community development team, uh, we have 2 vacancies. In our, um, finance and admin team, we're actively filling those. I think we— one of them closes, one of them we're reposting.

We had an applicant that got a better offer in another department, so looking good for them, but we're working through that. But yeah, we're doing pretty good shape. And as you work with the departments, I think collectively inside the building, we're doing very well. Yeah.

Okay, I'll note we were joined by Mr. Constant online, and then I have a queue now. So I have myself, Mr. Constant, and Ms. Baldwin-Day. So my question is really, it sounds like the reorganization that's proposed— I mean, we've been briefed on that, we understand the efficiency there.

I think other than kind of the management benefits of that, I'm wondering kind of, Mr. Wilbur, how you see or how you are utilizing the community development role in addition to kind of the operational pieces that these departments are doing. You know, we know we have a lot of housing policy, just development policy in general. So I'm wondering kind of how you've been engaging with that. Does this change any of that? And just generally where you've been into this policy picture?

I mean, I think I have been engaged in it since it's been proposed. You know, That's the beauty that we have right now, and I think the beauty that we're going to be able to continue is land use and transportation are always— they're very much connected. And so having a land use and a housing component allows— and then a transportation piece— they will never be disconnected because when they are, neither one of them will be successful. I think as long as that cooperation will continue, whether they're under one roof or separated, the fact that we both report to the same senior manager it's going to continue. In either case, it's not always about transportation and it's not always about housing.

The things that make them work are their legal issues, their innovative issues, their basically administrative issues. Those are the things that make each one of those work, and both of those need to happen in order for them to work together. So, on the organizational side, I think it's— I mean, I think there's some benefits to it. There's benefits the other way, but I think it, you know, the administration is obviously focused on housing. And, you know, my ability to spend time focusing on real estate planning and development services.

I mean, I think that's going to be a benefit for me. The team that we have in the building is working very well together. And I mean, I'm really proud of who we've got, the leaders that we got. So I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be really good. The structure that we have, the structure that's being proposed, both of them I think will work.

There's— it depends on how the leadership wants to make them work. Kent and I, as we're in those roles, or whoever's in these roles, as long as that structure maintains, that vision maintains, it's going to work. Thank you. Mr. Constant, go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. My question is probably quite similar, and I, I think I'm going to take some real convincing to get behind this because I cannot see how We're going to further the work of breaking down the silos between transportation planning policy and housing and housing development policy. I can say that the work of the department for the last 10 years has really failed to meet the mark in the context of grappling with the highways that, that run through the Fairview neighborhood. And so, um, I think between now and when this final action comes before us, the administration is going to really have to work to convince us that we are not creating another silo, which will set back the work of fixing the disconnection between our neighbors in Fairview who can die on their highway right next to their homes and are breathing in the, the air that the highway provides for them. And so I'm really hopeful that the administration takes some time to thoughtfully craft a presentation to the assembly on how they are going to ensure that this is not a step backwards towards the best policies 1990 had to offer, but instead starts moving us towards the 21st century, which we still haven't achieved.

Thank you.

Okay, um, the response from the administration, um, uh, next, Ms. Baldwin-Day.

Yeah, thank you. I think I'm curious, um, about, uh, just the future of, of this particular department as it pertains to the mayor's goal of 10,000 homes in 10 years, um, and what, you know, what, Mr. Wilbur, you believe is going to be necessary in terms of staff capacity in order to really meet that goal. I think we've heard pretty consistently that there are some internal challenges with buildings getting— with buildings getting built, right? And I'm I'm personally concerned that we may run into a situation where the volume of work outstrips the personnel that we have to do the work that's needed. So I'm curious what you're thinking about in terms of future staffing needs, future capacity, and how we can begin to build towards that as we are ramping up development goals.

Through the Chair, Ms. Baldwin-Day, that's an excellent question. I'm going to— I'll start with I guess the first one first, you know, what is, what do I see, how do we make the goals in the department? I think the goals in the department are going to be based on two things. One, the activity in the community that's basically in play or that can be generated based on policy changes and financial resources. And then the other one is the realization of managing expectations of what we can do with the staff that we have and the budgets, not this one and in the future, our ability to do those things.

There may be a reality where the desire to provide a certain level of service is not going to be met based on the certain amount of resources that we have, but the goal will be to prioritize those needs and deliver the best that we can with what we have. I don't think there's going to be a department that would say, you know, that wouldn't be challenged in the future about what they want to do in performing their mission, whether it's housing or transportation or the library, with the resources that are— that we have right now. And I think Director Brouse, in her first presentation, and has let the directors know the, you know, potential fiscal challenges that we're going to face in the future. So it would be difficult for me to, you know, commit to basically say how many people would I need, because the people are going to depend on the resources and the activity. So I don't know if that's answering your question, but that's how I see it.

I, and I do believe that, you know, Mr. Soule and Ms. Babb and Ms. Briggs and the other departments in there, they are going to be facing those same, those same challenges. The beauty that we have in the building right now is that we're all in the same building, and when we are in a challenge, one department to another, they either can support each other share resources if it's eligible and we can pull it off. So that's where I see the benefit being right now. What I have the ability to do as a community development director is, I mean, so I think that's where I'm going to be able to benefit from it, and they are too, and the community.

Yeah, so I think I, I would like to, I would like to actually understand quantitatively, you know, based on the volume of work that currently can be done by existing staff.

What would be needed? I mean, I think it's actually quite important as we look down the road for us to understand how we avoid community development becoming an inadvertent bottleneck in our— in this project to build 10,000 homes in 10 years, which is admittedly, it's an audacious goal, especially given what our permitting numbers have looked like in years past. But I think it's really critical that we understand what the need is going to be so that we can begin to plan for that and allocate resources towards that. Otherwise, I think we don't do a good job of managing community expectations, and we might end up spinning our wheels and creating a situation where we, we just don't have the people power to be able to get projects shovel-ready. And, and I think that would be a huge miss if we didn't plan for that now as we're sort of ramping up Um, so I would really love for there to be some kind of an effort made or a staffing study done to understand what, what our capacity is right now and what we will legitimately need if we're going to be permitting 1,000 homes or 1,000 units every year.

That seems like a really important thing.

Really critical information. And, you know, and as far as, you know, having the financial capacity to meet that need, that's, that's a separate question. And that's a question that, you know, the assembly can grapple with is how do we do that. But, you know, when it comes to, when it comes to our housing shortage, I think there's a great argument to be made that, that people are going to have to be in place to make that engine run. So if I don't know if that's something that, that you or the municipal manager or someone else could work on, but I think really having a picture of whether that's a staffing study or some other mechanism, is going to be very, very important, and maybe not necessarily for this budget cycle, but certainly for next.

So I would like to be on record as, you know, just having asked for some hard numbers as far as what we're going to need in the future, or who we're going to need in the future, I guess, is a better way to say that. I can do it. Through the Chair to Member Baldwin-Davis, this is Director Brouse. I will tell you that we are having those conversations, and I think one of the one of the challenges that we are faced with is that in order to do the resource analysis, we would need to know how much money we have available to us to actually put into the projects, because the way a lot of our community development and public works positions are set up is that many of them are bond funded, and so they are part of the project cost to begin with. They are sort of static across the board, and that's the reason we try to keep the bond amounts at the level that we have them, because they are capital funded.

And I'm not speaking specifically Community Development, but just the premise about the permit center generally. There's different revenue streams that come in to fund these different positions, and in order to increase those positions that are funded in those specific ways, either through the Building Safety Service Area, through area-wide funds, or through capital budget, we have to either, one, change our revenue and funding mechanism, which is, you know, part of the ongoing conversation I think we're all having about municipal revenue at large, but then we would also have to determine how many projects would what would we be expecting. If we're expecting to build X, we would need this many people. If we're expecting to build Y, we would need this many people. But I will tell you that that process in and of itself takes staff capacity and resources.

And so without the sort of premise that we have a horizon to look to where we have the opportunity to do that, we can tell you what we think we would do if we had, you know, a dollar amount X, Y, or Z. But until we actually know what we are looking at and what the horizon looks like, A projection in terms of what we might be able to do would sort of be a multiplier of current staff capacity, but it is what we're looking at going forward while we're having the revenue conversation for sales taxes, other revenue measures, and what the municipality looks like generally. If we don't have new resources and new revenue streams within the next couple of years, the conversation about expanding our permit center is not a conversation because there isn't any revenue to do it except that that is borne on the back of the projects.

That makes, that makes perfect sense. And I think that, I think that, you know, for, from my perspective anyway, understanding the potential future need, staffing needs, helps us to have a more robust conversation about why additional revenue is necessary. So Yeah, completely appreciate that, and if— happy to continue this conversation in a different venue. Just wanted to flag that this feels like an important thing to talk about. And good.

I'll also say, meeting manager Wimpy joined us as well. Yeah, apologies for my— struggling a lot of things today. Thank you, Madam Chair, and through the Chair to Member Bolden-Day, I was just wanting to add, I think it's a really interesting question. I realize, you know, we've been thinking a lot about how we bolster the team at Development Services and Community Development more broadly about training and salary structure, etc. But I haven't really conceived of the question as if we— if the unit count hits 1,000 each year, what is the resource gap we need to make sure that we don't have a time lag in processing that, uh, those requests.

And so I appreciate the framing, and I think you're right that it's a something that needs to be pinned down in anticipation of the 2027 budget cycle. And so we'll take that as something to, to a framework to think about moving forward. So thank you for the question.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Okay, Mr. Fransworth, and then myself. Thank you. So I'm going to continue the line of conversation. So when I was elected, 6 and a half years ago or whatever it was, this was one of the number one areas of concern that I heard about, that permitting and the bottleneck, just incredible frustration. And that was during Herkowitz's administration.

And I continue to hear the same thing. I have not seen it change. I have not seen it approved. I have not seen quantitative or qualitative differences between that and now. And so when I think about, when I think about our police department, I have a clear line of sight of what we need to do to get to where we want to be.

And I think that we need more staff, more police officers. I think there's a line of sight where I'm like, okay, if we invest more money, here's where we can put that, and I think we can see improved services to the people of Anchorage. I can see that in a whole bunch of our departments where I can see, especially now over the last year, I can start to see that line of sight of like what we need to do to get to where we need to be, right? Um, here I have no idea. I have, I, I have no idea if we put a million dollars $5 million into this?

What? Because, because what I don't understand is what the problem is. And so I, I, this may not be the meeting to have that conversation, but, but I think at a budget meeting, part of it is what do we need? What are the resources we need? If it's a resource, if it's, we don't have enough people or money, and that's why we can't build homes, or that's why we get complaints constantly about how long things take or how difficult the process is.

We just— and I just got another lunch with more and more builders that are like, we're just pulling our hair out here, right? And so, well, I guess I would just say is that I really appreciate Member Baldwin-Day's line of questioning, and I want to pose this not in a negative but in a positive in terms of like, what's possible, right? What could we do with X? But I have to say that I would really appreciate more conversation around this. I'd really appreciate knowing what some of the planning and strategic thinking around this is.

And we don't need to do it right, right now, because I want to move on. But I would just say that I don't have a line of sight. I don't have a clear sense of what the problem is, what would be the solution, what the needs are. It continues to feel like an internal problem, like a cultural problem. Like a systems problem.

It is— it has not been couched to me as a resource problem. And so that, if that's truly what it is, if it's money, then that's— that's— we needed, like, then I think we build out. If we had this much, then we could do this, and that would be great. So I just want to put that on the record, that this feels like a conversation that's been going on a long time, and I don't feel like there's progress. And I'm anxious to be part of a conversation where we can show our progress.

So I'm looking forward to the new department, looking forward to a vision for what's possible. And I think it's probably one of the most important areas, I think, for us to look inward and figure out how we can improve. And I will let you guys correct me if I get this wrong. Through the chair to Member Perez-Verdia, I will tell you that from the budget perspective, one of the major things that is missing is resources. So the The limitation across the board, no matter who is operating the department, is the Building Safety Service Area and the revenue associated with the funds available to fund these positions.

And the limitation around that has— is 15, 20 years old, at least in terms of the assignment and constriction of the revenue paired with the positions. The deficit we've been accruing in that Building Safety Service Area, which has limited any growth within the department from being assigned there because the funding for those positions comes from the, that revenue. And since there is no funding from that revenue, those positions have not grown. And in about 2010, I think there were between 15 to 20 positions cut from the planning department and other departments within the permit center, and that has bred this impact for the last 15+ years. And ultimately, we've had conversations, right, with the Assembly, with other administration frustrations about the BSSA.

There were additions to the budget to make sure that that BSSA deficit wasn't growing. So the Assembly, I think 2 years ago or 3 years ago maybe, added the levy for the BSSA back in to accrue about.

$1.5 Million to offset that deficit. We're seeing an uptick in fees, and that is offsetting the deficit as well, but we're still not level on an annual basis. We are eating area-wide general government dollars in this assigned position count because it doesn't fully fund it. And so if the contemplation is that we reconfigure the way those positions are funded and, and/or add new revenues to the stream, then I think it would be potentially transformative for the department and for those services. But that, you've heard it for that long because that's how long it's been an issue.

Yeah, well, I'm just gonna follow up and just say that, you know, again, 6 years ago, this as a city, we were investing very little in homelessness. Correct. And now we're investing millions, right? And there's been policy changes and there's been increased revenue and we, because it became a priority, right? Correct.

And so similarly, if housing truly is a priority for us, then I think we need to have that conversation. So thanks. And I would just say Director Brouse laid it out, but just more context, right? 2008, Huge economic downturn. So those dollars, revenues coming in declined.

People were laid off. I was going to say 2009, but it might have been 2010. I was looking at the budget. Robin remembers. And we have not ticked that back up again.

But I think for the mayor, at least, you all know housing absolutely a priority and looking at all the levers that can be pushed. But certainly one is about staffing and how we augment staffing, but also how we invest in technology and software, how we invest in customer training, how we get consistency, because With that also comes just stabilization of staff. I mean, we, we've had this conversation, how you get staff to stay in their positions, because it takes years to become experts in this field. And so the turnover sets us back every time we lose an employee. And so we, we need to invest in those employees so that they stay and have the ability to become experts.

Um, I'm just briefly in the queue, and then Mr. Constant, um, I think to try to sum up this conversation, I think there's a lot of, um, we, we should dive into it somewhere else, I believe. But I think, and this is partly for the meeting managers' benefit, I think what we've been talking about is, um, there are operational advantages to what's proposed, and I think what this conversation is focusing on is how does that affect the policy. Beyond the day-to-day operations. And I'm glad Ms. Braus brought up the BSSA because I think that is also a funding source.

Because we have not built very much for 15 years, that is— that system as designed was supposed to pay for itself, and that doesn't work when we're not building things. And also, to the degree that everything is treated as needing extensive review, or what needs review, what is built by right, what goes through major site plan review, all of those kinds of questions also affect staff capacity. So I want to make sure that's on the table. Able, because if we don't need to give the same level of scrutiny to everything, and we don't do that now, but if there are things that we can give less scrutiny, less discretionary review, less public process, all of those things, if it is not something that rises to the level of needing major public process, that also frees up staff time. So I think that is important and why it is so important to look at our Title 21, not just the rules, but the process by which everybody has to go through.

So just to say those things as well. It's not an either or, just a comment. So, so with that, Mr. Constant. Sure, thanks.

A couple of minutes ago was asserted that nothing's really changed within the department, and I would push back just a little bit to say that I think that the increased number of permits issued and requested is pure evidence to me, actual evidence that things are changing out there, but I think most of us would agree not fast enough to achieve the big goal, the audacious goal, as Miss Baldwin-Day has suggested. Um, I think that to, to be optimistic— oh, well, and another thing is, uh, it was also kind of asserted that we prioritized homelessness and it, it changed. And the key to the homelessness response in child care is that we figured out revenue. And so I want folks to understand that there is just such a clear and direct link to resources available to outcomes achieved that we have to really find ways to bring in revenue to the focal areas we want to see improve. And so, um, I would offer awareness there's an earthquake happening right now, so we're waiting to see if we need to respond further.

Welcome to the 8th floor, everybody.

Yeah, I traveled there. Chair Conklin, this is Suzanne. Thank you for that comment, because I would say we have gotten a lot of good feedback from the homebuilders. The mayor and others were at their summit now maybe 3 weeks ago, and honestly, we hear good feedback from them. Weekly, if not more, about improvements that have happened.

So I just want to recognize that. I appreciate that. And I was talking about a longer arc. I think I just want to make sure that, but yes, I would agree with that. Right.

And in that long arc though, I finally, on my last, you know, months, I'm seeing some payoff on that investment. So it is important. And to be optimistic, sorry, Ona, I would like to see at some point, probably not before this budget is done, a, an analysis of the offsetting revenue that will come if we achieve 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 homes through the permitting process. And so, uh, because, you know, it isn't just a one-way street. If and when we start to achieve big audacious goals, we also change the fundamental economic platform.

Okay, so that was Community Development. Now on to Development Services. Yeah, I don't have any— um, so Development Services, we kind of just talked about a little bit, um, but, uh, in terms of their 2025 to 2026 changes, um, it looks like it's It's relatively small. So we start the 2025 revised budget with $12.7 million, remove the $100,000 nuisance abatement funding from first quarter and small dollar salary adjustments and fleet adjustments, and then we land at $12.8 million. I will make note that since we were talking about it, salaries, etc., wages, positions, the work at Development Services, you'll see that line in there that shows $161,000 $1,000 in best salaries and benefits adjustments.

For the number of people included on this list, that could be perceived as relatively small. In terms of how the departments are staffed, you'll see as we roll through these departments that have lots of AMEA employees or non-rep employees that those wage increases are not reflective of the, of the negotiating process for AMEA changes, and the non-rep increases would also come after AMEA increases because the supervisory separation between those wage ranks needs to be maintained. So as a result of being in negotiations with AMEA while the budget was being developed, those changes are not included in here. So when we get to, you know, the finance departments that are all AMEA and non-reps, you will see little to no increases in those departments because they have not been booked as part of the budget. We do have those in consideration and that will come before the body as part of the CBA process for AMEA.

But, so there will be coverage for those as either an S version or the revised version in April, but I wanted to make sure that we're all aware of that as we roll through these dollar amounts. Questions from members? Mr. Dyer. So you're saying that we may see an S version of this budget? Not specific to— well, Uh, you may see an S version of this budget across the board as part of the process.

I don't know that the S version of the budget would include that change because the Assembly won't have actually approved any of that documentation by the time we get to this. So that's part of the challenge with the nature of the timing that we're in, is I think you'll end up with something in December, but we passed the budget in November so that that then becomes a contractual obligation that would roll into the first quarter revisions. But we have to figure out how we're going to actually onboard that in real time.

I think you have Mr. Constant and Mr. Gherkin and myself.

Thanks, Ona. You spoke of removing the money for the nuisance abatement, and I know we've seen some kind of approaches to how to change that with some other additional funding. Uh, can the department head speak to.

How, or whoever is there on behalf of the administration specifically, how we're going to not hamstring our friends in code enforcement, code abatement, who actually have been increasing and becoming more successful at the work of eliminating these nuisances from our neighborhoods where we have struggled before because we didn't have resources, and we've started to put resources there. If we're taking them out, how are we not just doubling down on the past failures? Well, through the Chair to Mr. Conston, I'd like to clarify that we're not taking them out. This was a one-time inclusion of additional funding available at first quarter that was being removed as part of the continuation budget process.

So it's, it's, it's an amendment just being reflected as rolling off it. If there are additional amendments to add money to the Nuisance Property Abatement Fund, replace this one-time money that was put in at first quarter. Does that make sense? Yeah, to the impact of actually operating within the nuisance abatement funds, I think that Greg Suley and Lance Wilbur can probably answer that better. Let me start and then I'll let Greg finish.

Through the Chair, Assemblymember Constant, we can get you some information about how much money is actually in the fund. It's not just that $100,000 because when we do clean up, in the event that we have to recover costs, we recover those costs appropriate those funds through the assembly action, put them back into the fund, and then we use that money to go and clean more sites. So I can get you some information on the amount that's in the fund. I think Greg can help me with the list of stuff that we'll be looking at if we're doing any this winter. Doing it in the winter is a little bit more difficult because it's covered with snow and it takes a little bit more time and expense, so we do most of it in the, in the non-snow seasons, but Mr. Soule can share if I missed anything there.

Through the chair, Mr. Johnson, uh, no, we are definitely focused on, on the nuisance pavement blight reduction efforts, and we'll continue to do so with the money we have available. We're working with legal to discover new ways to foreclose on liens, this kind of thing, and, uh, and our, our collection is getting much better, um, in terms of just, uh, waiting for people to pay fines. You know, now we are actually sending things to collections, and we've definitely increased the revenue that way. And all that money goes back to replenish that 205, which is the nuisance abatement fund. So we have our list, we have a prioritized list of, uh, you know, our top 10 blighted, blighted derelict properties that we'd like to tear down, and we're working with those owners, um, through stipulated agreements.

That sort of thing. But we have no intention of stopping, only, only pushing forward with the blight reduction.

Okay, I think it's important to reflect that somehow where that's a priority, but I understand that Ms. Brouse's point is that that was one-time funds. I don't have it all in front of me to look at, so I'm kind of going off memory. Thank you all. It is a priority and we should maintain it as a priority. Funded.

Just one— oh, sorry, I have—. Yeah, so Mr. Gerker. Yeah, I just want to circle back to something you said, um, so non-reps and execs are not getting any increases off of this. It's how we see what AMA contract is, that it'll be proportionate to what the AMA increases. Well, proportionate, I think— I can't say whether or not it will be proportionate.

What I will say is that we are contractually obligated to fund what is in the CBA, and the non-reps and execs have to follow to some degree within supervisory alignment, but that's a resource-based decision, not a contractual requirement. And when you guys are— conversation for another time, but when you negotiate an AMA, you're taking that into account? Absolutely, absolutely, yes. Okay, let's browse through here. Yeah, I'm not sure if this fits, but I'm curious about how we regulate, manage general sort of upkeep of privately owned buildings in Anacortes.

And I think one of the things I continue to hear more and more is you drive down the street and it just— buildings are just, they're not painted. There's been disrepair, but these are owned by us, right? And so I'm curious about our role in that. If there is a role in that to either support the improvement and improvement of these buildings, or to encourage or to incentivize, or to— do we have a role as a city to help businesses and encourage them or enforce any kind of rule to get them to make their buildings look nice? Mr. Perez, currently we do not have a property maintenance code that we can enforce.

Some jurisdictions actually do have that. There is an ICC property maintenance code. We are looking at adopting that with our most recent code updates. Okay, that would require resources for enforcement, obviously, that sort of thing. But there is something like that that's available.

We just don't have that currently. So there's nothing at this point if a building is in disrepair, that's really— there's nothing we can do to force them to improve it. Unless it's a— if it's— through the chair— if it's a dangerous building, you know. But if it just looks bad, there's nothing we can do. That's correct.

Okay. All right. Thanks.

Okay. I had myself in the queue. Oh, sorry.

Okay, I have a question to ask. What about doing upgrades to at least buildings such as a backup power generator?

Be more specific. Yeah, somebody, but I had a question about upgrading one of the buildings we lease. By adding a power generator to it and how we go about doing that since we don't own the building. So it's not maintained by us. Through the chair, that's a good question.

I think it's going to be a two-parter. One is depending on the lease requirements and what the operator is required to do. And then the other would be in that lease requirement. If we're, if we're responsible for doing it and it would be facilities, then I'd have to work with Public Works and Facilities. So I'll need to get back with you on both of those.

It depends on the building. So if you have a building in question, let me know. Or let Mr. Colhase know. Thank you. I have myself in the queue and then Mr.

Constant again. I was wondering in terms of current vacancies, and we've asked that for other departments, and then not to rehash the full discussion we already had, but just wondering from your perspective, are there process improvements that you are anticipating in 2026, or is it really a matter of just continuing to get folks trained up? Good afternoon, Ms. Brawley. I would say we have identified bottlenecks, you know, where they occur, and I really, I mean, I couldn't have said it much better than Ms. Fleet Green. You know, a lot of it has to do with retention and training, but yes, we are Anticipating more permit, more permitting activity because of all these incentives that are going through and the changes within land use codes.

And so we are looking at improving some processes as well, eliminating roofing inspections on re-roofs, things like this. Um, obviously the new software that allow people to, um, uh, apply for permits online as opposed to coming into the building, which hopefully allow our permit counter to run a little leaner when they have to. Those are the main things. Vacancies. Vacancies.

Oh, and the vacancies, correct. We have currently 2 vacancies as far as I'm aware. We have 1 permit tech that we're interviewing for this week, and then we have 1 plan reviewer, and oh, and 1 right-of-way enforcement inspector, but I think we've got a candidate for that. So 3 vacancies currently, and hopefully 2 in the near future, and then we'll be Advertising for one, after the first of the year, we actually use that money as the unspent labor to help us with our software purchase. So, okay, and just a quick follow-up, what is the estimated timeline for the software to come online, like to be available for the public?

Is that in '26? Yes, it's a— well, according to the vendors, it's a 9 to 12 month implementation process. So, you know, we all know there can be hiccups along the way, but we hope Best case scenario, perhaps September 2026. Okay, great. Online.

Okay, Mr. Constant. Thanks. I'm not sure who was speaking previously just now, but they mentioned there's an ICC code for maintenance. I'm hoping that whoever that was, you can email it over to me, that code, so I can see the language.

Yep, sorry, this is Greg Suley, Director of Development Services, and We can, I can definitely send you a link to that. Thank you very much.

Okay, any other questions? I don't see any, so I think we're good with development service. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

Planning. Yeah, looks like next we have planning department.

Small down, Director Mann.

Suzanne, I think you might need to say that louder. No.

So many great things happening downtown right now. It's awesome. Okay, so, um, also within Community Development is the Planning Department. So when we look at the Planning Department summary, we start '25 with 20— or we start 2025 with 25 employees, and in 2026 we continue That same headcount, um, the 2025 revised budget was $3.96 million for Planning. We rolled back some one-time amendments from first quarter, adjusted salaries and benefits, and land with the same 25 employee count at $3.75 million.

So the changes within the Planning Department were very slim in terms of actual budgetary impact, but Director Babb is here and can answer any questions pertaining to planning operations.

I don't have anybody right now, so I'm going to start with a question, which is, I was looking back to— and thanks for mentioning these prior amendments— 2 items that myself and former member Zalatell ran. One of them was adding a senior planner position. This was way back in— it would have happened in fall 2023. The FY24 budget. Both of them were recurring.

So I'm just putting these on the record because I intend to follow up and may not be running an amendment this year. One of them was a senior planner with the intent of really focusing on not just planning policy, but public engagement and communications, knowing that there's been a lot of public interest in all of the, all the things that we've been going through the last few years in that sense. And also there was, I believe, $75,000 added, again recurring, for planning communications and intended to be used for really educating the public about code changes that have already happened. Things like ADUs, the 3 and 4-plex changes, that was what had happened back then. So I'm just wondering, Director Babb, I know those predate you.

I'm wondering if, if you're aware of where those have been, or if you anticipate additional needs beyond that. Chair Brawley, thank you. I was not aware of those until you asked that question in an email. I did look into it and it looks like, and I may be incorrect on these, so we'll see if I get this right, but it looks like what happened is the funding for the senior planner position did come to the department, but we attempted to recruit for that position. We, I think, spent several months trying to recruit and were not able to recruit for a senior planner.

So that position was rewritten as an associate planner in the hopes that we might be able to recruit somebody that way. And in the process of changing the position description for that position, it, it dropped the community engagement piece of the puzzle. So that did not translate into the associate position that I now have in the Long Range Planning Department, but the funding did come to the department. We did end up with another position. If not quite what, um, was originally intended.

Um, so I was happy to be made aware of that. Um, and regarding the, um, the $75,000, I think you'll see, um, my understanding is that we did get that funding, but we did not treat it as a recurring source of funding. So we'll need to check to make sure that whether or not that was programmed as recurring and what that outcome means in terms of what that does for that position that then rolled off the community engagement position or community engagement duties. So I think we can align what capacity actually exists in the department based on this information. Yeah, and I mentioned only to say, um, my intent was to try to write amendments like that, then I realized I had done that 2 years ago, and so I'm following up.

And so, uh, you may not see an additional amendment, but I think that we've identified that as a need, so we're tracking that down. Uh, go ahead. I just want to dig into the angle. When you guys say attempted to recruit for months, were you getting applicants but they weren't meeting the MQs? Or like, what was— so is it an MQ problem?

My— again, I'm sorry I wasn't around during that time, but from what I understand, they, they posted the position 3 times and they did not get any qualified applicants.

Issue and getting in queues that screen in versus screen out. It's been a challenge. And so it's unfortunate to hear that by dropping it down, we lost, I think, the critical thrust of what member Raleigh was trying to get done. Is there a way we can work that back in? And this, again, might be an HR question, but is there a way we can work that back in without adjusting the MQs?

Actually, just to add some positivity to the conversation, I have had some open positions since then.

And I've been able to work with HR very closely to adjust the requirements, the minimum requirements, but also they've allowed me to pilot a process where we actually are able to see the applicants, all of the applicants, whether they qualified or not, go through our own screening process just to see if maybe we find something in somebody in there who might actually qualify even though they didn't hit the right button or whatever it was, and we were successful this last round, even though we didn't technically have any qualified applicants. We went through that process and we did actually find somebody who we wanted to hire. So, it was great. We've been working really closely with HR trying to figure that all out. It's going really well.

Okay. Mr. Fransvige. Thanks. Yeah, just to, um, Another variance question just on the 2004 to 2005 numbers, just in contractual. They went, you know, from $100,000 to $430,000 and then now revised back to $107,000.

Just curious about that. And I think you can see part of it reflected on the screen up here. That contractual in and out is reflective of some of these amendments coming in that we're saying $200,000 to do the comp plan. And so, so those come in as contractual line items. They're not added to the labor or benefits side.

So it's just, I think, for the most part, that kind of in and out of single project amendments.

Generally, we were talking about, about staff right now. Where are you at this point in terms of that they can see available? We have one, one open position right now. Thanks. Yeah.

Any other questions from members?

Um, I guess one request I'd like to make kind of related to these projects. We know these planning projects often take multiple years, and so it's been routine to roll them over, put them in a fund so that they can continue. And I know some have had leftover funding as well. I guess my follow-up ask to the department is to have an updated list of what those are, and not a detailed status, but just, for example, I imagine there's still interest in doing the EGO overcomp plan update. And so just wanting to understand what's already there, because I know that also relates to staffing as far as your all's capacity to begin and continue and finish those projects.

So that's just a— and it looks like Ms. Baldwin-Day has a question.

Yeah, a similar, similarly forward-facing question, understanding that we are in the midst of doing some targeted comp plan review, but that Eventually Anchorage will need a new comprehensive plan. Can you talk to us just a little bit about what will be required at such point as a new comp plan needs to be written and what the timing might be for something— for a project of that scale?

Through the chair to Member Baldonday, that's an excellent question, and I think it really depends on the the comp plan process itself. If we went through a comp plan rewrite similar to the 2020 and 2040, I would need several new staff members and probably close to— I just off the top of my head, I'd say $700,000 or $800,000 to go through that entire process. All over again. Um, if the comp plan takes a little bit more of a streamlined and contemporary approach, then I may be able to cut that, that cost and the number of staff required back a little bit. But I would, I would need to sit down and really scope that out and give you some, some realistic figures in order to answer that question properly.

I think just that ballpark is really helpful, and I would definitely like to know more specifics when you have time to sort that out, both for what we've done in the past and also for something that does look a little more streamlined and more contemporary. Do you have a sense of what the timeline, what the ideal timeline would be for initiating.

This process, a new comprehensive plan?

Um, we would probably need at least a year to gear up for something like that. Um, and then again, overall, if depending on the process itself, it could take, um, multiple years to complete. Um, I think the— I was not around during the previous comp plan updates, both the 2020 or 2040, but I do know that both of those took several years to complete. In fact, I believe the 2020 took 8 years, if I'm— Lance is nodding, you can't see him nod, but approximately 8 years to complete.

All right, so in a reasonable world, when in your opinion would we need to start doing the gearing up for that process? Um, I would, I would need to start now. Um, if we are hoping to do something like that in the next couple years, then I would really need to start making some adjustments to our, our work plan for the department, for the Long Range Planning Department specifically, and figuring out how to staff and how to fund that that, and that would be something I'd want to start to figure out now since we do have several large projects in long-range planning at the moment. Did that answer your question? Sorry.

No, absolutely. Yes. And, and do— is that something that, that you feel would be additive and important at this point, or would that be something that would be a little more of a distraction? I mean, in terms of like project priority, where does a new comprehensive plan fall in terms of the work that planning needs to do? Through the chair, um, we are overdue for an ACOMP plan update.

By code, we probably should be doing one right now. I think it is something that is a serious need for our community. The 2020 and the 2040 have served us pretty well, and they have some incredible guidance in them, but the economic and demographic conditions in our community have changed drastically since both of those were created. So the time is right for that to happen, but it is not something that would help us in the short term because it is such a long-term process. Um, so we have some, some conditions in the municipality right now that need to be addressed quickly and expediently, and the comp plan process is not a quick and expedient way to address things like a housing crisis or some of the other things that we're dealing with in the municipality.

So I'm sorry, that's, that's not a very, um That's not a very good answer. I think it doesn't answer exactly what you're asking, but that's where we're at in the department at the moment. No, I actually, I think, I think that's a really, really helpful answer, and I think gives us some good context for where we might be headed in the next couple of years. So, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Okay, others in the queue?

I will just throw it on the Comp Plan. Similar to the conversation we had with Community Development, I think it's a big, really policy discussion, and I think it would be helpful to take that offline and investigate it further because I, just to say, I think we've seen where there's a big kind of rub where does this meet the Comp Plan or not? Are we implementing the Comp Plan or not? And what does that actually mean? And that seems to be where a lot of these policy discussions end up running into, and there's not agreement in the community what that needs to look like.

And so, um, so I think I would hope that we don't take 8 years to update our plan. I know this, this town has had challenges with planning and implementation of plans, um, but I would just say that's something we need to flag. But it is absolutely, um, in a priority issue that we need to address, especially if there does need to be, um, action in the budget. I'll check one more time. Okay, I don't see any others in the queue, so I think we're good.

So next we have real estate.

So we, uh, we have Director Briggs coming up, uh, for us here on real estate. When you look at the summary page, you see Heritage Land Bank and real estate services, uh, 6 employees total between '25 and '26, so no changes there. Um, our 2025 revised budget starts at $11.6 million, um, rolls back some of the one-time amendments, uh, the costs associated with the facility assessment and new security hammers at City Hall, and we land at $11.3 million. So it's an overall budget reduction, but that is due to the one-time nature of some of these, um, cost items from 2025.

And any questions for real estate? Yeah, same questions. Vacancy, how are you doing on staffing? Uh, we, uh, Tiffany Briggs, real estate director. Through the chair to Mr. Presverdia, we currently have one vacancy.

It's on the real estate services side of the department, and it's actually my old position, but other than that, we're great. Um, a question about, uh, security cameras just was brought up. Um, do you— is it in our intent to, you know, the new system that the APD is bringing forward where they're going to link all sort of— they're going to have an opportunity to link cameras to businesses and, and residences. Do you know if the municipality is planning on doing that as well, linking all of our cameras to APD as well? Oh, at municipal buildings?

Yeah. I don't know, but that is a very good question. I will get you an answer. Curious. And, and the, the, I, I, I believe so far we have linked Town Square, City Hall, right?

But I don't know if you've heard anything at the Permit Center. But that's a good question. We'll find out. Yeah, yeah, just, just interesting to know. That seems like that would be a logical, you know, thing to do.

So, um, but, and just last question, is there anything, uh, any changes in your department that's not reflected in the bud— budget that you think that we we should be aware of from this last year to this coming year? Not that I'm aware of. No? No. Thanks.

Thank you. Okay, Ms. Baldwin-Day.

Thank you. Hi, Ms. Briggs. I'm curious about the contractual and other services line item and just what real estate services, what contractual services real estate is using right now. And how you, how you see that continuing into the future.

Thank you. Through the Chair to Member Baldwin-Day, I will have to look specifically.

What was the question? Sorry. Contractual. Who's in my contractual services? What's contractual services?

What's in there? Is that my license? Yes. Okay. Um, that is where our lease payments reside, so that's kind of why the number is so high.

Um, um, so lease payments for the Permit Center, the Muldoon Library, the Northeast Community Center, which is like the Boys and Girls Club, Real Estate holds the municipal lease, right? So they hold all of those together as opposed to them being distributed through the departments.

That makes sense. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, I don't see anyone else in the queue. I guess as a quick follow-up, so, um, —separate discussion, we are about to be embarking on the process of potentially purchasing this building.

From your department's perspective, let's assume that goes, whatever version of it, do you anticipate a budget impact or operational impact to you all?

Yes, it'll kind of shift around a little bit. Some of the pieces that currently live in real estate will go to maintenance and operations. Um, there wouldn't be a lease payment per se that I would be facilitating, but whatever the financing looks like would probably still roll through our department. Um, day-to-day management would still— but there will be a little bit of a budget shift. Through the chair, Mr. Fawzy holds all the sort of fine details on that specifically, but in the process, what we have gone through is trying to get to a point where what is the impact of this, and is it flat, is more, and I think we're going through some M&O refinement to figure out exactly what we would need to transition this building to ownership as opposed to lease, and there may come a slight.

Increase due to the maintenance requirements of owning the building and making improvements. But overall, it's flat, as far as I know, in terms of the cost of the lease and the ancillary requirements of the lease versus owning it outright and the payments there. Okay. Yeah, and also recognize that is an item that's been introduced on our agenda. It's not something we're talking about in detail here, but that's something we can continue the conversation on.

Okay, any other questions from members?

Okay, I think we're good. Um, and as we're transitioning to the next one, uh, we're going to make a slight timing adjustment, so I'll just mention it now. We are going to continue through with— we have Public Works, uh, project management and engineering, traffic engineering. We have those folks in the back, so we want to make sure that we use their time well. And then, um, uh, we have online our, uh, our executive director, Austin Davidson, for the ACE Fund, and she has a schedule constraint.

So what we're going to do is pause on the departments after those 3. We'll take up the ACE Fund, and then I think that would take us to lunch. So then we'll do our lunch break around 1, and then we'll come back, finish the departments briefly, and then move into alcohol tax and the rest of our agenda.

So next, I believe we have Mr. Colhays from Public Works. And again, if all of you want to come up together, you can, or you can come up a little time.

Welcome, Public Director. Thank you. Um, so, okay, let's get into Public Works. Here we go. I believe this slide is correct and holds Public Works Administration appropriately, as opposed to the Community Development slide, which inflated some positions.

Um, so you'll see, um, Public Works Administration, we have 1.2, the director position at 267. We roll down with the 10 personnel count, and in the reconciliation— oh, that is the wrong one. Oh, I have the wrong slide on that one too, because we need to include the— there it is. Okay, at the bottom, um, the revised budget was the sole position of Kent, and then we went through the reconciliation or the continuation changes for personnel and then added the Public Works Admin Division when we separated, uh, community— when we made the organizational changes. So that Administration Division of 9 people is added to the total.

And we have Kent Colhays here to answer any questions around Public Works, and also Melinda Colhays for PM&E when we get to the next department. But any questions for Public Works?

Any questions for members? I have a question. Just same questions, vacancies, how, how do you—. Uh, in, uh, PM&E, we have 6 vacancies currently, um, out of 24 positions, um, 2, 3 civil engineer positions in the design group. The watershed manager position is vacant.

We're advertising for— actually, that position is closed. We'll be interviewing soon. Uh, the 3 engineers positions, I think 2 of them are currently advertised. We're going to fill those. It's been challenging.

We have a project administrator position vacant, and we have 1 project inspector position vacant. Uh, in traffic, there's several vacancies. Probably the three of the most interest are the Vision Zero position is vacant, the safety position, one of the safety engineers is vacant, and one of the signals positions is vacant. Those are all civil engineering positions, and I believe they're all advertised currently, and we're hoping for candidates with those as well. Wow, that's a, that's a lot.

Yes. Yep. How's that going? Uh, it's— I think it's tough. It's, uh, you know, especially I think for Mr. Coy's department when he comes up that's a significant shortfall in the staffing for those critical functions.

They've been working it, they're doing a good job, but it's tough. In blended world, it's challenging, but perhaps a little bit less challenging, except for in the engineering group with 3 out of 5 engineers vacant. That's a challenge. I did want to just— I was going to have this question before, but I know that there's been some— and we can take the whole thing offline, but the public art pieces in your, your area now? It will be, yes.

Um, just, I'm just curious if, if, uh, I know that there was, there was, um, my understanding is there was some disruption with, with that. I don't know if that's necessarily really true, but, but, but is that, is that online now in terms of making sure that we're, we're having the, the public art as a part of the, the projects moving forward? I would apologize from before, through the chair, to Mr. Presley. I would say that we are working to get it online. Um, There certainly have been some minor disruptions, maybe not so minor disruptions.

We've been working closely with Municipal Manager Wynt Pearson, as well as Alainse and I and Courtney Peterson to rebolster that program. Okay, yeah, we just love that when you're ready, I know that there's work happening in there, I just want to make sure to be able to communicate out to the ART community, particularly, where we're at with it. And create some sort of positive next steps. Like, this is where we're going and this is what it's going to be. Because I think there's just been— I've received a fair amount of questions like, where are we at?

What's going on? That sort of thing. So, we'd just love once you guys are ready to give a kind of an update on that, would love to hear that. Absolutely. Glad to do that.

And I would say that we have heard— we've received comments from the art community as well and taken a strong interest in in moving that forward. Thanks. Miss Baldwin-Day.

Yeah, thank you, and thanks, Mr. Colhase. I'm curious about the vacancies in PM&E. Are those municipal employees' positions that are vacant, or are those positions that are project-funded?

They are municipal employees And all of the positions I mentioned, all of them are bond funded with the exception of the watershed manager position that is funded with operating funds, but they are all municipal positions. Gotcha. And how, how long have those positions been vacant? Are these recent or longstanding or somewhere in between? And do you have a sense of of what the challenge has been in filling those positions?

I would say it's a mix of short-term and long-term. One of them, the watershed manager, the retirement, who she retired earlier this year. So we're working to fill that. We have a strong candidate, we believe. The engineering positions in PM&E have been a challenge to fill in the design section.

We have advertised and interviewed and most recently had two very well-qualified candidates turn us down. At the point of making a job offer. I think that's related, at least in part, to pay. It's challenging to compete sometimes with the private sector. The second inspector position, I think, has been vacant for over a year.

And, Melinda, help me if I'm missing another one. Well, we went through the recruitment process with the inspector. We didn't find a very strong candidate, so it was getting towards the end of this season, and we decided to just kind of put it on pause and wait until getting it ready for 2026 season. The other vacancy we have is the project administrator position, and that's actually a new project administrator position to complement our new project manager that is focused on the federal-funded projects, namely the AMAP projects. Gotcha.

Okay, thank you and, and good luck. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I just have a brief question again, not to rehash the community development discussion, but Ken, from your perspective, how do you see ensuring that there is a clear continued linkage between roads and housing or transportation and housing in the policy? I would say that Mr. Wilbur and I, Mr. Wilbur and I meet at least once a day, and likely more often than once a day, and talk about all the issues related to that envelope you've described.

And I think that I would also offer that largely with the way we have functioned for the past year is that although I report on paper to Mr. Wilbur, I really report to Municipal Manager Wind Pearson. Mr. Wilbur and I meet with Ms. Pearson once a week and, and and discuss all the issues that this group has been talking about, has been concerned about. I don't envision that relationship with Mr. Wilbur changing at all. I think we, we, um, I worked in the Development Services Department. I was the acting director down there for a year.

I understand the issues down there. I work very closely with Mr. Sule. So I, I don't see, um, I don't see that the reorganization, the change in reporting structure, will change in any way the emphasis on housing and transportation. I think that, uh, um, there's some very strong people in the PM&E department, including Brandon Telford, the head of design group, who has a very close relationship with folks in both planning and the traffic department and the folks in development services who manage private.

With subdivision projects. So I think there's a close linkage there already. Um, Mr. Morlik. Yeah, I just thought of something else I want to ask you about. Um, uh, it's interesting because I was, you know, I've lived in Alaska my whole life and lived in Anchorage for a long time.

And, um, and I, for some reason, just recently really become ultimately really aware of these massive 4-lane, 3-lane roads that we have running through the center of our city. And And how strange that seems to me. Um, and I guess, and then just the amount of trucks running through our city and downtown. And I think about the bike lane project we did last year, and I work downtown, so I drive in and out every single day and how much I like that because it reduced a lane and slowed people down. And it probably was frustrating for some, but it felt safer.

It just felt safer to drive downtown, felt safer to walk around downtown in some areas. So I guess what I'm wondering is, on a larger picture in terms of what we're thinking for Anchorage and for roads, I know there's been a lot of discussion about safety and about the ability to cross roads, that sort of thing. Is there a vision to change some of that to reduce some of those larger, wider roads so that they're— so downtown particularly is less speeding traffic. And is there a— did we learn anything from that, that study from the bike lane that would actually translate into something coming in the next year, 2, 3 years? That's some of the long-term stuff that would be—.

I would say there definitely is a vision. Mr. Coy is deeply involved with it, as is Mr. Downey. I'm not sure if he's still in the room. We—. There's a group that meets regularly that Mr. Downey has convened, talking about all the things you're describing.

I think some of the discrete things that are happening now In addition to the pilot project you're referring to, some other things that we are working on, and we'll see how— see what fruit they bear. But there's a— there's a— there's going to be a pilot project this winter to have street maintenance explore how they might manage snow removal on a— it's going to be in a snow disposal site. It's not going to be on a true road, but a mocked-up road section with a bike lane so street maintenance can figure out how how their equipment and staffing can manage snow removal on a complicated street section like that. Some other discrete things that are going on, um, the Spenard Road project, which is currently under, under design. It's an AMS-funded project, so the project team includes DOT staffing and municipal staffing, and that project is rescoping Spenard from 4 lanes to 3 lanes.

Um, the other project that is early in design is Fireweed Lane from the Seward Highway to Fireweed, and that will do something similar. It will rescope Fireweed from 4 lanes to either 3 or 2 lanes. That decision is yet to be finalized. So I think there's, there's a lot of interest and a lot of emphasis on the things you're talking about. And then when Mr. Koi comes up, I'd be glad to have him provide a few talking points about the lessons that were learned from the bike lane project last year.

Thanks very much.

Hey, I don't see other questions, and I know we want to make sure we're moving along, so I would suggest if we have other questions, I imagine it'll be for the department directors that we need to hear from. So maybe we can next go to PM&E, and then we'll have Mr. Coy come up for traffic. So on to PM&E. We have the summary page here that shows the 5 full-time employees that are funded via the operating budget as opposed to bond funding, and very small adjustments there between salaries, benefits, benefits and fleet, and you essentially land with $50,000 less than we originally started in 2025. And that's, I think, based on the actual positions being held by the people who are holding them and aligning the costs associated there.

But otherwise, operationally, Director Kohlhass, all yours.

Thanks for that introduction. I'm Director Kohlhass, PM&E Director, and I don't have anything prepared. In the interest of time, I'll answer questions. Okay. And I forgot to notice while we were joined by Mr. Bolland in the room a few minutes ago.

So, questions from members. I guess I'll start. So, this is a conversation that will happen through the capital budget. As of now, we do not have our kind of named road and drainage projects on the ARSA bond that we typically do. And that's, that will be, that's a conversation that's ongoing, but I'm wondering, depending on what we do with that, like, let's say right now there are none of those in the bond is exactly as proposed.

What is the budget impact to your department, given that some of those positions are bond-funded? So we, every year and continuously through the year, we look at our staffing levels. We have a pretty robust matrix Excel spreadsheet that we look at, and we're conservative as far as adding staff and making sure that there's a balance between what we're planning to work on and having adequate staff. We look good through 2026. We ran the numbers and people have work to work on.

We're still delivering some projects that are carryover work that we originally thought we would get underway in '25 and will carry forward in '26. The other thing that's keeping us busy is the AMATS project, and I had mentioned that we added Tanya Hong, and we're actively hiring for a new project administrator to support her work. But that's also helping fund some of our department needs and what we're delivering. So, so far, I think we're in a healthy balance.

And to the Chair, I will say that I think because of the nature of the sort of split between operating and capital funding within the department, and you operate at a certain level for a certain number of years with a certain dollar amount funding, you have a little bit of latitude in sort of the downturn effect of decreasing that revenue. Stream. I think the buildup and the, the project availability might give PM&E a year or 18 to 24 months of current staffing levels, but once we start regularly decreasing that bond amount, then those positions would probably have to be cut as well, depending on how they are aligned with funding. So there's, there's a little bit of, um, sort of runoff, I guess, is the way to say that, that, that gives us contemplation time in terms of if we were to have permanently reduced bond funding, what would we do? And Director Browsup, if I may add to that through the chair, um, uh, we do— it was a good reminder because we have our consultant project management, um, term contracts, PTS, and TBC, the Bouté Company, that helps add and augment what we're doing and provide additional capacity, and that was always the strategy, is knowing that, you know, we want to have our balanced staffing levels and be secure in what we're delivering, and then they're taking the peak of the workloads.

So if things are reduced, you know, then that means just we still have our workload that we can deliver with our staff member and less to the consultants. Okay, so just to briefly restate, then basically the decisions that we make on the '26 bond and beyond are really going to be budget— though they will impact the budget in '27, '28, and out years, but not necessarily the operating budget for '26. Yeah, I think that's correct. Okay, thank you. Other questions from members?

Don't see any online. So why don't we then invite— and thank you, Ms. Colas. We invite Mr. Floyd as well, and we'll hear about trafficking. And then also, I forgot, I forgot all the capital pages, but since we're doing this later, I will just do this for impact here. This is PM&E's capital list that we'll also talk about later, but this is the 2026 request list as opposed to what the 2025 proposal looked like, which included all of the projects that were in the state column of funding.

And so you'll notice this sort of length and size difference here between '26 and '25 when we exclude what the state is not paying for and what they weren't paying for in '25 either. And it reflects a sort of more practical reality in terms of what will or could be done and what is being funded at the local level. So, yeah, we'll put a pin on that, come back to it when we talk about the capital budget. So next, we'll hear from Mr. Poyette and traffic engineering. Okay, so traffic engineering, we start with their summary pages.

You'll see the bottom, the position count maintains between 25 and 26, and the 2025 revised budget total was $7.2 million. We have a $9 reduction in general obligation bonds. And I know it's a doozy. And some salaries and benefits and fleet adjustments there within the continuation budget. We add about $100,000 for voter-approved bond O&M and get to $7.6 million total with the same headcount as the previous year.

I'll jump ahead since I keep forgetting the capital slides on these, that to say that Director Koy has these 3 projects within the bond proposal list and they are all either, I think, the same level or slightly more than were the 25 bond proposals in these categories. And he can speak more to that.

Part to those and what they do. But if there are questions, uh, traffic engineering, here we go.

Yeah, go ahead, Mr. We already got the vacancy conversation out of the way, but I'm curious about particularly the contractual line item and the change, um, year to year on that. Maybe just speak to that. Oh, um, one thing that I recall from last year's budget was that the neighborhood greenway funding was put into that line item and actually was intended and moved into a staff position that you see goes from 4 to 5 part-time. It was put into the paint and sign shop staff, which the neighborhood greenway effort.

So that's the one piece from the contractual that I'm aware of, of maybe some movement around, kind of dropping and then going back up. But other than that, I'm not, I'm not sure exactly on details of where, what might be in there. And we can, through the chair, we can dive into what that detail exactly looks like. But I will say one of the, um, challenges with including unaudited actuals in the line item where we don't actually have the other actuals shows sort of specific time-sensitive impacts. And we can look into what that really is directly and answer that question.

And it's a large percentage, but it's a small dollar amount. Correct. Just to clarify for people that it's not— it's not significant in my mind. And then just real quick, I know we're talking about budget, but I did want, as long as I have you coming up, just a couple of things we learned from the traffic study that's going to be— or the biking lanes that we are going to sort of apply to future work. Yeah, for sure.

So the first most important thing that might not be quite as visible, but is, is it— I would say the most critical is that our relationship with DOT is essential. It was a DOT-managed facility that we and our staff worked on, and we collaborated, and it was managed kind of jointly. And so the relationship with DOT on that project grew and has been a very important part of the work that we're doing. So that's number 1. Number 2, we must figure out solutions that can be maintained in the winter.

And so the mock-up that Kent was speaking to, which was the idea of street maintenance, is phenomenal. So the collaborative effort of our different departments trying to figure this out Uh, PBLs, protected bike lanes, are one treatment worth figuring out. But the other thing that we learned is that's not going to be a silver bullet. It's not going to be a low-cost way to do other things. And instead, other treatments, such as the neighborhood bike ways, which rolled out this year, uh, speed limit reductions downtown, which is something that's been talked about, could be another option, given that bikes aren't allowed on the sidewalks downtown.

So, How do we do more and improve safety in ways that can be maintained in the winter? These are all questions moving forward. Thanks. Through the Chair to Member Presverde, I know the answer. The answer is in the reconciliation page.

It's the fleet and the voter-approved bond O&M that's rolled into that category.

Okay, other questions from members? Yeah, I have one question. I don't want to go like too deep in the weeds on this, but I'm curious about like speed studies and how they impact changing speed limits.

Is there funding? Would more funding for more speed studies be helpful, or is it a capacity issue, or how do we actually move into action on slowing down? So I have exciting news on that front. The Braga Street Safe Streets and Roads for All grant included funding for a speed management study citywide that is going to be kicking off next year. And so I think they're already working on negotiations with the contractor.

So, so that should be something that you would see, and that will be addressing and tackling all of those pieces looking citywide. Identifying low-hanging fruit, talking and figuring out policy. It's not something that we have done very much. So trying to do it in a way with proper precedence and understanding, you know, community understanding, all of those pieces are somewhat challenging, especially with our vacancies. We've been focused on maintaining our system and trying to keep everything running.

So I think having this additional contract outside support to manage this this effort will be critical for next year. And so I'm excited to see how that rolls out. Great, thanks.

Okay, I don't see other questions from members, and I know the questions I have are really more on the capital side, so I'll hold those for the afternoon. So thanks for being here. We're going to make one more quick schedule change to accommodate Ms. Quinn-Davison, as well as our other director who's been waiting patiently, which is HR. So we're going to take up HR We'll come back to the ACE funds, and then I know we will not have Ms. Quinn Davidson on for much longer, and so we'll make sure to get her information on the record, and we may need to stretch that after lunch, but we'll take a break after those two things. So go ahead, Ms. Billingsley, and if you can just verify what page we're on too.

Yes, if we go to slide 39 in the deck, the HR, Human Resources Operating Budget Summary, the The personnel count switched from 41 to 40 as our '25 to '26 transition, but for the most part, our changes within the HR department are zero, and part of that has to do with some of the operational realignment that the department did in advance of this budget process, and so because it was a midstream position change, we were able to refine those numbers to maintain within our continuation levels. So it was, it was very interesting and lovely math problem, but I think that particularly Director Billingsley can give us some insight into how HR has made some adjustments over the last few months since she was confirmed and what their operational outlook is for next year. But for HR, there's you know, not a lot of money to talk about moving around. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Do you want to speak or just do questions? Okay. Let's go with Mr. Peralez-Berdia. Well, just the standard questions.

Vacancy. Do you have vacancies currently? We have— through the chair to Mr. Peralez-Berdia. We— when I was here in front of you at my confirmation just a few months ago, we had 11 vacancies. We are now down to 2.

One position closes today and we have 5 candidates. And so we're hoping to interview for that one next week. And then the remaining position is the benefits administrator. We're waiting until open enrollment ends so that the benefits director can focus on recruiting for that one. Great.

That's great. And then, um, um, could you help me understand? There's a budget item of contractual and other services of about $380,000. What do you use contractors for?

I think that's actually—.

We don't. So I think that that line item actually comes from OMB.

We have— So I think, actually, I can't think of what that would be unless Director Brouse can, can tell me. So I know we do run the Lamay contracting through our office, and so it may be that when other departments want to use temporary employment staffing needs where we're using an outside agency. Uh, the, the contract runs through Human Resources with Lemay, and so it may be that we, we can look into—. Through the chair to member presbydia, we can look into what that exactly is. But Director Billingsley is right, the same way the Real Estate Department holds the leases for the rest of the municipality, HR holds the contract for the temporary and sort of I can't even think of what the right word is for the temporary employment services that we activate through LMAE when we need to just do a, you know, quick hire for backfilling a position or something specific to a department that doesn't require a full-time, long-term employee to go through the HR process.

And then just one last question. What is the program-generated revenue? So I'm not sure what that is, but, you know, we had $3.8 million originally for 2024, and we're looking at a— or was it a— yeah, is that a gain? Yeah, we're earning $3.8 million in 2024, and then looks like we're planning to earn $134,000 this year. How do we earn money in HR?

Through the chair, I believe this is actually a fund transfer for.

ML&P PERS liability that is normally noted specifically to be paid via the HR budget, but this year it is not. Okay. So it's in risk, I believe, this year as opposed to in HR. So it's not necessarily generated revenue, is that—. Right, it's a fund transfer that puts money into their budget from another place within the municipality, so it's not an IGC, but it is a revenue mechanism.

Okay. Thanks. Through the Chair, I would also add that we have a $2.50 biweekly benefits admin fee that gets deducted from employees' pay that may also fall under that category. Thanks very much. Any other questions?

I'll just ask one other contractual item that I know— I don't know if it was sitting in the HR, but it was the workforce study that was initiated by the Assembly, and a lot of work has been done, and I know there was an intent to continue. So I maybe, again, offline be helpful to have an update on that and where it's reflected. And through the chair, that was moved into the Office of Equity and Inclusion, I believe, as part of first quarter budget revisions to live. And, but HR is actively working through that process in conjunction with the Chief Administrative Officer, Equity and Inclusion, Mayor's Office, OMB, etc., to make sure that that does continue and that we have that data, you know, as useful as we possibly can. Yes, go ahead.

I just— maybe this is to actually, um, Mr. Pearson, um, as we're looking at, you know, a sort of a first-year report of some kind, I'd love to see a vacancy report of this is where we were, this is where we are. I think it'd be really helpful for the public to, to, to just see that. It seems like that there's been a lot of progress made. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Pearson.

And we— I know that Mr. Fawzy has been working with HR and tracking some of that and trying to figure out some of the initial numbers are skewed by things like election worker presence or absence. So I know he's been talking about that with Mr. Kamaheli and has some drafts already sent to you relative to that. Yeah, but congratulations, lots of growth there. And through the Chair to Member Perez-Verdia, there is a page in our budget book that shows the snapshot of our current positions filled and vacant. It doesn't show the movement over time over the last few years, but it does show the current status just for informational purposes.

Thanks. I don't see any other questions. So next we will move on. So thank you for being here. Thank you.

Next we'll move on to the ACE Fund, and I know we have Ms. Quinn Davidson online. And then I'll say, I know we're a little behind on our timeline. So for folks who have come in, everything else except the ACE Fund, we're gonna get to after lunch. We will take a break at 1:30 or sooner if we get done sooner for about a half hour, and then we'll be back after that. So, So we'll move to the ACE Fund, and then also ask Mr. Clowder to come up because I believe you're also the point person on that.

But we will start with Ms. Gwinn-Davidson, and then if we can verify, it looks like slide 58 is where the ACE Fund lives. It's not our big, big thing. It is, it's in Appendix R. Yeah, so if you're looking for it in the budget book, it is Appendix R. I don't have the page number. The alcohol tax and the marijuana tax both live there back in the appendices. And we're looking at slide 58.

No, I'm looking for the context consultation page. Yeah, and then, Miss Rouse, I don't know if you're presenting or if we just want to throw to somebody. Um, I think the— I mean, the premise— well, I'll start with an update that is that I believe there was a briefing for the assembly, I think 3 weeks ago, perhaps right before, um, that Miss Quinn Davidson and Mr. Storrs did on, um, the budget as it currently stands right here. I think we are here to answer any questions that may exist. I'm available to answer questions around the technicality of some of these moves and/or what may have, you know, made the tax collection go from $800,000 to $275,000.

And Mr. Clowda and Ms. Quinn-Davidson can answer substantive operational and board decision-making processes for what the outcomes of these programs might be. I'll see it in our— what we're talking about, I thought we were talking about ACE Fund. Yes. Oh, marijuana tax. Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry, it's labeled. See, that's why we got to work on the titles. Throw a pound of gum tax. Sick Dam Tax.

It looks like Ms. Quinn Davidson doesn't have a separate presentation but is just here for questions. Correct. So just to overview, we established— I think the ACE Fund was established specifically in 2023, and the first year of funding availability was 2024, but the board had not been seated, and the spend for 2024 and 2025 were budgeted and occurred starting this year. So we have the movement between 2025 budget and 2026 budget of $500,000 $500,000 change between the early educator childcare subsidies, an increase of $500,000, a decrease of $750,000 on the pilot project line. The early education grants to providers was initially put in in '25 as a one-time item and is included again in 2026.

The Little Bears Construction was a one-time add and has been taken out as part of the continuation. New programming from the Board of Sector Worker Retention Bonuses for $400,000, as well as startup funds for in-home providers, and the one-time amendment of Boys and Girls Club grant to South Central Alaska, which was part, I believe, of the first quarter budget revisions, or maybe proposed, I can't quite remember. The tax collection changes, you'll see the number go from $800,000 to about $300,000. And that is two-part. One is the original dollar amount included 2 years of collection and enforcement, or of enforcement, of collection, I should say, on the marijuana side.

And the positions associated with the collection were decreased between, or were, I should say, refined between '25 and '26. So you see the change be a 1-year collection cost with accurate personnel numbers reflected at about $300,000. $800,000, As opposed to the $800,000 that was in the original budget. Um, the board administration line is approximately the same, and this includes use of marijuana tax fund balance because essentially it was all fund balance because it was rolled out of the property tax cap into its own fund in 2023. And this is the first sort of reflection of the budget and spend.

So, I think if there are questions—.

In the current budget, is there still fund balance? Is there money that is kept out of— that is left in fund balance? Uh, about in, in for marijuana tax, it looks with the projected revenues, it's $19,000. Um, okay. And so, as I'm looking at this, the, um, for the budget for 2026, I see, um, $321,000 for salaries and benefits, and then $8 million plus for contractual services.

So the—. Originally there was a 10%, I believe, admin on this, which is still there on line 14 under board administration. And that includes the position count that you're speaking of. Oh, sure. That's good.

For administration, I see. Okay. Are there funds that are going directly to the— I'm sorry, this has been stated before— to the Department of Health Yes. What, what is that dollar amount? Well, it's included in the board administration line because that's where the PCNs established for accounting and administering the fund exist, as well as the funding for the executive director position that is currently contractual.

Okay, okay, so all this— so the executive director position is included in the ICOA? Yes. And so is this funding a position other than the executive director position? Um, to the chair, yes, it's funding a position in the health department specifically around the administration and accounting of this fund and the grants managed therein. Thanks.

Uh, Mr. Johnson. Yes, so tell me if it's right. So we're, we're using about $2.6 million in fund balance this year, but then the fund balance drops to almost zero for next year. So is that going to mean that when we take up next year's budget, we're going to see a significant reduction in terms of what's available for the program function? Theoretically, yes.

I think one of the challenges we have with the marijuana tax is the same problem we had with the alcohol tax, particularly at the beginning of the fund, which is the ability to move the money out the door means that we have a fund balance that has time to move. Um, the, the Average annual marijuana tax is less than $6 million, and right now the budget is.

Getting $8 million. So the $2 million, the revenue reduction would have to be absorbed in 2027. So for 2027, they'll probably be around $6 million. Correct. Yes, assuming all, you know, things remain the same, but unless marijuana consumption goes up or the tax rate goes up, revenues should be the same.

Yeah. Okay, yeah, I don't see other members in the queue. I do have one question, and really it's something to flag that I think will be a continuation, a continued conversation, is the $2 million that is, um, that was previously in alcohol tax, um, essentially paying for Anchorage School District pre-K classrooms. Um, setting aside the other discussion about local contribution limits and assuming none of that changes, I know this was a question actually for Ms. Quinn-Davidson. Can you, so essentially the ACE Fund Board did not recommend making that change.

The Mayor's Office has proposed that change, or it was done last year, is proposed to be a permanent change. I wonder if the Board has taken that question up in the last, you know, 30 to 60 days, or if there's any other new information to share there.

Uh, sure, thank you. Through the chair, the board hasn't discussed the budget since the mayor's budget was released. However, Trevor Storrs, the board chair, and I, when we met with the mayor's office and learned that they were planning to fund the ASD funding through the marijuana tax, we proposed an alternative budget that reduced a number of line items to accommodate space for the ASD funding, and that's essentially the budget you see here. There was one change. So we went through, but that was just Trevor and I.

We didn't have time to convene the board since they only meet monthly, but we later shared that with the board and had a discussion last month right before the mayor's office was about to present their budget. So the board is aware, but we didn't take a vote or anything on it. Okay, and just a quick follow-up. Do you— I know the board meeting monthly would have an opportunity presumably in November. Do you know if they intend to take that up or, or if you anticipate a potential position or any statement on that?

I mean, I, I guess we could discuss it again. I think it's pretty clear since the board proposed a budget that did not include the $2 million that the board's preference is to be able to spend more on these other programs. But we also understand that the municipality is in a tough spot and there are other things that need to be funded. So I think You know, all of us associated with the ACE Fund are trying to be supportive and understand the complexity of putting together a budget, but also we're disappointed that the ASD money is funded out of the ACE Fund because, like Member Johnson stated, and I think Member Baldwin-Day did in the work session, and you too, Vice Chair Brawley, it's just long term. How do we sustain that?

And I think the bigger hope is that this fund is for additive programs. It's not funding things that were already funded, but That said, it's complicated. I don't envy you guys. I've been there, so we, we understand the challenges. I don't expect the board to take it up again because they've already, they've already prepared a budget that they spent months preparing that is similar to this but just didn't include the ASD funding.

OK, yeah, thank you, and I appreciate that they've, they've done their portion of that work. I guess I'll just say I don't, I don't, I'm still contemplating what, if any, action I want to take on that, but just to put on the table for members and the public, this is within the realm of what these funds can be used for. But the implication is that it is freeing up $2 million of alcohol tax for something else, but it is utilizing funds that voters approved. And my understanding or assumption is that the intent was that it was new money. And so that's really the— it's a policy decision that I think we'll continue to grapple with.

Mr. Pressley. Yeah, I just want to add that I think this is a new fund. And we are figuring it out. And I think that my perspective is that these funds are intended to be used to invest in child care and early learning, period. And where those go and who those go to, I think, can be discussed and then decided.

I think the most important thing is we're investing in those areas in a really meaningful way. So I think that's part of the fun of this process, right? We get to debate that. So I would just say that I don't believe that these funds are intended to only be additive. I think that this is why we have this board in place and we have this process in place.

So I think each year we're going to have to have these hard conversations about how to invest these funds in the most strategic way. And so I just wanted to put that on the table as well, is that it does still fit the intent, I think, of what the voters voted for. And we can discuss how that's done each year. And through the Chair, I will say that I think that there are nuances in that discussion, right? There is language that the voters approved that said that this fund will make the highest and best use of existing ASD programs, buildings as available because This is related to childcare.

And the alcohol tax has a limitation on any funding must be over and above X baseline level in order to be considered for this fund. But I'm not aware that the marijuana tax has that same limitation on it. And the limitation in particular on the alcohol tax was specific to municipal services. So it's a municipal service baseline, but this is not a municipal service baseline. This is a funding baseline for essentially a pass-through mechanism.

And I think the, that's all the statements that have been made before by Ms. Quinn-Davidson and Member Presverdia and Chair Brawley is that this is how we work through this stuff as it's new and figure out what it looks like in a resource-constrained environment where we don't have enough money to fund the core services that we have that the community is demanding. This limited availability means that we are making decisions that have real real impacts, and we're keeping that in mind for 2027 and what it means for what the available revenue is. But I think that everybody should consider themselves, you know, aware and put on notice that if you receive grant revenue or any kind of revenue from the municipality, you should talk to us in the next 12 months because it will be impacted in the next 2 years if we don't figure out more revenues or different revenues to come into this funding stream and the way we operate our budget. So I think, I think everybody is moving with the best of intentions. It's just a challenging environment.

So I don't have other members in the queue. Two other quick things I'll mention. The fund balance, it is important to note that the fund went into effect in 2024 and there were not decisions about where the money would be spent until starting in 2025. So the fund balance is partly unspent funds. It's also partly an extra year of funding that had not been programmed at that point.

So that's the other source of that. And then also to note, my understanding of Proposition 14 that created the ACE Fund, the language around using existing ASD facilities was partly a result of the discussion around school closures and relocating childcare programs into that. So I think that there's an open question about whether programming could be interpreted that way versus the facility. But so with that, I think we are almost at 1:30. Thank you, Ms. Quinn-Davison, for joining us.

And with that, I think we will take our half-hour lunch break. So folks are invited to come get lunch, and then we will pick back up with the other departments. And I'll check in with Ms. Krause around timing, because I know we also have a number of our enterprise utilities folks. Stay tuned for order of business.