Houston: Regular Scheduled City Council Meeting 10.08.2026

Councilmember Johansen? Here.

Uh, Councilmember Courtney?

Here.

Council Member Lewis. Here.

Council Member Khan. Here. Council Member Mitchell, I believe, is a little late. Deputy Mayor Brazell. Here.

Mayor Kohl. Here. Mayor, we have a quorum. Okay, I will say the invocation. Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this day.

Lord, I'd ask that you would be with us, give us your wisdom, give us directions for the people and citizens of Houston, that we make wise and good choices for them and future Houston. And I just ask that in the precious Lord's name, Jesus. Amen. Amen.

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

Moses, to approval of the agenda. I will make a motion to approve the agenda. I'll second. Any items from anyone?

Uh, Council Member Khan, Council Member Doherty?

Hearing none, is there anything from the council? Not Take a vote. This is spelling, uh, on page 3, legal, forgot the L. That's all.

Can I add something?

May I add something? Yeah, the, uh, minutes for the last meeting, September 10th. Says agenda, not minutes, so it should be minutes. Yes, I'll fix it once they're approved.

Motion's been made and seconded to approve the agenda. Council Member Lewis. Aye.

Councilmember Khan.

Aye.

Councilmember Johansen.

Aye.

Deputy Mayor Bresil.

Aye. Councilmember Courtney.

Aye.

Mayor Kohl. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Okay, that brings us down to reports then.

Senator Roucher, you have anything you want to So, uh, appreciate it. Thank you. Uh, today we had a, uh, we had a resource committee meeting. It was with the House and the Senate, and on the agenda was, uh, ADA. It was the, uh the land, I guess, transformation.

And what they discussed was there were a lot of questions, there was a lot of concern about where Ada was and whether they were going to go through with the actual transfer of the land. And my—. There was never really that, that actually came out, but There was some things that were kind of weird to me, and one of them was that it seemed like, uh, ADA thought that the comment periods were something that they could take into consideration, but no matter how bad they were, how good they were, it would not change their opinion, uh, if they wanted to still go on with the transfer of the land. That was what I was getting at. Now, I did ask a question about the data center, uh, and I basically asked if they were going to actually think about removing it because we had heard that they would take that out of the mix.

And it didn't seem like any question that I asked probably would give that opinion that they were ever going to do that. So it was going to stay no matter what. Does that mean they got a data center in mind? They kept saying no. They also said that there's no future for a data center here because of energy, because of, uh, the, uh, oh, you got a fiber optic line, few other things.

And, uh, so they did say they were going to keep that in. And since they said they were going to keep that in, that just tells me the whole land trade is going to happen. And they did say that The, uh, the government here in Houston has a big say as to what happens inside their area. They also said that the Matsuburo has a big say as what happens inside Matsuburo. Um, they didn't say they were going to ignore the many, uh, comments that they got.

They're going to read them all and they're going to make some, probably some decisions later after they've, they've calculated all of the limite that they got. But I just thought that the takeaway is it's going to happen. So, um, that's what I was getting.

Um, what they— what they're actually wanting to do with it, I don't know. Um, I don't think they know. Uh, I don't think they've decided anything about what they're going to do, but they're just going to keep the same placards that can possibly happen in that area. We also have another meeting coming up. I think we moved it to the 26th of this month for the Senate to go over some more stuff.

Now, the Senate also brought up the land out in Point Mac, and because there's this concern over that land too, they were actually thinking about the constitutionality of it all is what they were trying to do. Um, I'm not sure how that's going to pan out because we had lawyers that couldn't answer the questions correctly. Not that they couldn't answer correctly, that was a bad choice of words. They couldn't answer them completely. So, um, because I guess they weren't really for that, that type of, uh, a discussion.

So that's the takeaway on that. There is a meeting coming up on the 26th, um, and, uh, we just have meetings all day long. I've been to 7 today. So I've been to one more, and I was just another one with the DOT just a little bit ago, but they were talking about District 29 and that one. So, uh, but anyway, uh, that's pretty much the wrap-up.

Any questions?

No. All right, thank you. Thank you. Uh, I would— this would also be a time I'd normally have Kevin McCabe, our rep, come up, but he has told me he'd be late. Uh, he, he has had meetings all day with DOT.

One of them was here. Um, I can tell you that they— I've invited Jacob to our planning and zoning meeting to talk about the northern section of the improvements, and I think he said that would be done in 20 '27, the construction. And the southern section— did I say southern? I meant northern section would be '27. And then southern section from the bridge to Big Lake is 2029, 2030 is that target range.

And I, from what I understand, all the funding is there. The planning is already in place for it. So if Kevin shows up, I'll interrupt and let him fill in anything I missed, but that's kind of the gist of what I heard today.

That brings us down to my report. Mayor, excuse me, for the record, Council Member Mitchell has joined the meeting at 6:05. Very good, thank you.

Um, does anybody have any questions on my report at all? I was just going to ask you where we're standing with looking for public, uh, we are going to go back out for that this month. Um, I had a couple people I had talked with. I decided they weren't the fit that I would like to present here. So, um, we are going to run that advertisement, uh, start probably starting Monday.

Oh, I've been actively looking, but, um, we can go through a— we've had an advertised program, but if as it ages it goes to the bottom of the list. What we're going to do now is bump it back to the top of the list so that, you know, it'll get more eyes again. But, um, the one— the candidates I've had, uh, I'm not— I'm not— I mean, I'd rather keep doing what I'm doing than have to retrain a public works director. What I'd like is to find a good solid person for Houston.

We haven't had any traffic from the, uh, posting on the website either.

So, and then that brings us down. If no one else has any questions for me on my report, I'll bring up the Alaska Housing folks.

Seeing none— oh, they're right there. We don't even have to bring them up.

And this is Stacy Barnes and Daniel Delfino, I think is how you pronounce that.

Good evening, Mayor Cole, members of the Houston City Council. Thank you very much for allowing and inviting AHFC to be here with you this evening. For the record, my name is Stacy Barnes. I'm our Director of Governmental Relations and Public Affairs. I'm here with my colleague Daniel Delfino.

We do have a slide deck, and if it's acceptable to you, Mr. Mayor, we thought we would go through this a little bit to talk in some of the detail about what AHFC has been doing across the state as it relates to housing development and overcoming some of the challenges of affordability across the state. So, uh, if you don't mind, please moving to slide 3. Very briefly, I just wanted to share with you that there is a great deal of information that's available to you on our website, and I understand that you might have this in your packets as well. So it's slide number 3. There's a picture, uh, it says ahfc.us.

I know that a lot of times people think about the work that we do in the energy efficiency space, or perhaps seeing or providing grants to Alaskans, but one of the things that I wanted to call your attention to is the work that we do around home mortgages. And I was looking at our portfolio just today. About 60% of all of the home loans that AHFC invests in— and when I say invest, I mean we work with the private sector, local banks and credit unions, to be able to offer home loans to Alaskans, and then we buy those loans— about 60% of them are outside of Anchorage. About 8% of them are veterans, and about 40% of them are first-time homebuyers. And within that first-time homebuyer space, if you'll turn next to the next slide on headwinds, a question of affordability is something that we've continued to hear increasingly across the country.

And whether it's related to local zoning issues, whether it's the cost of lumber that we all know went up dramatically during the pandemic, the cost of labor, or specifically to Alaska, the logistics that it takes to get homes built outside of, uh, outside of the lower 48. The cost of land is one of those areas where we can really help to move the needle and bring the cost of housing down. AHFC's My Home interest rate, and that is for anybody who comes in and qualifies for a mortgage today, is 7%. And so I asked our mortgage director to pull together some information for us. And in the Matsu Borough in 2022, the average sales price of a home was $382,000.

So far this calendar year, it's up to $453,686.

So what does that mean for a potential home buyer who needs to put down a down payment? If they're looking at 20% down, that's $90,000. And so a couple of years ago, we were in front of the legislature and, um, had the opportunity to work with them on a bill that would decrease the down payment that's required to get into home ownership. And the very minimum that it would take in 2026 to get into one of those average price homes is $22,000 at a 95% loan-to-value or 5% down. The legislation allowed for 3% down, but you still need to come up with $13,000.

And I think more tellingly, at a 7.5% interest rate in either of those scenarios, your home mortgage is over $3,000. And so when we talk about affordability, I just wanted to sort of set the stage for what kind of definitions of affordable housing are sometimes used in public debate and conversation around HUD standards or those kinds of things. But when we think about affordability, it's a much broader conversation. And so with that, I'd like to turn it over to my colleague, Mr. Delfino, to move to the next slide and talk about some of the work that we've been doing statewide. Thanks, Stacy.

Uh, thank you, uh, Mayor Kohl, and thank you to all the people for coming out here. Uh, we don't always get invited to the communities to explain what we do, and we appreciate the opportunity to talk about this because, uh, I understand the notices that went out and what's been going through people's heads when they've been reading that. And I think it's quite a bit different than what we've been looking at. So for the folks in the audience who may be nervous, I'll just jump right ahead and say the end of this is there is no model where a large-scale rental development for very low-income housing works in this community. That's not something that pencils under any scenario unless there's some massive investment that doesn't exist with resources that we don't have at our disposal.

So I'm going to go through how we got here, but I just wanted to put folks at ease because I think that's what people automatically assume when they hear—. I did. Sorry. Yeah, I mean, the way it was written, that's— I assumed that sort of thing. So yeah, it's a, it's a great point, Your Honor.

And it's one of the things that we learn when we have these conversations is when we talk about doing things affordably, or when we think about ourselves at Alaska Housing, we mean something different to communities when they hear that Alaska Housing is coming to town with the development. We do a lot of different things, but what they associate our brand with is something that might be entirely different than what we're talking about. So if I, if I could move forward to that slide, why we're here. A couple of years ago— well, not just a couple of years ago— there's been a bit of a housing crisis in the state for a bit. And one of the things a lot of folks don't know is that less than 1% of our state is privately owned.

Almost all of Alaska is either owned by tribal organizations, state government, or the federal government. This is something we actually confirmed with the folks at the Department of Natural Resources, uh, earlier in this year. So when we're trying to think about ways that we can expand housing opportunities for Alaskans, it's difficult when you can't buy land. So with the public landholders that we have in the state, we were asked a couple of years ago by the folks in the legislature through a new program that they created called the Statewide Housing Development Program. It's basically, here's $4 million, can you go and start having a conversation with the public entities that have land to see if there's anything you can do to unlock that land for Alaskans so it can be developed into housing?

It wasn't an ask to get every acre you can and develop low-income rental housing. It was just a broad, can we expand housing for Alaskans? This could be market-rate housing, it could be multifamily that's market rate, it could be affordable housing, it could be for sale homeownership. It was just do something because right now the land isn't doing anything for Alaskans. So what we started was a conversation with all the agency heads at these groups, the Mental Health Trust, Land Office, Natural Resources, the University, and we tried to get a sense of what they had that was close to where people lived.

As if it was out in the middle of nowhere, not connected to roads, this didn't do us any good. So we tried narrowing down the scope of where the properties were located, and then we tried to get a sense of, can it even be developed? Are there things that we can tell from a map or from Anchorage or from the resources that we have? We use the hunting app Onyx a lot. It ended up being one of the best property records things out there, uh, to cross a bunch of properties off the list and then work down to properties that warranted a site visit, say, does this actually make sense to do something with the resources?

Some of the resources that we had, we had the ability to buy properties. Others, like with the Department of Natural Resources, we were seeing if they could transfer it under a state or charitable use, public use thing to Alaska Housing so we could just not have to, not have to purchase it and develop or transfer the benefit over to the development equation. So we were working with a lot of public agencies to get a sense of what was out there and what were the barriers that had stopped these lands from coming into the inventory for Alaskans. And then to see what we could do to move forward with the first test cases that we thought had the best track or best prospects of moving forward. So if we can move to the next slide.

What ended up happening as a result of that is we closed on a bunch of properties using federal money with the University of Alaska last year in September, so right around now.

It was close to 700 acres, and we picked it up in the valley in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and we'd made site visits to every single one of these facilities. And in the process, we had said no to a number of facilities and a number of lands for one reason or another. There were prohibitive site issues, there were issues that we would have to deal with holding land before it could be developed. And we had— we didn't name it when it didn't work out, but we received pushback from the community that they thought this was going to be a bad investment to develop in their community. So it's one of the things that I want to get across to you at the table and the folks in the audience is that when we come to your communities, a big part of this process is we listen to what you say and we try to make sure that when we come back to you with a result or the next step in the process, that you see that your feedback was incorporated.

And that's what led to some of the properties moving forward and some of the properties falling off, is being respectful of the community partners that were going to be critical for us to move forward. So, uh, like I said, we purchased about 700 acres, uh, close to 700 acres, and then we helped the University of Alaska, provide some funds to them so they could improve land that was underwater that they couldn't sell to housing developers. We didn't care if we developed it or if someone else developed it. We just wanted to make sure public land became housing for Alaskans and that we got it off the sideline. So we were agnostic as to the way that it went forward.

We just wanted to make sure that housing was the end product. So some of it we purchased, some of it we improved through partners. Um, the end result of this is where we sit now as of October 8th, is that, uh, through the RFPs and things that we did with this land, we have about 740 housing units that are going to be coming online. Across the state as a result of these efforts on the properties that we closed last year. The lion's share of these units that are coming online are for sale, homeownership.

These are not income-restricted units. These are units that your public works director, depending on what they make— there are no income tests for your public works director, people that you hire in your businesses, the folks in this room— Alaskans should be able to afford a place to live. So when we're talking about affordable, we just mean someone that we hire with a job can go and buy a home for their family, and that's it. It, it's not the public perception that I think a lot of people assume when they hear Alaska Housing. It just means any one of us, or your kid who might have come back from college or something like that, can actually buy a starter home.

These are the units that we're talking about. So if we can go to the next slide. The process that we used to do this was to look at the lands, and the lands would only work if we did a decent job in our due diligence. The only way that we can turn lands into housing without additional capital resources that we don't have at a scale to develop 700 acres is to buy land that's good enough that when you take the land costs out of the equation, it makes the numbers work for a developer who is pairing up a housing product with a borrower or a home buyer who's coming in with mortgage equity. That was the process that we used because development is so prohibitive in most of the state that, um, the construction costs sometimes are higher than what they can sell it for.

So we were trying to get it down to a reasonable margin where people could actually build, afford to build something and then sell it. And with the communities that we invested in, we thought the margins on these properties and the communities allowed this process to actually work. So when we said some I just said 740 units are going to come online. That's the process. It's, uh, money that AHFC used to close on the properties.

It's probably well north of $150 million in builder equity and construction financing that's going to come on to generate that development. There are millions of owner equity that's going in in the construction period to make these happen that's going to be at risk before. So there's a lot of buy-in between HFC and the private sector and the home builders. It's a lot of folks coming together, meetings with the folks in the communities that these properties were located in ahead of time to make sure that they were comfortable with our approach, and that if they had concerns about our approach, that we incorporated those into the process before we released it. So those 740 units, these were things that were done in partnership by having conversations around the table like this with the elected leaders in every single one of those communities.

It's a public process, and by that, sometimes folks think of public process as this meeting that's happening right now. What we think of at Alaska Housing as a public process is we're not giving it to Uncle Bob. We're going and we're putting something in the paper that is open and above board for everyone to compete for, and that there's a fair chance for every builder who wants to compete for these proposals to submit a proposal to develop it in the best interest of the state. That it goes through a competitive review process where we have competent builders from the private sector looking at the proposals. So we make the land available to folks through that public process.

So there's accountability and very clear expectations for everyone as to what it will take to get the bid. Uh, so like I said, with that, it's a broad range. We leveraged what we knew our private sector partners would do. Uh, someone is not going to take a 40-acre parcel and sit on it and put up a duplex. They have an incentive to maximize the units.

They have an incentive to work within the boundaries of the market. We weren't worried about Elon Musk coming and trying to build a $20 million thing because he wants to come up to this part of the state on vacation. We trusted that the builders would develop something that was consistent with the market. That's how we were able to leverage this process, and we brought partners in that we had never seen partner with any of our programs through this effort. Um, the per-door cost that we were able to get as a return on this is like nothing I've ever really seen in any of our programs.

So we can go to the next slide. This is where we get to DNR. Natural Resources was actually one of the first departments that we spoke with. They weren't able to move as quickly as the university. The university had a land office that was used to selling land, and they had pretty good data.

The And not to pick on the folks at DNR, they have a very different process. So that took a little bit longer. The benefit of DNR though is that these are properties that we would not have to purchase. We were able to have a conversation with them and say, we don't understand all of your maps. Can you please give us an inventory of what you have in the state and tell us what's next to where people live?

And then let's have a conversation about properties and try and whittle it down. And that's how we came up with the properties that we looked at here. We got there with their help. We didn't just start hunting and picking off onyx or what we could see and say, give us this, or I like that property. It was an engagement process of back and forth with the folks.

The example I show here is of a property in Seward. This was a property that DNR issued a preliminary notice on at the same time your community was a subject of a notice. When we submitted the application for the Seward property, We were doing this work in November through February. Snow was on the ground. We didn't have the ability to go out and do site visits.

We submitted the application because we were told that when you submit an application, it is not an irrevocable election. If something happens and you do your site visit or you find that it's contaminated, or we go to a meeting like this and the community says absolutely not, we have the ability to pull it. We would not have submitted the application had it— we been told it was an irrevocable action. It's not. Uh, with the Seward property, when that notice went out, we got a call from a couple of the members of the community saying, what are you doing?

I live right next to there. You're going to have to pave a road through my house to be able to access the site. We got in the car, a couple of days later we were down there walking the properties with the community members, and it took all of 30 seconds to realize this is a prohibitive slope. There are massive trees that would cost way too much money to cut down. You have erosion.

This is not going to work. This in February looked fine on Google. Walking it in August, it did not. So it's like, okay, the application is still in there, but it's not going to go anywhere. And that was a commitment that we made to the folks down in Seward when he had a conversation like this a couple of weeks ago about this property.

So I just hold that up to say that we do the best we can when we're starting these to pre— to preserve options, but we don't go ahead and try and make everything work just because we put our name on it and we said we're going to go forward. If we see it doesn't work, we incorporate the feedback. We're willing to say, if this doesn't work, it doesn't make any more sense, and we'll pull out of it. We're not going to throw good money after bad to try and make everything work just because we submitted an application. Which brings us to your community on the last slide.

The same thing, there has been no site visit to this parcel. This was— it looks maybe like this could work. It could work under a couple of conditions. A, you have to approve it. AHFC does not control land use decisions, and we have no interest in engaging in fights with the community to say you need to change it or you need to maintain it.

So we work with whatever the community says can be done with this property. If you don't want this to be housing, it's not going to be housing in our book, and we're not going to fight anyone on it. When we looked at this parcel, the next step for us was to do a site visit, to do some sort of market analysis, have a conversation with you and go, okay, the only way that I can see this working from my years— I've been in Alaska Housing for about 18 years now— without equity is a home builder would have to come in and be interested in buying or building a home that they know they can sell to someone in their community. And that's someone that's going to have to have a mortgage that can pay that builder X number of hundreds of thousands of dollars for that unit. And if the economics work and that's something that the community wants, that's something that can move forward.

I can tell you from doing this, I don't see how any sort of rental development could work in this community with this land that we're talking about with DNR. Uh, I don't think it would be feasible in a spatial sense, and from an operational sense, the cost to operate a property wouldn't be offset by the rents that would be achievable in this market. So I don't want folks to walk away with just, oh yeah, he's saying it because he knows that we want to hear this. The math doesn't work for rental property in this community, and I just don't see how it would work. The only way I could actually see this moving forward is for a home builder who had interest and confidence in the market that they could build something that someone in the community could afford to buy.

So with that, I think that's the end of our prepared remarks, but we're here to basically be accountable to you and answer any questions that you have about the process that we haven't addressed. Well, if the council doesn't mind, I'd like to let the public weigh in first, and then we'll have a shot at them.

Okay, anybody in the public have a question for them? I have lots of questions. So, um, Um, first I want to say that I do appreciate the program that you guys do, you know, and making an effort to offer affordable housing to individuals. I've actually taken part of it 30 years ago, um, and so there are good programs out there, but The main question that I would start with is if your target is affordable housing, why are these all lakefront properties?

That's a great question. When we looked at what DNR had, the fact that they were lakefront caused a bit of a debate with me and one of the people who was working on this. I was like, we can't develop this, it's probably a swamp. He was like, no, no, no, I've been up there, I think this might actually work. It wasn't that we were looking for lakefront property.

We were looking for land that DNR owned that was close to a road in a community. For the same reason that sewer didn't work out, we did not want to buy, or not in this case, we didn't want to acquire anything that would involve a new road that goes through people's communities. We knew that that was a deal killer for a lot of folks. So we were looking for property that DNR owned that was close to a road. We did not want anything that was next to a trail.

There were a bunch of properties that were close to trails, and we're like, this is a nightmare. The public uses the trails. That's gonna be a horrific fight with the community. It's not worth it. That's not why we're here to do this.

Apparently there were a couple of trails that we didn't know about on some of the other parcels that we're gonna be responding to, but that was a big part of it. And it wasn't so much that we were looking for lakefront property. It's just that that's the property that they had. In the community, uh, that was available. There was a lot of property that DNR had that was just unusable, so we were trying to whittle it down to a property where something could theoretically be developed.

It's not that we passed on other properties in Houston, um, it was that— that was what we had and we thought it could actually work. Okay, so are you aware that the property on the east South side of Cherry Lake does not have road access. Uh, we have not done— for the properties that we closed on last year with the university, we went out in the rubbery boots and went past people shooting targets and walked all the different sites. We had not done that level with this, and that's the thing that we're trying to be honest with all of you about. This—.

There was a level of due diligence that had not been done. And would have to take place before we even move forward with the transfer. Uh, the thing that we did, what we were told would preserve the option to develop a property— if this goes forward, um, they would issue a determination, and then we could do more due diligence on the site. And there would be a bunch of different steps and surveys and things that we would have to go through before we would formally get entitled to the property. And at any point along the way, if we walked down there and we said the soil doesn't work to build anything here, you can't build a road, we have some community feedback where this doesn't work, we would have the ability to pull it at that point.

So I'm going long-winded there because I suspect there are a lot of questions that you all can ask me about this. You know your community way better than we do. So some of these things are probably ahead of where we are in the process. Okay, so have you—. You haven't done site visits to these?

4 Properties yet? These properties, no. Okay. Um, well, I did write you, and so you are aware, but the property on the south end of Cherry Lake, um, is a migratory bird nesting site as well as a salmon-bearing stream. And then it's also very heavily forested with black spruce.

So if you're targeting properties for development, that's not one you can develop. Yeah, and not, not without an effect to the environment. So it's, uh, I'm happy you brought this up because this is— when we looked at the parcels from Natural Resources, some of them were quite large, and we carved out a bunch of ones. We're like, okay, this, this is too big, or there's an issue like you're talking about that we can see, there's a trail. So we would ask them, cut this out and break it down to a smaller section.

So when we go through this process, and if there's a, um, there's a critical habitat or something like that, there's some environmental issue that we're coming up on, we have the ability to extricate that parcel from the larger request that we have. And then it's just a question of, do we have enough property to make it worthwhile, or who have we cut down to the bone on the request? Um, so that would be one of the things that we look at. And if we do run into issues that make it so we can't develop it, or the community doesn't want us to develop it, we chop it out. And if we've chopped out too much to have it not make any sense anymore, then it wouldn't go forward.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay, seeing none, Council, do you have any questions for me?

I was just wondering, um, so for the land that you would acquire from DNR that you said that you wouldn't have to purchase that land, whereas the university, you purchased that land. But, uh, so if you guys acquired the land for free, what does the transaction look like between you and the builder, or how, how does that look? Sure. Uh, so that's a great question, and that is one of the values that we have as the type of agency that we are, is that when we acquire land, there's no holding cost for us. Whereas, like, in Anchorage, there are parcels that I know developers have purchased that they're getting eaten alive by holding costs.

And that gets factored into the return that they have to calculate when they do something with it. With the public and charitable use provision at DNR, if they sign off and say housing for Alaskans at a good price point is consistent with the charitable use, the step in their process— and if someone from DNR was here, I'm sure they go, you're using the wrong words to describe— so I'll ask for a little bit of grace here. The public comment process goes forward, and if they decide, yep, we're, we're sticking with this determination, we think what HFC is proposing qualifies, the next step in the process is they give us a checklist and they say you have to go out and survey the property, you have to do X, Y, and Z things. I don't know if that involves a plat, like there are a bunch of administrative steps that involve us spending money and time. To give DNR what they need to formally transfer the title to us.

We don't have to take that title at any time, like there's no clock that says you have to complete it within 12 months or 24 months. It's odd, it seems to actually go on for quite some time. If we satisfy all of those steps, uh, for the surveys, then the title comes to Alaska Housing. At that point, that's when we would start something with, uh, our an RFP or some sort of formal process so that builders could propose plans for developing the sites. Maybe they don't have critical habitats.

I mean, like, if for whatever it is that we have left through that process, uh, we've given folks, I want to say, about maybe 3 or 4 months to put their ideas together in various stages, and then they submit an initial design to us. They give us financial capacity to make sure that we get a sense that if we move forward with the developer, they have the financial capacity to work with a construction lender and to pay their crew through a 24-month construction cycle, things like that. They have the liquidity to move forward. Uh, so we have an evaluation committee made up of builders look at these things, look at the team's resumes and what they've got. We would issue a preliminary award based on the proposal that they would submit And then we would give them milestones to hit to say, you have to start construction, you have to submit plans to us by X date.

And it would depend on where we are in the building cycle when we make these awards. But we would want to make sure that they're ready to start construction by the following year when they get to summer. For— want the properties, they don't care about the taxes so much. They want the properties immediately. We can give them a lease and convert to a deed when construction is complete.

We can give them title to the property, um, that says the title is yours, and it's kind of like a reversion clause, only it's called a fee simple determinable according to lawyers. We say, here's the title of the property, you get it for 24 months. If you don't have a certificate of occupancy, it immediately goes back to Alaska Housing. We could put in provisions like that so they could get a lease or they could get a deed. There would be a restriction that enforced, but that would be recorded on the land for whatever it is that they built.

And the one common theme that we've had with all of the lands that we've made available for housing development is that it can't be turned into short-term rentals. It has to be year-round housing for Alaskans. I don't know if that fully answered your question. So does the, does the builder have to then sell the home? That's a requirement for them to sell the home, just like for affordable—.

That's a great question. Could a developer just go in there and build a house and live in it? Uh, owner-occupied housing, that would be a lot for this. Um, we have not— it would be something under our existing rules that they would actually have to disclose. Just thinking through out loud, we do have a prohibition in almost all of our procurements for people living in properties or financially benefiting personally from the product that they're building.

With corporation funds. So again, I'm thinking on the spot, recalling, recalling these procedures. I think there is a prohibition on a builder occupying a unit they build for themselves, right? Because the idea is to make an affordable house for somebody to live in. Yeah, the idea, sir, is, um, and that's why I want to caution everyone because I don't want folks to think that I just lied to them when I say affordable.

When we think about affordable, affordable can mean different things to different people. If you look at a federal housing program, like say in Anchorage, a federal housing program may say an affordable rent is $1,700— under a federal housing— okay, yeah, federal housing program may say $1,700 a month for a one-bedroom. I think close, but that's not a precise figure. The market rents in Anchorage may actually be $1,400 a month. Affordability in federal programs means a percentage of your income.

It doesn't care what the market is doing. And we have seen in some communities that affordable housing can be more expensive than what the market bears if incomes have risen very quickly and the market hasn't caught up. What we think of when we're talking about affordable housing outside of the program world is, does the average Alaskan— inable housing for a person with a job who who works 40 hours a week, can a married couple with a couple of kids, can they find a place that they can afford to pay without having to worry about food or skimping out on something? It's not a program definition, and I think that's what folks think of when they hear of Alaska Housing and affordable housing. They're thinking of a federal program.

When we're talking about it in this context, we're talking about what's achievable for an average Alaskan. Okay, so I guess as far as the process goes, you guys get the land for— I guess you said you got survey costs. There's, there's a little overhead in that. Um, when the transfer is awarded to a builder, what do they pay for that land to do that job? Uh, they would pay us nothing, sir, for that, and the benefit would go through to the Alaskans who are purchasing the property.

Okay. Yeah, that's all Anyone else? Council members online, you have any questions?

Hearing none. I've got a question. Real quickly, uh, do you publish, um, the market analysis for the, uh, housing demand supply data that's specific to Houston?

Sure, we have a bunch of data and I'll explain the data that we have. So we have data from rental properties that we funded that we monitor and we can see their cash flows. That's usually in the affordable housing space. We can track their absorptions, their occupancy rates, things like that. We also, to make sure that our programs aren't crowded crowding out the private sector.

That, like when I talked about affordability, I don't want to make— I don't want to see any of our programs funding something and call it affordable and then find out that our affordable housing is more expensive than what people in the market are paying for a private sector apartment. That's bad. So to make sure that we don't do that, HFC pays for a survey every year that goes through the Department of Labor where we canvass the state and we just look at private sector rentals, we say there can't be any income restrictions on any of these units. How much are you renting the unit for, and is it occupied? So we have a rental market survey that we get.

It's sent out every March, and we've been doing this for over 20 years. So we can track that and say, what is the private sector market doing relative to the affordable housing space? We publish that for a bunch of communities, and I can't remember if Houston is on it, but If the data has less than 100 observations for a community, we don't publish it because we don't want to freak the community out because of the large spikes that we have when there are variations in a small dataset. So we may have information for Houston specifically on that, but I don't think traditionally we publish it because of the number of observations we have. And then we have the lender activity from the private sector lenders that we survey.

We do not have access to the online lenders like Rocket Mortgage or some of the other people. So we have Northrim, we have First National, we have a lot of the Alaskan lenders that will report data to us, and we can track those loans. So that's the access to the data that we would have for your community.

With the, with the research that you've done, whether it's published or not, would you be able to ascertain what the, what the market I mean, it is for rental. Uh, yes, before we move forward with, uh, properties, um, like, there's a gentleman's question about like an RFP process and all that. We commission a market analysis for the communities before we do that. There's a property in Anchorage where we're going to this, and we asked a market study firm— I'm just using this as an example of, uh, we look and say, okay, what's next to this property? So what are the homes like in this neighborhood?

What do those sell for and what is an achievable sales price for that? And we'd ask the same questions about rents. So when we move forward with the big investment like this, that's the type of analysis that we do to make sure when we're doing the RFP that we're setting achievable objectives for the builders and we're not just playing desk jockey from Anchorage about your community saying, we think the rents are achievable at this level. But that's a step that we haven't done yet, but that would be a part of our process. Is it potentially like one outcome?

Could it be that you just sit on the property because you deem that it's not worthy to develop? Uh, so in that case, sir, we're, we're not interested in acquiring property just for the sake of becoming land barons, and that's why we didn't move forward with a lot of the parcels from the university. There was a federal resource that actually made it possible for us to buy property, more property than we could develop. Um, we didn't want to do that because we didn't want to sit on properties. It could be better used by other people for maybe some other use other than housing.

So if we don't see a viable path forward, it's not something that we would achieve just to go, oh, we can get it, so let's put it in our pocket. Um, that's not something we've done. I, I thought that it was already a done deal. The conveyance was— I misunderstood that. Okay, is there a date when that's final then?

Oh yeah, sir. So, um, the way that the process works, as it was explained to us by our friends over at DNR, is that we, we walk through this process where we're looking at the maps and the lands, and we say, okay, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe this, this hasn't We haven't developed— no, at this stage, so we can submit an application to preserve the option. We submitted an application to them and we said we're interested in this land.

They take that and they go through their analysis to say, do we even own it? Are there title issues? Are there X number of things that we can see make it so we can't do this? And then if they get through that process, they send it off to their folks to write a decision going, we think this is consistent with the public charitable use. They issue a preliminary determination that goes out for comment, and that's the thing that freaked a lot of folks out around the state, because it's like, wow, HFC is coming to all of our communities with low-income rental housing as far as the eye can see.

Uh, there's a public comment process that triggered with that, and at the end of that, they make a decision, and that decision can be appealed to the commissioner And after the commissioner, it can be appealed to Superior Court. If it goes through all of those steps, then the next stage in the process is that they give us the ability to move forward with all of those soft costs, doing surveys. That's where we start spending money. And then we have to go through their checklist before we can acquire the property. At any step along the way, HFC can pull our application.

So it is not a done deal. It's not a foregone conclusion that we're going to do anything. All we have been doing, and the entire thing that we confirmed every step of the way, was that nothing we were doing was set in stone. That if there was feedback that we received from the community, or we saw that the site wasn't developable, we were not committed to taking title to the property. Nothing has been done that can't be undone at this stage.

Thank you. Thank you.

I have several myself.

Um, so that this particular area, the city has done some investment in the past, and not that I blame private sector to come in and try to make money, that's not— I don't have any problem with that personally, but this particular land DNR has had, and now you guys are going to get in, and now we're going to try to— if you can get it, which would be better in your hands, I'm sure, than DNR's, because they've done nothing.

Um, is there a way where that property, when it's being developed, that could share in the cost of upgrading some of those areas that I'm I mean, the residents have already been putting money into that area for a while, and if, if, if you're involved in that deal with a contractor, is there a way for the city to have, uh, requirements into your projects? Sure. So Mr. Mayor, when we've picked up the properties to date, it's the same process that we would use with this, and I think we even said this in the application, but Department of Natural Resources is that we work with the local communities.

When housing is being developed, uh, it's quite common for there to be, uh, especially if there's a new community or housing going up that's not part of an established subdivision, uh, maybe utility upgrades or road, road things that need to be factored in. So it's quite common for that actually to be a a part of the discussion and to be a part of the development budget. Uh, there are a number of ways to actually tackle that. Uh, the limit— and I don't want to overpromise this— is that it has to be accommodated by the economics of the subdivision. So there's a ceiling in terms of how much capital is there to address it.

But if there are overlapping priorities, we're happy to entertain that. When we've, uh, acquired some of these properties, like there were A couple of the communities, we said, we can do this a couple of different ways. HFC can write an RFP and we can try and establish criteria for what gets done in your community, and we can publish it to the builder community. Or if you're interested, uh, we can talk about maybe leasing it to you and letting you run that parcel. A lot of people have said, we'd prefer that you do it, this is what you do, and we've done it.

There has actually been a community was like, uh, we would like to do it ourselves. So we lease them the property and said, here's the property, you have site control now, you can do it, it's your community, you can talk to your neighbors. So if there's a preference on how you want to handle that, or how you view your partnership and the way that you want to see that go forward, if we can work with you with the funding that we have, we do it. Um, it's just we're capped by the resources that we have, but the partnership That's the thing that's been the common thread to all of the communities that we've worked in, is sitting down and saying, what do you want us to do? What do you wanna do?

And if you can do it, we get out of your way. And a question on the long line that Christine asked was, in an area where it's not buildable, but you have it in your ask, so to speak, instead of returning it back to DNR, the agency, is there a mechanism where you would turn it over to Houston, the city? Because that would be something that we would— could, uh, you know, keep it as recreational and so that there's no development in that where we know there should not be. Sure. I don't want to overpromise on this, Mayor.

I know that we can back out of the parcel and not take it. That I know we can do. I don't know that we can keep the parcel as being undeveloped or work with you on that without getting the blessing from DNR, because I wouldn't want to feel like we're changing the deal on them. So I don't know how amenable they would be to that. Can you look into that?

We can. But if, if it came down to that, or it's just part of— it's part of the parcel that doesn't get developed, like the parcels that we purchased from the university, a lot of them were 40-acre parcels where maybe 24 were developable. Do the 24 stay in the hands of the person who we awarded the property to, or do we give it back to the university? We just—. We left it entitled to them.

So it's not unheard of for every acre that we pick up to not be developed. It would just be a question of who owns that parcel and does DNR feel like that ownership is consistent with the commitment that we made to them.

Uh, and then the last thing that I have is, um, should you develop these areas, I know what you've told me, but I think it's important that the public knows that you will be working with the city to— in those developments.

Yes. And Mr. Mayor, I don't expect you to take my word for or really anyone in the community. I think we provided a list of references of other communities that we've worked with, and I think that's the best sign of confidence that I could offer, is that I'd ask you to talk to anyone that we've worked with in this space. Yeah, it's— nothing works without partners. We can't come to meetings like this if we burned people or if we're not respectful of our neighbors.

A person may be able to get away with it once or twice, but you can't do it for any length of time. And how we've been able to make these initiatives moves forward is by talking to people. So nothing would happen before you've seen it. There's another one in Seward, uh, that's about to go live next week. We talked to this city manager before that ever went forward.

We did a presentation to the city council, and they're getting another look at it before it goes live. And it's the same thing that we did with with all the other communities that we worked with. And just so the council knows that I did request that list of, of people, they did send it to me, and I did chat with a few of them. So, um, I just wanted them to be able to tell you, and then I will send you that list also.

Mr. Mayor, for the record again, Stacy Barnes, and as AHFC's Director of Government Relations I note that Senator Rauch and Representative McCabe are here with us today. We are an independent agency of the state of Alaska, and that means that we go to the legislature every year with a budget request. I know that your elected officials at the state capitol will also hold us accountable for continuing to come out here and connect with you in the community to understand what the needs are and to work together in partnership should this effort be successful with DNR. Thank you very much. Is there any last chance anyone?

See, and I really appreciate you guys coming out and sharing with us. Thank you. Thank you.

Since I've seen our Representative McCabe, I'm going to allow him to update us if he wants to of anything he learned.

But Mr. Mayor and members of the assembly, um, thanks for hearing me out. I've been— sorry it was late, traveling all the way between Palmer and Houston twice today. So as the mayor said earlier, uh, and I was listening, we did have the commissioner, the DOT commissioner, out here today. It drove of the road all the way to Willow and back with him and his team. They are committed to doing something with it.

We stopped at the ski jump on the way out of here. Everybody knows what the ski jump is, right, coming out of the mall there on Big Lake Road. So we stopped there and they're discussing ways to repair that somehow so that there are less accidents. And they're— they agreed that there's a sight line problem as you come up to the top of that. So, so that was a positive development.

Um, we talked as well about decision in the next 9 days on the CRISI grant for the rail spur. And one of the things that I think, uh, you know, you mentioned earlier, Mayor, about a planning commission— your planning commission is meeting and you're putting together things for the DOT. I would urge you to consider that Miller's Reach and how that rail spur rail spur is going to come into the state road and make that part of your discussion with the state. And, and if they're going to rebuild that road anyways and they're going to start the planning, they might as well start planning for the growth that's going to happen when that rail spur comes in, in there to Millers Reach. So I felt like it was a pretty productive meeting, and I was happy that the commissioner responded as, as well as he did.

A few other things, uh, I listened to Senator Rauscher talk about, um, the DNR ADA land transfer. Keep in mind that Senator Rauscher was talking about the ADA response to the public comments. All those public comments that you made, that everybody made to, uh, on this transfer, went to the DNR, and the DNR makes the decision on this, whether or not they're going to transfer it to ADA. Much of what you heard from AHFC is exactly the way ADA is going to do it. They may not be as elegant as of talking about it, but there's still any— AHFC doesn't know who is going to buy those houses.

ADA doesn't know what business they're thinking about putting up there. Um, so there will be much public comment, there will be much public process involved if it if in fact it does happen, and I'm not convinced, like Senator Rauscher is, that it's going to happen. I think there's lots and lots of pressure on DNR. I did drive Zero Lake Road maybe 2 days before you all went out there and cleaned it up, and I appreciate you, um, you guys stepping up. It was not as huge a mess as I've seen it before, um, but the last time I was down there I think was 20-plus years ago.

So, um, I, I tend to agree with folks that say, hey, we recreate here, we have a shooting range here, dogsled trails. If in fact DNR says no, I would like your input, and I told Willow this last night, on whether or not maybe we should petition the DNR to make it a state recreation area and make them a little bit more responsive to keeping it clean and, you know, maintaining or helping maintain the trails, or maybe even some money for trails. I don't think we want to go as far as making it a state park. It's a little too restrictive probably, but a recreation area or something like that that would be available to the community, Willow and Houston, might be, might be something good. So still very fluid.

I don't think a decision's been made yet. I don't think there's, uh, there's much to be really concerned about right now. So, um, uh, what else was I going to tell you? There's a, there's some interesting things working with Port McKenzie and with the rail spur and with the roads and everything out there. So, um, I would, uh, it will probably happen before, before your next community council meeting, so keep an eye on that.

If you have any concerns or any input on what's happening with the railroad and with that and with the gas line, um, just feel free to call me and, and I'm happy to pass on or ask questions for you. Or, or anything like that. So, um, that, that's, that's kind of it. We're in the middle of, you know, campaign season, so everybody's running all over the place and meeting with everybody. But as far as legislation, um, that's, uh, that's pretty much all I know.

Anybody have any questions?

Cool. Thanks, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Okay, Burke, you had something on the handbook and policy.

I was supposed to make one and show you.

Sorry, what's in your packet though will be bound and presented, and you'll have one once it's—. Once it's approved. Yeah, it'll look like that, only updated if it's approved. So my apologies for that.

Okay, does anyone have any requests of our directors?

I was going to let each one of them just— I let the clerk, but how about the finance director? Is there anything? Uh, yeah, yeah, well, you can do either or.

Hi, for those of you that I have not met specifically, my name is Cynthia Witcher. I am the treasurer for the City of Houston and I have been here 5 months.

Um, just a real quick, uh, overview of the accounts for August. Our total collected revenue in August was $214,000.

Our expenditures were $286,000.

One of the things that I would like to make note of is that in the very beginning of our budget cycle, we will have Um, some annual disbursements that go out to cover the entire physical year, and that will spike our budget line. But as the year proceeds, you'll see that flatten out. It's because those funds have been spent for the entire annual or physical year's expense, like for instance our insurance, uh, to ACRA. Um, with that said, so some of the highlights: our snowmobile has been, uh, has arrived, has been shipped and arrived, and will be ready for pickup, I would say, in the next few weeks. So that's exciting for Parks and Rec.

Um, collectibles—. The Mat-Su Trails grant is, uh, ripe for final reporting and collection. Uh, that grant we have collected $40,000 on, and there's $10,000 that is still due, and we're, uh, the mayor and I will be working on collecting the balance of those funds. Now, those are funds that have already been expended, so that'll be a reimbursement.

Other collectibles, no, no real activity, but they're out there, are the two judgments, the Adams judgment and Dana Street judgment. Uh, so that is kind of what's, um, and then as far as the finance department, uh, we spent last month, uh, primarily updating, uh, the infrastructure, uh, uh, workflows to meet the reconfigured spending thresholds for the departments. And so that has gone very smoothly so far.

I'm always available for questions. Let me know if I can answer anything or provide clarification. Okay, thank you, Cynthia. Thank you.

Chief, my report's got pretty— my report's got pretty much everything in it. One of the things I do want to mention, just as a side note, positive side note, it's a wonderful inconvenience. So, um, mentioned in my report, we talk about there's some local residents that are providing a— it's an older home for some destructive training for the fire department so we can practice some of our skills. We're going to destroy it, and we have a permit request into DEC from— to burn the home later on when it's safer to do so. Um, but I will say, we're not going to say where the location is because the last thing we want to do is have anybody know where there's a vacant home that they can go move into in the next week.

But we went down there to do some training in our command trucks, not the big fire trucks, our command trucks, the pickups and stuff. And it's happened twice now Um, residents notice people in the neighborhood that are not supposed to be at a house, and we've had the troopers called on us twice. And it's a good thing because that means people are paying attention to their neighbors, and that is a very positive thing for our community to keep an eye out for your neighbors, because that's why we have neighbors, that's why we live in a community. We're all in it together. I just want to point that out as a very nice inconvenience.

Did the trooper show up? We were gone long before they got there.

Okay, I'll just hit the highlights. Next week will be the last of the Public Works group, or, uh, they'll be switching over and getting ready for winter. Um, they've got a couple last-minute projects that they had going. And then they're winterizing— they've already done the campgrounds. They will be doing the rest of the capital projects around here for the plug-ins and the heat trays so we don't have to go through that again.

So all that'll be taken care of here in the next 2 to 3 weeks. So it's, it's been a pretty busy summer, but, um, everything's wrapping up rather quickly now. Other than that, that kind kind of highlights the city's activities. Mayor, I have a question for the Public Works Director. Where's my sign?

Um, the, uh, I know that we're making a lot of positive strides towards improving the road system. What are the challenges that are holding us back from filling the potholes? For example, on just one example, on King Arthur and what kind of timeline, or could you set expectations? The potholes on King Arthur's are scheduled for next week to be filled. And I'm sure there are many other areas, not to discount that.

That's just the one, the only one I drive on. Well, and the grader towards the end of next week will start its regular maintenance through the entire— everything will be graded before winter time so that the roads are flattened out and you know, worth the worst of the worst to be done. It's awful hard when it rains. I will say this, people have decided to drive really fast on our roads, and when they do that, a prime example is right out here on Armstrong. If you—.

We can grade that by, uh, first thing with the leaves And by noon, they'll be, uh, where people are just ripping, and it just throws the rocks, and they're just— folks are just driving too fast. I mean, that's to be honest. You're driving too fast on dirt roads. There's not a road in Houston that's designed— we have one road where it's in design that could go up to 45. I'm afraid to take and put it at 45 because they're already going 65 on some of these things.

It's— I was— short story, I was driving down King Arthur on the curved section by, uh, Bear Paw, and I was going probably 35 miles over what I should have been, and the guy passed me like I was standing still. I mean, it's— you— I'm telling you, you're You're driving way too fast out there and you really need to slow it down. And that's what will preserve your roads a lot better. Leave 5 minutes earlier and at least help with the maintenance on it because you're just going too fast. We cannot keep up.

And that's what some of the problem is. And then the rain adds to it too. But anyhow, I'll get off my soapbox. I mean, that was from the public works director, not the mayor. I'm anxious to see how that new culvert there at, uh, No Name Hill and, uh, where the water pool's right down at the end of King Arthur.

No Name Hill goes down there. What's the crossroad there? Valley Chain, right? Yeah, that, that I think is, was long overdue, and that, that kind of development is good. Um, what other primary areas, what are the, uh, where the high priority roads that that needs to be taken care of?

Well, we've got, and you're gonna have a list of this at the next meeting, and of all the things we actually did this year and why we did them. So that'll be at the November meeting, along with some letters that were passed back and forth from some residents. And I think that exchange will actually help everybody understand what the— what, what rules apply with, uh, for what we look at and how we do maintenance. Because I think there's a lot of ignorance in the public not knowing how it's looked at from the city perspective. And I believe my 5-page response will help people understand that much better.

Um, probably should have been written 5 years ago, but it, it will at least educate the population of Houston of how the Houston city has to deal with our roads. And, um, we've done more work this year than ever on roads, but there is your day-to-day maintenance that is lacking right now. I did call out a temporary, uh, worker from 302, and he's working with us right now. And then He'll fill in through— well, we're going to keep it to the month, the end of the month, because one of the guys is going on vacation. So it'll keep a full crew working towards the end.

But that is one of the benefits of actually having that relationship.

Thank you. How many public work employees do we have, not counting the 302, whatever that we have right now? Well, we have 3 normal 2 normal workers that are out all the time, and one of them's been pretty ill this year for other issues that he's been dealing with. So that was one of the reasons why I decided to call in, um, Tim. And so he's been supplementing whenever that person couldn't, which did set us back a little bit, but, uh, we're managing.

He's get— he's on the end, so we're getting through it. But it was a tough summer.

Anyone else?

Folks, I just couldn't help myself tonight. I've—. There's just so— if you watch people drive down, it's a dust cloud, and you—. It's just—. It's too fast.

It really is. Okay.

That brings us all the way down to public participation.

And our clerk, you want to read into our first public item, or would the council like break? Um, little break. Yeah. So we'll take a 10-minute recess.

Have a good night.

So we'll reconvene it. We're going to reconvene at, uh, 7:30.

Okay, that brings us—. We're on ordinance 7B-1. You want to read that in the record?

Public hearing for Thursday, October 8th, 2026. Number 1, Ordinance Number 26-20, an ordinance of the Houston City Council establishing a temporary 2-year moratorium on the acceptance, processing, approval, or issuance of permits, as well as construction, establishment, and operation of data centers within the city limits of Houston, Alaska. Providing for enforcement and penalties, and providing for an effective date and expiration.

We will open the public hearing for Ordinance Number 2620 at, uh, 7:30. Anyone in the public like to comment on Ordinance Number 2620?

Seeing none. We will close the public hearing for Ordinance Number 2620 at 7:31. Would anyone like to make a motion?

I'll make a motion to accept Ordinance 2620. I'll second.

Okay, anyone have comment? Um, As the council knows, I brought forth an ordinance to ban data centers in the city of Houston. Some good discussion ensued, and Council Members Lewis and Brazell specifically had concerns about what I had brought forth, and they brought forth some, some good ideas. And I think this ordinance in front of us, uh, is a good balance between what I was looking for and the concerns that the other council members had. Um, it gives us time as the city to get our planning and zoning involved and looking at things.

And overall, I think this ordinance makes everybody happy in terms of what the other council members were looking for, what I was looking for. So I think we came to a happy medium, I would say.

Yep, I agree. I think this is a great compromise to a good idea. Um, thank you for your work on it. I think this is You know, this is a good thing for Houston to be able to work through the planning and zoning process, just to set up Houston to where we're not going to get things in Houston that the people of Houston don't want. Um, we have the opportunity to draw some boundaries around businesses that come into the city, and I think that's a great— that was a great suggestion by Deputy Mayor Brazell.

So thank you guys for your work on on us. This is awesome.

Anyone else? Councilmember McCartney?

Councilmember Khan?

Hearing none, let's have a vote.

Motion's been made and seconded to approve Ordinance Number 26-20, an ordinance of the Houston City Council establishing a temporary 2-year moratorium on the acceptance, processing, approval, or issuance of permits, as well as construction, establishment, and operation of data centers within the city limits of Houston, Alaska, providing for enforcement and penalties, and providing for an effective date and expiration. All those in—. Oh, sorry, roll call votes. Councilmember Courtney?

Aye.

Councilmember Lewis? Aye. Councilmember Mitchell? Aye. Councilmember Khan?

Aye. Councilmember Johansen?

Aye. Deputy Mayor Brazell. Aye.

Mayor Cole. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.

Okay, you want to read ordinance number 26-21?

Item 7B2, ordinance number 26-21, an ordinance of the Houston City Council amending the fiscal year 2027 budget by appropriating $7,000 from American Heart Association to the account E01-104-5305 for the purpose of creating a cardiac emergency response plan, purchasing automated external defibrillators, and become certified as an American Heart Association authorized training site.

We will open the public hearing for Ordinance Number 2621 at 7:35. Anyone from the public have anything to say on Ordinance Number 2621?

Seeing none, we will close the public Hearing portion on ordinance number 2621. That's 7:36. I'll make a motion to approve ordinance 2621. I'll second.

Any comments? I just want to say just a couple facts real quick. I think this is a fabulous thing. For the department. In just one year alone, 436,000 Americans die from cardiac arrest.

More than 350,000 cardiac arrests occur outside of the hospital setting. 10,000 Cardiac arrests happen in the workplace each year, and only 50% of people can find an AED at work. And 90% of people who have out of of hospital cardiac arrests don't survive. When you have CPR and AED, it can double or triple a victim's chance of survival. So having something like this in our community is a fabulous thing.

And Chief can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only places in town that actually have AEDs other than the fire department are the high school and middle school. So being able to be a training center and have something on the northern end that allows people to be certified in CPR and AED, I think is extremely important for our community and the surrounding areas. So.

Anyone else?

Hearing none, I have to agree, Lisa. We have an elderly population here greater than any other community I know of in the valley, so it's a good thing.

All right, let's take a vote. Motion's been made and seconded to approve Ordinance Number 26-21, an ordinance of the use and City Council amending the fiscal year 2027 budget by appropriating $7,000 from American Heart Association to the account E011045305 for the purpose of creating a cardiac emergency response plan, purchasing automated external defibrillators, and become certified as an American Heart Association authorized training site.

Councilmember Johansen. Yay.

Councilmember Courtney.

Aye.

Councilmember Mitchell. Aye.

Councilmember Lewis. Aye.

Councilmember Khan. Aye.

Deputy Mayor Brazell. Aye. Mayor Kohl. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.

Okay, bring this down to Resolution Number 2623. You want to read that?

Resolution number 2623, a resolution of authorizing submission of fiscal year '26 Community Development Block Grant application, ANCDBG-002/PGCDBG-001, as the matching grant to the city's USDA community facilities project for the Public Works and Fire Station 93 joint essential public facility, including construction match and additional funding for design.

I'd like to open up the public hearing portion for Resolution Number 2623. And we'll call it 8 or 7:40.

Anyone in the public like to comment on Resolution Number 2623?

Seeing none, we will close the public hearing for Resolution Number 2623 at 7:41. I'll make a motion to approve Resolution Number 2623.

A second. Okay, this is a resolution that the block grant folks, uh, are requiring, um, and they actually needed a public hearing before we submit before December, and this qualifies for both even though we've had several public hearings previously. This is one they wanted to have document— we have to document it a certain way. So that's the fulfillment of that so we can do our submission of the grant. And I don't know if the council had a chance to go through the packet at all.

It was quite a large packet this time, but, um, the block grant will fund the fire station design So even if we decided to move forward and say, okay, we have X amount of fun, we're going to build this portion of it, it can actually design the whole building. So just, just as a in your back of your mind thing.

Anyone else have any comment?

No? Okay, go ahead and Motion's been made and seconded to approve Resolution Number 26-23, a resolution authorizing submission of an FY26 Community Development Block Grant application, AN-CDBG-002/PGCDBG-001, as the matching grant to the city's USDA Community Facilities Project for the Public Works and Fire Station 93 Joint Essential Public Facility, including construction match and additional funding for design.

Council Member Khan.

Hi.

Councilmember Johansen?

Nay. Councilmember Mitchell? Aye.

Councilmember Courtney?

Nay.

Councilmember Lewis?

Aye. Deputy Mayor Brazell.

Aye.

Mayor Cole. Aye. Motion carries, 5 yeas, 2 nays. Okay, audience comment. You have sign-in sheet?

Uh, we have some. I don't have a sign-in sheet, but I know I have some people that didn't sign in that want to come speak. Holy shmoly.

Larry Mayo.

Um, Patrick, do you want to speak before your time? Yes, I don't have anything additional to add.

Okay, you're good.

Shauna Davis. Dave, is that—. Did I say that? Darnell. Okay, come on.

Yeah, my name is Sean Darnell. I live within 1,000 feet of 11809 West Parks Highway. I'd like to provide comment in opposition of approving a conditional use permit for Alaska Plastic Recovery to operate an industrial plastics processing operation at this location. I recognize that businesses create jobs and contribute to our local economy. However, the question before the council is also about whether this particular use is appropriate for this location and whether the risks to surrounding residents' environment have been adequately addressed.

Mr. Simpson purchased this property without appropriate zoning permits required for the plastics processing business he now proposes operating here. That, that is precisely why the CUP process exists, to determine whether a proposed use is appropriate for this location. Noise, air quality, traffic, and environmental concerns have not been adequately addressed. In fact, fire safety concerns have intensified after reviewing material data safety sheets Mr. Simpson provided at the March 12, 2026 City Council meeting. Data sheets note special firefighting procedures specifically directing dry chemical water fog or foam should be used, not to use direct stream of water, indicating, uh, using solid streams of water could actually spread the fire.

Another data sheet directed, uh, keep personnel removed upwind of fire, wear self-contained breathing apparatus and full protective equipment. What are the fire response plans for this site and business? What will happen if a major fire occurs and these plastics catch fire? What specialized equipment or suppression procedures will be required, and how will firefighters protect neighboring properties and prevent contaminated firewater from entering the soil and groundwater? Plastics fires are not simply a building fire, and they create smoke, airborne pollutants, debris, and contaminated runoff.

Furthermore, there are concerns regarding groundwater contamination that should be prioritized. Information presented recently by Three Tier Alaska at a community meeting identified diesel contamination in the groundwater. The source is not currently known. I am not claiming the proposed business causes contamination, though the fact remains diesel has been detected in the groundwater as well as solvents, and the source is not clearly identified. This should not be treated as a minor detail.

Shouldn't we not only understand but address what's already happening underneath the property foremost? The state of Alaska is now involved in investigating this contamination. Shouldn't the city wait for the state to complete their investigation for conclusions, including cleanup efforts needed to address the contamination at this site? Determining health and safety risks must be a priority, although the city should at a minimum require comprehensive fire safety review and thorough analysis of traffic, noise, air, environmental impacts this business may pose. This isn't about being against a business or jobs.

It's about making sure that this permit is granted to this that this permit grant, if it's granted by the city, isn't left trying to solve problems that should have been addressed beforehand. The responsible decision is not to approve and then investigate or attempt to mitigate problems later. I respectfully request the city council to deny this CUP. Protecting public safety, our water, air, and neighborhoods should come before approving a site for industrial use whose impacts have not been adequately determined. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? I don't know if they're all still here. Tony Wollers.

This is Tony Woolers. I live directly adjacent to the gravel pit. I had a laundry list of facts that I was going to put forward here tonight. I think you guys are going to get inundated enough. I don't think anybody here argues whether or not recycling is a good thing.

I think we all agree that recycling is one of the best things for the environment, provided it's done properly. To resave and reuse is always a good thing. No sense in throwing things away because we're running out of land space to way it is with garbage.

However, being right there and knowing what is going to come with this being in my backyard and how this is going to affect not only myself, my animals, my neighbors, the environment as well, I do get very concerned. Sean's absolutely right, you know, the fire side of that. I was an R firefighter, so I was trained in the chemicals needed to treat a plastic fire, AFFF. Would have been the primary source, and I believe you'll agree with me on that. Chief?

Oh, we use a different— the product we would use now is F-500. It's a different type of foam. Okay, so that's a very expensive foam though, is it not, to be able to deploy that? Do we have resources in the event of a large fire? Because the quantity of foam that's going to be used for the amount of plastic that's stored there at this time is going to be quite extensive.

Do we have the resources to be able to replenish that in the event that this happened, let's say, even once every 6 months?

Chief? I'm not, I'm not supposed to do back and forth on questions and answers. Um, the answer is we have our resources. We also have the Matsuburo has a significant amount of resources, and we do have the ability to replenish if it's needed on the— but it would take a significant amount of foam like any plastic burns. Yeah, and with that, with the burning plastic there is typically mandated the residents around there are either immediate evacuation or harbor at home and ventilate.

You don't just get a fire. You get ash. You get the water. It's destroyed. It's not just a let's rinse it down the drain.

You have to excavate the soil. You have to remove it. You have to treat the soil. You have to treat the water. The water, the aquifer there flows I'm actually a victim of the contaminated water right now, 'cause it's all flowing directly at my property, which is going to cost me a very large sum of money according to the state when this all settles out.

And I'm stuck paying that bill, even though it's not from my property, it's from the property above mine. I'm going to have to foot that bill. Sure, I can go sue that person for the money for what it costs me, but I have to pay it up front. And we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars to fully excavate all of that soil, which now has to be brought up treated, it has to off-gas, there's many things going on there. It's not only diesel, but there's also solvents in the groundwater currently.

I moved there 5 years ago, I tested my water, I sent it out, I had all the expensive tests done, I spent $800 on tests, I had clean water. I had to spend another $800 getting it tested, I haven't got it back yet, but it's my understanding I am going to find these chemicals in my water. This is not fair to me, this is not fair to my neighbors, it's not fair to people down the watershed. This is 3 times the legal limit for for consumption. That means technically I can't even shower.

I do have a water quality assurance certification from the lower 48. I used to work in water care, so I understand all the benefits and hesitations of these things. I can't legally, or technically, healthily, I can't shower in my own house right now, not without putting in thousands of dollars of treatment to be able to operate that water because of the contamination that's going on there. It's flowing directly at my property.

So I ask you, Please at least address the underlying issue before we add to the contamination. We all know melting plastics lets off gas. There's chemicals there. We all know that grinding it up is going to put extra microplastics in the ground. We all know these things.

There's no argument there. That's how they get there. It's not a matter of them breaking down. Even when they break down, that's the end result, is microplastics. Every time you turn around, the microplastics are causing this cancer.

This person's debilitated from it. It's stored in your body. We all have it. We shouldn't all have it. It's not normal.

So on my conclusion, I want to ask each one of you, if it was you in your backyard, would you want this in yours? Would you want this in your backyard? Would you want this in your backyard? You've got kids, you've got animals, you've got neighbors. Would you want this in your backyard?

If the answer is no, then please do not grant this permit.

That's all. Thank you. Thank you.

Jennifer Jenner. I wasn't quite sure what I was signing up for there, and it looks like you're getting— okay.

Yeah. Brian Kingsbury. Yeah, I'd love to answer any questions.

Later.

Bonnie Church.

My name is Bonnie Church. I live in Big Lake and I volunteer at the recycling center. And I was just wanting to let you know that I'm in full support of Grizzlywood, which is Patrick Simpson's operation. And I don't know if any of you have seen the product, but it's pretty amazing. And when we do recycling, we can only take a certain amount of products.

I believe one of my friends here has different kinds with her, but the clamshells and all different kind of products that we don't take at the recycling, he will take. So it's a huge, wonderful thing that he does with all the stuff that would normally go into the landfill.

He's converting it into usable products, and it's just a win for the valley. So So I'm just here to support him and his operation, and I hope that he can get approved. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Stacy Barnes.

Oh, they already spoke. Sorry. Peter Bauer.

Hi, Peter Bauer, running for State Senate, and also would like to just speak on behalf of State House candidate Sandra Loomis, who couldn't be here tonight. And as I think everybody's probably aware, this is your last meeting before the general election kicks off, so I wanted to just take a moment to thank the mayor, council, and residents for warmly welcoming us throughout the campaign season. It's really been a wonderful thing to see how serious yet friendly everybody deliberates about some pretty major issues as the community evolves and grows. So I just want to say thank you for enduring us for the campaign season, and what is it, 10 and a half days till voting starts? So I believe the voter pamphlets are just about hitting mailboxes So, uh, read up.

Thanks. Thank you.

Don Grimes.

Um, my name is Don Grimes and I live on Wonderland Drive here in Houston. Um, I'm in an unfamiliar position right now because the majority of the time that I speak to the council, I have something negative or something I'm wanting from the council and the mayor, but I'm here today to say thank you to the mayor, the council members, to the fire chief, to Todd and Travis on the construction crew. 26 Years ago, I started a home at the end of Wonderland Drive, and at that location, there's a little cul-de-sac, and every year for 26 years that cul-de-sac flooded. And as it flooded, then the people that were using the cul-de-sac to turn around in used our driveway instead. And, uh, we're glad that they could, but it created some problems.

Well, this year, this administration— and by the way, I asked every administration over that 26 years to help us out, do something about it. This administration came through. They upgraded the road between Leprechaun and the cul-de-sac. They put in a culvert that we had a short rain spell and it worked wonderful and, and got rid of all the water. So thank you for doing this.

It's made our life and friends and other people that come down and use that road better. The second thing that I'd like to say is that we had a fire that's already been mentioned there on Wonderland Drive about 2 months ago, and our fire department under this fire chief was there in less than 5 minutes. That fire required the fire department to bring in additional resources from the state, including a hotshot crew. I personally witnessed that fire rapidly growing, and if it hadn't been for our fire department, we would have had a very different outcome. So thank you.

And the last thing that I'd like to say is, you know, some of us— the mayor had mentioned that this is an elderly community. Uh, yeah, I'm one of those. And, uh, and I wondered if there was a way that you could revamp the agenda to allow public comments towards the beginning of the meeting instead of at the very end. One meeting that we sat through, my wife and I, who's here too, um, we had to leave because it was like 10 o'clock at night. And we have meetings, we have bedtimes, and as other people do as well.

And for the people that need to speak to these ordinances, they can stay and quickly do that. It appears to me that this public comment goes very quickly, and so I'd appreciate some consideration there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else?

John Ferry.

Yeah, I'm— my name is John Ferry. I live on Laray Road, not far from the plastic site, and I'm not really prepared. I I'm not really prepared, but I just wanted to voice my opinion, um, that I don't see any problems. Although living closer than I am— I'm fairly close—. But I could see their concerns.

Thank you. Thank you.

I don't have anybody else written down, but I don't know if anybody else—. Anyone else in the public like to—.

Okay. Sammy Taylor, also a volunteer with Mid-Valley Recycling out of the Big Lake Transfer Site. Um, a number of years ago we had a contest where we asked people to think of ideas of ways that they could use the recyclable items here in Alaska rather than shipping them south. You know, it makes more sense to have businesses making things and employing people right here in the state rather than sending everything to Canada and the lower 48, which is what VCRS does now, except for Thermal Cool, which uses the corrugated cardboard and a number of other items and they employ 9 people. When we had our contest, we had Alaska Plastic Recovery submit a request and we had them produce 3 picnic tables made out of recyclable plastic that was collected right here in Alaska and got used right here in Alaska.

And that process was done in Palmer. Between the fairground and the city of Palmer, so there were plenty of residential people around and we heard no complaints. Anyway, when we found out that, that not only does Alaska Plastic Recovery use industrial plastic as well as beachcomb plastic, but they can also take the things like this that our recycling center, VPRS, cannot take. So we were very excited, and all the people that would normally bring us their bottles, because that's all VCRS can sell down south of this type of plastic, the, the buyers do not want to take this kind of plastic. Well, if we can put it into Grizzlywood right here in-state, mix it with the other plastic that we collect, We're saving a lot of plastic out of the landfill.

So we're really hoping that we can continue to get this process going so that more of our local plastic can stay right in here and make Alaskan jobs. Right now, if you want to see the picnic tables that Grizzlywood produced for our community, there's a picnic table in Willow at the Willow Library. There's one in the front of the Big Lake Library also made out of that recycled plastic and one at the recycling center, VCRS, on 49th State Street or off 49th State Street. So you can see it's wonderful to have it used. I don't know how many people that Alaska Plastic Recovery employs right now, but if we could get it up to 9 like they do for the corrugated Cardboard, it would be a wonderful opportunity because there's no reason for us to spend our energy and time sending things down south when we can provide jobs and a use for the stuff that we use right here in-state.

So I urge you to support Resolution 2601. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Go ahead.

Hello, my name is Patty Fisher. I also am a volunteer with Big Lake, uh, Mid Valley Recycling, which is at the Big Lake Transfer Site, and I am here to speak in support of Resolution 26-01. In addition to volunteering at the recycling site, I am also a volunteer and work with the Meadow Lakes Community Council and the Meadow Lakes Community Park, and what you have there are pictures of how grizzly wood has been used used at our park.

We have a 70-acre park. A creek runs through it, and the pictures that you have there show the bridges that we have built over to go over to span those— the creek. We have two. We actually have more, but we haven't gotten to those. So, in the future, we will be building another bridge.

I learned about grizzly wood working at Mid-Valley, and that was— I recommended it to our park management so that they could use it for these bridges. It's turned out—. And I called and asked them, so how's it turned out? They've been very thrilled with the way the wood has handled. It's easy to cut.

It's easy to put together. They use screws, uh, and it can be buried. It's not going to deteriorate. It is very long-lasting. So it's a very positive reaction to, uh, from the crew that has built those bridges.

So it is a valuable commodity, and I am fully in support of Mr. Simpson's applications. You build the product here in the— in Houston. Excuse me. Thank you. Thank you.

Is there anyone else?

Good evening, my name is Tam Bovee. I'm a resident of Willow, and I'm the executive director of Valley Community for Recycling Solutions. We're a nonprofit organization that partners with the Matsuburo to divert more than 2,000 tons of reusable materials from the landfill every year. I'm speaking in favor of Resolution 26-01, granting a conditional use permit to Alaska Plastic Recovery.

I've been working with Pat's company for almost 5 years now. I've watched him create new products and new jobs. He's worked with statewide recycling groups and local nonprofits and service organizations to provide picnic tables and benches and walkways to our local communities. His operation has the support of the USDA, NOAA, and the EPA. He has state, national, and international recognition He's operated without any issues in Palmer for years and would be an asset to any community.

You're very fortunate that he chose yours. Please approve RS 26-01. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Seeing no one else. Yes, I promise, man, I won't take the 3 minutes. Christian Hartley speaking in my role as the fire department chief. So two things I wanted to bring up on the—. I'm sure that you guys may have noticed this already, but I wanted to make sure that you did.

On Resolution 26-01, it mentions under the warehouses that the Planning Commission did not approve 'approved 25-PC-05,' but you include a copy of the signed and approved 25-PC-05. So the 'whereas' should say 'did approve' since it is attached. Um, also, I do have input for consideration on Resolution 26-21, but would you like me to speak to it when that comes up, Mayor, or can I do it now? That's all. Thank you.

Uh, anyone else? Once, twice, three times. Okay, that'll wrap up the public comment period. Thank you.

Consent agenda.

Clerk, would you go over the items on the consent agenda?

Um, we have Ordinance 2622 set for public hearing in— no, on the November meeting, November 12th, 2026. Uh, it's an appropriation ordinance, and we have the minutes, um, for September 10th, 2026. Okay, I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. I'll second.

Anyone have comments?

Hearing none, take a vote. Motion's been made and seconded to approve the consent agenda.

Council Member Johanson. Aye.

Councilmember Khan. Aye.

Councilmember Mitchell. Aye.

Councilmember Lewis. Aye. Aye. Councilmember Courtney.

Aye.

Deputy Mayor Bristow. Aye. Mayor Kohl. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.

Okay, that brings us down to unfinished business, resolution number 2601.

And we had, uh, requested on this resolution that once they provided all In fact, I believe there's a list of items right here.

It's so And this, this letter, Jeff, on the next page, this letter, it says that you do not recommend.

So the question's on the photo now. Okay, I just wanted to clear something up to the clerk. We, uh, had set a date. It was already in discussion at the time, and we postponed it to a time date certain. It had went past that by request, given another month.

We came here this month, so it's before us now, the question, uh, and he's returned the items that we requested at the time. So we can pick up, in my understanding, with discussion at this point.

Yep. So does anyone want to start off?

Do you want them just kind of set up? Yeah. Yes, if you guys would come on up here. Do we need to make a motion to approve before we discuss? Because we picked it up off the table.

Okay, so it's already been motioned.

Yeah. Thank you, Mayor Kohl. I'm Patrick Simpson. I'm the one that submitted the conditional use permit request, and I have with me Ryan from Three Tier Alaska. Ryan did the—.

He was the author of the report that you found in there, um, and can explain any of the aspects of that if you need that.

Well, I'll do— I have a series of questions myself. But I'll let the rest of the council go first. If, uh, uh, Council Member Khan, or you have any questions for him, um, can you explain all the water samples or whatever, I guess, that you have come up with?

Yeah, sure. Um, We—. I've got a little cheat sheet in front of me here. We ran the groundwater samples collected from the site for a series of analysis recommended from the state of Alaska, ADESE, and from a prominent lab in Anchorage, SGS. We told them about what we believe to be the primary risk of environmental contamination at the site.

It's called 2000 AG, and there's— it's my understanding is that pipe thread compound, like a pipe dope. Yeah, and it's covering about 10 to 20% of a very specific kind of plastic that's there. So we provided the SDS of that product to the DEC as well as that lab and asked them what analysis should we run it for. DEC recommended diesel range organics, residual range organics, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PAH, and then VOCs and copper based on the SDS there. I forgot to mention diesel range organics, that's your sort of middle of the range hydrocarbons.

Carbon. DRO is what it's known for, known as. RRO, residual range organics, that's the low end, that's like your grease, your oils, that sort of thing. And since this is a pipe dope, that's very applicable. SGS said very much the same, DRO, RRO, VOCs, but they also added PFAS, which stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Which there are many, many hundreds, if not thousands, of PFAS compounds.

So when we sampled, we— there's basically two sample events. There's one early summer that we completed at the three wells, and then another sort of later on after our major July rains that happens. We wanted to do it per purposely two different sample events, one early on when it's dry, one later on when it's wet, just to sort of see if there's any difference, you know, as a result of a fluctuating water table. It's very common standard practice to do that.

So our results basically came back— to summarize, we didn't find any PFAS compounds. Or PAHs, those polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Didn't find any VOCs, but we did have two surprises. And both of those surprises happened early on at the beginning, our first sample event. First one was copper.

We exceeded copper concentrations of copper at one of the wells.

That was a surprise. So we sort of looked around, what publicly available data do we have where we can compare what we found to, you know, whatever is in wells nearby? So about a mile away is Houston High School, and they have a public water system there. And so the data that is collected from those water samples are publicly available. And we looked, there, and we did find that it does appear as though copper is naturally occurring in the groundwater, at least in just the general area, because it was found in levels that were comparable, if not higher, than our water samples that were collected at Mr. Simpson's property.

So the second thing that was a surprise, and I think it's a surprise to, to just about everyone, and perhaps this is the, the thing that caught our attention most is that we had very high concentrations of diesel-range organics and residual-range organics, DRO and RRO. I can give a few numbers here just so you guys understand. The diesel-range organics, the cleanup level for the state is 1.5 milligrams per liter, and at 2 of the 3 wells, we exceeded that. The highest being 3.9, almost 4 milligrams per liter. That's a surprise.

Residual range organics was even more of a surprise. The cleanup levels, 1.1 milligrams per liter. The highest we had was 7.15 milligrams per liter. So very high. Do you know which way the water was flowing in those studies?

Yes, absolutely. So They had their—. They had the police. Oh, sure. Yeah, well, that is something I can talk about as well, uh, because that was on our, um, within our scope of work.

But, uh, so, um, those levels that I just relayed to you, that, that was only found during the first sample event. And there's a little bit of— might be some confusion here because is the second sample event, we didn't see any of these concentrations above the state cleanup level. So you might ask, what's going on? It is common for there to be, when there's a large fluctuation in the water table, to be a difference in the concentrations that you find. That's why it's a common standard practice to have, you know, 2 different sampling vents at least during the growing season.

It's a common misunderstanding that, you know, petroleum hydrocarbon will just sit on top of the water table. Whenever the water table rises, it rises with it, almost sort of sitting on top. It doesn't always happen. In this case, what I think happened was that we had a lot of rain in July. In that time, and the water basically came up, and the petroleum that we found during our first sampling event is there, and it's more— our first sampling event, the results are more accurate for that first sampling event than the second sampling event.

So what did we do with this data after our second sample event, we— and we got the lab results back. We, uh, on behalf of Mr. Simpson here, I contacted the Department of Environmental Conservation, um, reported our findings and provided them with all the information that you guys have in your report. They are currently reviewing it right now. This is the Spills Division of the ADEC, and as of this morning they said it's still under review, but what what they're doing is they're transferring it from Spills Division over to Contaminated Sites, and that's where things stand right now.

Let me, let me just add one small piece. Um, after the first set of samples, which were done earlier in the summer, and we realized that there's a contamination issue, I had during the second samples at the same spot, I had them take soil samples And the question I had was, in the soil samples, are we seeing the same contaminant measurements as we are in the groundwater? And the answer was no. And, um, what was interesting was, if you'll look at the map which is included in the operational plan, we picked 3 locations. We determined that the groundwater— we, Ryan, for— determined the groundwater was flowing flowing south-southwest, which basically means it's flowing across the highway.

So it's not flowing into the neighborhood, it's flowing away from the neighborhood. And given that directional flow, one of the locations where we had samples taken, there was no plastics stored there. It was, if you will, it was on the upstream side. And so as a result, what that indicated to us was that contamination of the groundwater, which wasn't coming from us from any of the soil sample measurements, and was also in an area where we weren't storing any plastics, was actually coming from further upstream somewhere above us. Which, you know, we gave all that data to DEC.

The other thing I'll mention is that, you know, it's a requirement for us, it's state law that we have to report these things. I mean, it's not— there's not an option. So, you know, it wasn't one of the funnest things we ever did, for me anyway. But, um, and now it's, it's being taken, taken under advisement there.

If I may, uh, Mr. Simpson requested we collect soil samples. Focus was groundwater primarily, but because of the results we got from the first groundwater sample event, it prompted us to collect soil samples as well. Where is this coming from? You know, and so we actively sought out a worst-case scenario. Where is this 2000 AG?

Where's the highest concentration of this pipe compound on this particular plastic? And so we found an area that is— it's where you kind of drive down into the pit right immediately adjacent to one of the wells that we installed there. Either it just got knocked over or, you know, it fell out, but there was a substantial pile of plastic that had this compound on this coating in contact with the ground surface. So we thought this would be a fantastic place to, to kind of kick some of that aside and collect the soil sample. And as a standard practice, we collected at about 6 inches below the ground surface.

And, uh, those, uh, sample results indicated that, uh, the soil was actually clean. It was below, um, DEC cleanup levels. There were concentrations of DRO and RRO, but not anywhere near the state cleanup levels.

So just for, um, myself. Um, can you, for a layman's term, tell us what your— the chemical compound other than just oil? I mean, what is the petroleum, uh, the organic piece of that, uh, classified as far as for hazardous to your health type stuff? That's a good question, Mr. Mayor. Um, I—.

Right now there's a lot of unknowns on, uh, where this is coming from. We don't know the source, um, so it's hard to answer that question. But I will say that, um, I believe that it's a dissolved, uh, petroleum. Um, I believe that because in our soil samples that we collected, we we did not observe any sheen in the water samples or the purge water that we, we generated when we collected these samples during either sampling event. If we had seen some sheen, it would be indicative of more of a free product, something that is, uh, that you'd see at a gas station, you know.

Um, this is not visible to the naked eye.

Anyone else have questions?

Mr. Simpson, entire time that— sorry, um, the entire time you were in Palmer, um, operating there, was emergency services ever called to your facility for any type of emergency, fire, anything like that with your product? Never. We've been there since 2021.

Go ahead, uh, Council Member Portney.

I have a question about the water sample.

There is a column, allowable limit. And it is blank. I'm just curious why.

Yeah, could you repeat the question?

There's a column called allowable limit.

Um, can you give us the page number of the document that we submitted, and we can look that up real quick.

It's multiple, uh, page 8 of 42.

It might be— is it in the presentation or in the report? In the report.

And does it have a table number associated with it? Uh, I think it's page 354 of our packet, I think, is what she— where it says the allowable limits.

Oh, I see. That's the SGS table, and it has allowable limits, which, um, was included with your report, I think, and I didn't bring that. Yeah, 354 in our packet. So, council members, is the question what, what do the allowable limits refer to? Or why is it— why is she saying— asking?

Because it says allowable limits and it's all completely blank and she's asking why.

Yes, this is part of the laboratory report, right? Uh, that is a good question.

Typically, when we look at these reports, we're looking at the far left column that says results.

I would have to check with the lab to, to see what that column is reserved for.

Typically, in any samples I've taken in the past, It gives you a gauge of where those numbers should be.

I see, I think I understand. You're talking about the various cleanup levels?

I think it means that what levels are safe or not. Yeah. Are all those undetected? Because there wouldn't be anything to compare to, therefore it would be not applicable. Likely, yeah.

And I will say it does vary across the state. So the particular cleanup levels that we have here in Houston, I did use in the report. For example, the sheet that I have in front of me is from the lab It's specific to the PFAS analysis. For PFAS compounds, I mentioned earlier that there's hundreds, if not thousands of compounds. Right now in the state of Alaska, there really are only two that are regulated that actually have a cleanup level.

And of those PFAS compounds, that's PFOA and PFOS.

But when the lab is running these analysis, they're running them for everything. And so I'd have to look at that particular sheet to see, to look at PFOS and PFOA in particular to see if it's there. But what I do when I look at these reports is I pull up the cleanup levels that are published in, 18 AAC, Alaska Administrative Code 75.345. There's a large table there, it's called Table C, Groundwater Cleanup Levels. This is updated regularly and, excuse me, that's what I compare all the results to.

Regardless of whether it's PFAS, DRO, RRO, PAH, VOCs.

Also, why did you pick the piece of property that you're at right now?

Did you understand her question? Is the question why did I choose the property I did? Yes, it's an ideal location for the storage and processing of plastics. It's a gravel pit that when you store things, you can't view anything from the road. A pit is a natural acoustic cup, so sound will bounce out and not across.

It was close to my home in Big Lake. I had had the space I needed for storage and processing. The price was right. Um, so it, it checked a lot of boxes. Um, it looked like a very natural location for the type of work we're doing.

Thank you.

Any other questions, Council?

Um, I have a question. So with this, uh, diesel supposedly in the water table, how does that affect your, um, for going forward with doing your projects there or helping out the rest of the neighboring community, you know, members.

I'm at this point then, I— this is Pat's opinion, not the state of Alaska, because it's under contamination now that the contamination folks are looking at it. Um, if I was to get water in this location I would have to do the same things I'm doing now and determine if there's suitable water for drinking and processing. So I'm not sure exactly what my options would be. I think what we're planning to do, what I'm planning to do, is monitor probably with permanent wells at, at least 2 locations on site for the next 5 years. Taking samples in the spring and samples again in the fall and providing that data to the Department of Environmental Conservation as part of the monitoring effort so we can see whether or not these are continuing, they're diminishing, or they're increasing.

Um, so at this point my operation doesn't require water, so I'm able to push that problem down the road a bit until, uh, at some point we decide to build a building. And if we did decide to build a building, then we would certainly want water, and we'd want to bring electricity in at that point.

If I may, um, for, for projects that I have had in the past where we identify contamination or discover contamination. It's very common for the DEC to request a work plan. How are we going to monitor this? What is happening within the boundaries of a certain area of concern? Um, right now all that's under review.

Uh, best guess is that they will require Mr. Simpson, uh, install long-term monitoring wells and, uh, and require him to submit, to collect and submit water quality or water samples to the state for review on a regular basis.

Anyone else? Okay, just curiosity, do you have a problem if the city's public works if a park director or employee was to come and take samples if there was concerns once a year or twice a year too, whether it's soil or water samples? Not at all. I'll share the results I get if you guys share the results you get. I think it would be a great thing to have additional sampling done.

Yeah, so if you're wanting to do that, certainly, it'd be great.

If I may also, the, the DEC does require these sample results to be provided to them, and because it would be listed as a contaminated site, it's on the contaminated sites database, which is publicly available. They do update that database with the latest rounds of, of, uh, sample results.

Any other question from council?

I don't want to beat the dead horse, but I do have some questions right along here. Would this— I mean, with what work you've done, would the residents themselves know the condition of their water?

I mean, without the work that you've done here, would any of them know what their water condition is?

Right now, with the levels that we saw, I do have concerns about the concentrations.

From what I found, I'm confident that it's not coming from the plastic that's currently stored on site, just because of the well locations. But I don't know where it's coming from. I think you've got more than that. You have soil samples also. We also have soil samples, right.

And those are the ones I've read, and I myself, I'm not a scientist, I'm qualifying, but I was able to read that and understand it. And from what I could understand, anywhere that they pulled the soil samples, there was none of the same stuff that they found in wells. The wells themselves are a puzzling thing, and I'm wondering, have you notified the Matsu Borough of it? Because we have a school over there. I have not, no.

First step is DEC.

I've also got some experience in water treatment, so I know there can be filtering systems put in for it. But it is something that I, I mean, now that you're bringing this to us, when I first read it, I highlighted a bunch of stuff, but I do want you to, what are your, your conclusion? I'm assuming you wrote this conclusion. Correct. And so, And when I read that— okay, it's, uh, 244, our, our number 244.

It's their number, page 5 of the plastic recovery.

Actually, I really appreciate you doing your summary the way you did it. It made a lot of sense to me to be able to read it because, uh, the rest of the packet I helped assemble, but this I had no idea, and it took a lot of time. And I had my grandkids help color sections of it so I could find them later. But I think, you know, I hope all council members had a chance to read that, but this is— it's full of good information that you got here. And I think you undersold the part of your soil sampling that you've done on the site.

It's— it kind of made it real important to me that once you went and tested where your plastics were, you didn't find anything in that concentrated soil. If water would have leached it into it, we would have had excuse me, I'm sorry, I lean forward and should have known better than that already— that the contamination wasn't coming from this operation. But I am very perplexed where it is, and it's a problem. I, I'm not going to sidetrack us too far, but Council, when you see a bunch of junk everywhere going through our town, this is the stuff that we really do need to be worrying about. You had an ordinance up for burying garbage.

I would love to see that back through there because this is this kind of stuff that throughout Houston we're going to be dealing with this if we don't do something about getting the trash cleaned up. I mean, stuff can leach into the soils and end up in who knows where. So I'm only bringing this to your attention because later on I— we have to deal with this stuff. I mean, as Houston, uh, grows, and it will, I want— I want to know what my property is, that my neighbors aren't running something in the ground that's contaminating something on me. I mean, I'm thankful you guys found it.

I mean, at least the residents actually know what they're— what to deal with now. I would—. I will be calling ADC myself to see what type of treatment available for them and what we can do. But, and I will be calling the borough in the morning. That's a big deal that you've kind of done, and I'm surprised the borough hasn't, didn't have this stuff.

I know that, I do know that they know there's some issues. I don't know that they know that it's the extent that you have. So I appreciate your work and I, and, This is why we asked you to go back and do this. This is exactly why we asked you, 'cause when you do those things where it lets us know what's going on. And so I appreciate you actually doing it, not just running out of town, but it actually helps us understand what's going on.

So those are, I mean, if anyone else wants to add in, go ahead. I wanna ask one thing real quick. So just generally, From what I surmised from all the, all the evidence, we're concluding what it's not. We still don't know what the source is. What level of effort would it take to determine what the source is?

Because that would exist on land that you don't have access to, potentially. And that right there, I think— well, I'll just, I'll leave it at that. What level of effort would it take? Sure. So, uh, a lot of what you're asking is currently being discussed with the DEC.

I believe, uh, there likely be some form of investigation into upgradient, um, properties. Um, they'll look at the data that we collected, and this will almost just be considered initial, right, almost preliminary, but they'll use it to guide the investigation and then base a lot of their additional investigations of gradient of the property on the sample results that we collect from the long-term monitoring wells. In your experience, is there a precedence for like what, what are typical sources in this type of a scenario? Sure. I think what is very common are drum dumps, miscellaneous petroleum products that are either used or forgotten about that just sit out over long periods of time.

Drums become corroded and lose their contents to the water table and the ground surface.

There are drains, dumping that's not known about, spills that aren't reported. Imported, that sort of thing. Thank you.

I tried to—. When I saw the, the diesel molecules listed, I, I tried to sort of get a frame of reference on parts per million, per billion. I mean, there's— it's a whole lot of zeros in there.

Trying to kind of build up the concentrations that you're seeing. Are we talking a decade ago somebody upstream dumped the oil out of their oil change in the woods? Are we talking a diesel truck that's sitting there leaking into the ground? Or are we talking 50 barrels of diesel that are leaking? Like, I have no concept of what that contamination level looks like comparatively?

I mean, is this 1/100th of what the floor of my garage looks like, or is this somebody upstream caused a catastrophe? It's a good question. I feel like it would be a lot closer if the source— I feel like the source would be a lot closer if we had seen sheen in our samples. We didn't see any sheen. We saw dissolved petroleum, which is usually further downstream.

That's the only answer I can, I can provide to you with confidence. Um, I, I do not know where it's coming from. The concentrations are pretty high, um, especially, uh, compared to when you look at the soil samples, as you brought up, Mr. Mayor. Um, they don't match You would expect to see very high soil concentrations of DRO and RRO to get the groundwater concentrations that we're seeing.

Yeah, we do have a problem with people dumping, and I don't have any doubt that people just change their oil and dump it on the ground. I've actually heard it out of a few people, put it back in the ground where it came from. That's probably not an uncommon practice for people that don't want to pay to dispose of it, which is really sad. But, you know, as far as the water testing goes and anything like that, we have, you know, I work at the church up here, we have quarterly samples that we submit. We've gotten extreme water testing done because we had the walls in our shower turning blue.

We had 3 times the allowable limit of copper in our water. Um, it's a pretty common thing around here. It seems like we're 2 miles— well, about 2.5 miles from here straight north towards Willow. And so, you know, we have quarterly testing that we're required to do. We don't drink any of the water.

We haul— we actually fill up water jugs or get all of our water from Matsu Water, and that's all we drink because we can't drink the water we had. We moved there I think the first 2 years we were there, uh, all 4 of our kids ended up getting root canals and crowns. The water was— we didn't know the water wasn't drinkable. We didn't know that what all was in there. We weren't told before we got there.

So the groundwater, we have some pretty serious issues here for sure. Um, yeah, as far as the testing that you guys went through, the lengths you've gone through to provide this information, it's really appreciated. So thank you very much.

Anyone else?

Anyone else online?

All right, hearing none, call the, um, do, do the roll call please.

I have an amendment.

Oh, oh, sorry about that. Go ahead. Um, there's just a typo in the address comparative in the first sentence to the title. There is The address is wrong. It's just fixing the number on the address.

Can you fix that? Yeah, we just—. I don't think we need to know. That's a typo. We can fix it.

We'll fix it. But thank you for pointing it out. It's just the number that needs fixed.

Read it into the microphone so that people know. Replacing 1246912 with 11809 to match the title and the proper address.

We're just going to call that administrative.

That's a big fingers. Yeah.

Okay, so you're voting on whether or not to approve the resolution? Yes.

Council Member Khan?

Aye.

Councilmember Johansen.

Aye.

Councilmember Mitchell. Aye.

Councilmember Courtney.

Aye.

Councilmember Lewis. Aye.

Deputy Mayor Brazell. Aye.

Mayor Kohl. Aye.

Motion carries unanimously.

Thank you all.

Okay, well, thank you for your diligence in trying to do that. Thank you for letting us know that we have an area that needs to have more attention. And, um, despite the exiting, uh, you did a good service for the community. So we'll, we'll take, take what you guys have found and put it to good use. Thank you.

Yeah, uh, Council, can we take a 10-minute break?

Okay, it's 9 o'clock and we're gonna start. Can you hear us, Desi? I can, yes. Okay, great, thank you. All right, we're under new business.

Uh, why don't you read that in record there?

Uh, item 10A, resolution number 26-20.

A resolution of the Houston City Council revising the city's Personnel Policies and Procedures Handbook by amending all chapters— excuse me, chapters— to meet legal requirements and clear interpretation. I'd like to make motion to approve Resolution Number 2620. I'll second. I have one, uh, it's a issue that was brought to me, so I need to bring it to your guys' attention. It was—.

It's—. It will be corrected. It has to do with a firefighter position on our schedule, and shame on me, I didn't transfer it to the— well, we had went— not to make excuses, but it was— we went through the 302 negotiation, all that, and then I didn't get these the schedule updated that to add a position that Chief has been trying to get us to add for, I don't know what, 6 times now.

So it's on the pay schedule, and Thomas already works there, but it's under Grade 5. It's supposed to have a fire department assistant. Oh, excuse me, it's, uh, 464, COH 464.

And, um, we have the city attorney online in case you guys have any questions for them. And it's not her fault, I did not transmit the corrected version of that.

So you—. The difference is what we finally publish will have under— I'm sure Chief would remind me, uh, to include a fire department assistant.

So that's the only thing I know is not correct at this moment in time. Everything else has been thoroughly vetted. And, um, anyone, any questions about it?

Uh, just want to make a comment for a possible conflict of interest, that the pay schedule for firefighters has been changed to, I think, meet borough pay. But as a firefighter, that would affect me, so I wanted to put that out there. Well, yes, that— okay, but you— it's, it's, it's in code, it's in the book to that the chief has to do that. So—. Oh, I know, but I just wanted to put it out there that you're voting on something that would affect me.

All right, want to be transparent. All right, so noted. Anyone else have anything?

Seeing and hearing none, let's, uh, go ahead and vote. Motion's been made and seconded to approve Resolution number 2620, a resolution of the Houston City Council revising the city's Personnel Policies and Procedures Handbook by amending all chapters to meet legal requirements and clear interpretation.

Councilmember Johansen. Aye. Councilmember Courtney. Aye. Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Mitchell. Aye.

Council Member Khan. Aye.

Deputy Mayor Brazell. Aye. Mayor Kohl. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.

With that said, I, I do want to thank our attorney that's online, but Desi, can you hold on because we're doing the social media thing next, I believe. Yes, we are. Sure, I can, I'm available just in case there's one of those legal questions.

But I, I would, and, uh, just to kind of further up in my thanking her, she, uh, sat through the 302 negotiation and helped update this thing to a modern standard that was desperately needed with, uh, and she's been doing like, uh, how many of these you do this year?

At least a dozen, I think.

It's been a fair amount. Yeah. Okay. All right, would you read the next resolution?

Item 10B, Resolution Number 2621, a resolution of the Houston City Council adopting the City of Houston's social media policy, official communications policy number COM-01. I'll make a motion to approve Resolution 2621.

I'll second.

The reason this is even here is because our handbook actually references it and we didn't have one, so we created one, uh, for you guys to look at. And, um, I think that's what makes our whole package kind of legal now.

This is Also, where Chief, if you want to make your comment. Yeah, because you're now complaining about it and I want you to be able to be right in front of me.

And as always, just ignore my comments if they don't make sense. So The only thing I would like— I would like to add a couple or make a couple of comments. One is, it's a really like— perhaps the lawyer could weigh in on this one. Um, you guys do reference TikTok as one of the social media apps that could be used by the city. TikTok is banned by the state of Alaska on all state electronic devices, whether it be computers, cell phones, laptops, etc.

As a subsidiary of the state of Alaska, as a municipality, I don't know if that extends makes sense to us as well. So I don't know, I don't know that TikTok would even be an option in the future for the city, so it might not even need to be in the policy. Um, not gonna worry about that one. The main one that I want to bring up is under Appendix B, content or comment moderation guide. So the city has a policy for very specific reasons.

We do not allow— the City of Houston's Facebook page does not allow comments. That is because, well, there's reasons for that, as was explained in the information here. However, on the fire department side, we have had a department page that has allowed comments, that we do have a comment moderation, um, procedure that is actually listed on the Facebook page. If the city adopts this policy as it is, we would have to just completely remove that and we can go no comment. We can follow the same procedures if that's the council's decision.

I would ask that the council consider just extending that sentence under Appendix B. I'm not asking for a motion, this is just spitballing at you, but would be that comments will be disabled in all social media city accounts unless authorized by a department head for a department page that has been authorized by this policy using content moderation guidelines approved by the mayor.

The reason I asked for that is because we do engage with the public a lot on our social media when it comes to public education, people requesting fire information, requesting extinguisher installations. To have a no comment, they can call, but we all know a lot of people just use social media for that primary point of contact for businesses. Anybody in here that owns a business knows that they go to your Facebook page first, your phone second, your business heard. So I just want to throw that out there as a consideration. And I will say this, I— the chief came to me and, you know, um, generally I would agree, but that's a— this is a policy issue, it's not a mayor issue.

So the, um, I told him that, uh, no, I wouldn't do it because this is something the council actually needs to weigh in. And I don't care what you guys decide, I just— it wasn't my decision to make.

As, as the community risk reduction officer for the department, I 100% agree with Chief. We build so many relationships with our community by engaging on our Facebook page, and that includes the comment section. I mean, we get all kinds of stuff coming through, and for the most part, I would say 99% of the things we get on our department Facebook page is positive. We rarely, rarely— I can't, I honestly can't think of the last time we had anything negative that somebody posted. But the comments are a huge, huge thing for us to engage with the public, especially when we have incidents in the area that might be a little large, major car accident, something like that, a fire, like the fire we had by Bear Paw Lake this summer and stuff.

And it's, it's a really important way for us to engage with our community. And I would echo what Chief said. And actually, continue on with that, it is also a tool for us to correct disinformation that people are spreading about incidences. Yes, I would have to agree with both Lisa and the Chief. But I have to ask the attorney, if we have a policy in place that we are saying we don't on the city webpage, but then we— are we creating a problem for ourselves by allowing it?

I hope not, but I just want the attorney to weigh in and let us know.

No, I think that Recommendations that were raised by the chief make sense. I think that if you give discretion to a department head in the way that the chief is suggesting, that would make it so that it would be applicable to the policy and it would be in line with the policy. And so I think that it's an acceptable recommendation by them. I don't see any areas there that to be concerned— that I would give me any concern. Well, and just so one other piece of information, just make— help solidify what you said, was they've always run that independent of the city anyhow.

So I think if that's— they continue to do that, then not that it's outside the city, but at least there's a history of where history where it's always been independent of what the city's done.

Certainly, and I agree with that. I also think that in the policy here it says the city is not required to. I mean, if entirely, if it's separate, you know, that's a different thing in itself. But here it doesn't say that the city is prohibited from doing it, right? So that's different than the city is not required to.

And so I think there's some leeway there too as well, Mayor. Okay, thank you.

That being said, they are employees of the city and, you know, therefore their social media should fall under the same policy, correct? So I— my interpretation of, um 7.1, the city is not required to allow comments on official accounts. Doesn't really say you can't allow comments, right? I mean, the only binding sentence is the last one. City uses broadcast-only accounts.

That's the binding one. Um, yes, and we have to— I mean, for us to turn off our comments we can only have it set up that way. But it is a different account, and I, I have to think that that would be treated separately because it's always been separate from the— so I don't know if we want to have a line that excludes the chiefs or the fire stations from this policy, or— but I, I see this is why it's before you guys, not me making a decision, right? What I'm saying, I guess my point was their page, in order to operate independently, would have to sit outside of this policy. I like— I mean, the whole thing, the whole social media policy.

Otherwise, you know, if it's going to be considered, then we'd have to change the verbiage. It's the Appendix B is the one that specifically says it cannot have any comments. Yeah, so I'm fine striking TikTok. That's, that's no problem. I don't even know how to use it.

Anyone else? Anyone online have a comment on that specific topic or anything for this?

Well, anything on the policy, yes.

Well, the only other question I had, and it was again related to fire department stuff, is 6.5, the photographs of people. Um, the fire department, we always post pictures of events which the majority of the time are related to kids. And it says do not post photographs that focus on identifiable minors without a parent or guardian's consent. I mean, at the same time, there's no expectation of privacy in public, but then that right there would pretty much make it impossible for us to post photos of any events—. Trunk or treat, Easter egg, Easter, yes.

Um, open houses that we have one coming up this Saturday, um, that would pretty much, yeah, keep us from being able to share anything that we do with the community because our events are focused on kids.

I agree, I think that's too restrictive.

Mayor, if I may, just the thing that— the reason why the mayor wanted it to come to the council, like he just said, we as a city need to have a single policy. I appreciate the comment about that the fire department might be able to run off independent of this policy, but I don't think that it should. Because that would set a bad precedent for other departments in the city in the future. I want to make sure that we're following the policy, so whatever you all decide as the policy, we will abide by. I just want to give the opinion from the fire department that we would prefer to be able to communicate with our members directly through our social media, including through the comment section.

And like Lisa just brought up, that I hadn't even thought about, was the photographs. We don't intentionally take pictures of kids without the parents' permission, but when you take a picture from the top of the hill down toward Founders Day. That's 400 people that are in that picture. We're not— well, we can't possibly walk around and get permission slips. Waterworks show.

A lot of our events are focused on kids because we're trying to save them to become firefighters before they maybe go into law enforcement. We want to save them. I hope my son who became a cop is listening. So Desi, can you give us all a little guidance on that aspect. If they take photos of a group and they're not focusing on a child, is that— I mean, we're not breaking any laws by them doing that, right?

No, you're not breaking any laws. It's more of, you know, a socially acceptable concern, right? And I— the— what I'm hearing described is that these are more photos of events, probably taken from if you are further away, which, you know, this says identifiable, which would mean, you know, that you are close up, that you have pictures of kids. And I am assuming that if you are doing that and they are in an event, are you telling them that there may be possibilities that they could have their picture used for public use, like on a website? If you are telling them that beforehand, that is in a way getting permission, right?

And saying, hey, by being here, you may have your picture posted. If you don't want it posted here, let us know. You know, that— those kind of things usually help with these sort of policies and, you know, ensuring that you're protecting minors, you know, and not having kids just getting posted on there without any permission. But also being able to use those pictures, you know, for the page when you're having these public events like Founders Day and those kind of things. Well, Thank you.

Um, just to just let you guys know, from the cities, I mean, we, we do not want the comments on one. I don't— we don't have the manpower to try to answer and keep up with the people that are— have more time on their hands than they have anything else. I— there's just no way we could honestly do a good job for the city. So that's why we, we chose a couple years ago to turn the comments off completely. It's not that we don't want to, it's just the fact we couldn't keep up with it.

And then you get drug into ridiculous conversations that were, you know, no-enders and no-brainers. And so we, we had made that determination for the city. However, and that's why I'm not making this that decision. Uh, I— the chief has always run a first-class operation and never had the same problems at the fire department. So that's the only thing.

I mean, we— there's nothing that stops— I, I fired my— I think there's nothing that would stop us for putting an exception for the fire department. Is that— can I say that honestly?

Does he? Can we— can you not— yeah, right. Can you not add a line here that says the city may authorize departments to have social media comments on their page, like something along those lines? Yes, because I think that takes care of the issue, right? Yeah, that's so that—.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, if you want to allow the fire department to do that, just have the city authorize the department and then you can just have it in writing. And it could just be an email that says, you know, Mayor Kohl authorizes fire department to have comments on.

But okay, yes, that would be— that I could— I mean, I could live with that. I— if the council could, uh, Chief, did you thought we had to change the language a little bit to do that. It's only because specifically under that Appendix B, it just is a blanket period: comments will be disabled on all social media city accounts. So I mean, I gave a really complicated way to do it, but after hearing the lawyer, maybe it could just read, unless otherwise authorized by the mayor. Yeah, yeah, I, I think that makes it easy So I'd like to make a motion to amend our social media policy to include—.

Write it down.

Chief already wrote it down. Did you write it down?

Where did—. What—. On which number was that again? It's Appendix B, page 520. Yes, page 10 of 11.

Page 10 of 11, Appendix B, to extend the sentence to say unless authorized by the mayor. And we, we have to change, uh, 7.1 too.

So we're going to say— how much will we disable on—. Last sentence. I got to write it on this.

Except as authorized by the mayor. And, um, that's Appendix B.

Where was the other spot? 7.1, The city uses broadcast-only accounts. We could just add a little verbiage to reference Appendix B. Okay, right, just to say, Deputy Mayor through the Mayor, I would suggest you just change that sentence, just say the city recommends broadcast-only accounts. Yeah, because the first line says is not required to allow comments, which is pretty pretty open for interpretation.

I agree.

Yep. But I mean, and then are we also changing 6.5, photographs and people? Right, I was just getting to—. Oh, kind of to that. I don't think we have, you know.

I mean, the way this is phrased— I mean, I watched the pie-eating contest at the— at Founders Day this year. One of the guys in the thing was a kid from Houston High School that had his jersey on. That is an identifiable minor who was fully shown in a photograph of Houston Founders Day this year. I mean, that is awfully broad. Um, no focusing on minors.

I mean, that's—. That's—. We're going to be discovering reasons that we can't do things based on that one line for the next 2 um, back to what the attorney had said though, is there a way like we can, uh, when we make an announcement on the city website about Founders Day to say, just so you know, if you attend this event, your family may be subject to photographs? Um, there's just, you know, I know we— my wife and I have worked with OCS for many years with foster kids, and you're not allowed to post any pictures of foster kids on social media. And when you go to a school play, and there's a lot of kids that are in the play, school events, that kind of thing, they ask you not to post any pictures of the group on social media, that kind of thing.

It's, it's just a legal requirement. Um, but like the attorney had said, is there a way we wouldn't be violating anything by, you know, kind of like we have to announce, hey, just so you know, quorum can be present at Founders Day because we have multiple city council members there making another announcement saying, just so you know, photos will be taken at Founders Day, possibly posted on social media, um, just so people are aware and there's a public announcement.

I think that makes sense, Mayor Matt. Yeah, um, the— what the lawyer also pointed out was the fact that the policy specifies um, I'm trying to find it again— that focus on identifiable minors. Yeah, if you're looking at the group and not focusing on an individual, I don't think that it would violate the policy.

That's the way I read it, right? But right, but if you're focusing on the kid that won the egg toss, that's where his—. And adding that piece to it, right? But now we're right—. What we're doing is writing ourselves policy that's enforceable by by code that we're just going to spend the rest of our lives accepting ourselves from by writing this in every time we have a gathering.

So we're going to create a rule, and then every time we, we do anything in public, we're going to say this rule doesn't apply.

Why are we writing the rule? Well, I mean, there's already laws that govern some of this. All we are is just trying to keep it within the bounds of the laws. Yeah, this is probably a pretty standard across the state. Yeah, it is.

Um, so we're not, we're not doing anything that the law is not requiring us to do. But there's, there's no expectation of privacy in public, right?

So other than the minors—. No, minors are not—. No, minor— yeah, as a photographer, I can go out to I can go to the skate park in Wasilla tomorrow and shoot photos of minors skating on their skateboards all day and post them wherever I want to. And I don't need to get anybody's permission because there is no expectation of privacy in public. Now, as we have seen on social media, are there going to be 8 million moms on there on Facebook posting about some creeper lady with her camera?

Absolutely. But I mean, But I mean, there's no expectation of privacy in public.

Well, all right, let's— I mean, this is more of a good taste thing, I think, right? Yeah, but we're binding ourselves to it if we write this into code.

I don't think it should be there.

Well, well, we haven't had an issue with this in the past. We haven't had people saying my kids internally on the Facebook page. And I mean, we've never had a problem with what we've shared on our page. This is under the handbook, which the handbook is part of code. So it is code.

I think if you want to remove it, that's fine. You could also broaden it a bit and include something like Generally, the city does not post photographs that focus on identifiable minors without permission. But something to that effect, you could broaden it. But the easier way would probably be to just take out the language. Okay, I like that.

That's one word. I can do one word. Generally, that's a perfect thing to do. How's that? It waters it down a little bit.

Down so bad. Yeah, basically nothing. We're gonna endeavor— that was another one of those good words. I was going to insert a void. Yeah, that's why you're here tonight.

I wouldn't have thought of that one. Yeah. All right, so my amendment is under Appendix B, except as— geez, I can't even read my own writing— authorized by the mayor to the end of Appendix B. And then this under 6.5, we're going to add the word generally to the first, uh, sentence, and then, um, with a comma. And then this Under 7, we're going to add, the city recommends broadcast only.

And so that'll be the last sentence that we change.

Uses broadcast only recommends. I'll take out the word uses and put in recommends. Where are you putting the word generally? Generally, at the very front, just before do not post. Generally, do not post.

First word of 6.5 with a comma. Generally, comma, do not post. Okay, does everybody— any, any council member have any question on my amendment?

No. Okay. Anyone? Any other comments?

Hearing and seeing none. Um, you made the motion, but we don't have—. Oh, a second. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so we're voting on the amendments.

There's one, and I see your timer's on at exactly 9:30.

Okay, we're voting on the amendment that he read into record.

Council Member Lewis? Aye.

Council Member Courtney? Aye.

Councilmember Johansen. Aye.

Councilmember Mitchell. Aye.

Councilmember Khan. Aye. Deputy Mayor Brazell. Aye. Mayor Kohl.

Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Any other comments on the policy before we vote?

Okay, call the vote on the main motion as amended.

Hold on, I'm writing, sorry.

Councilmember Khan.

Aye.

Councilmember Mitchell. Aye.

Councilmember Courtney.

Aye.

Councilmember Johansen. Aye. Councilmember Lewis.

Aye. Deputy Mayor Brazell. Aye. Mayor Kohl. Aye.

Motion carries unanimously.

Okay, that brings us to Resolution Number 2622, Resolution of the Houston City Council Confirming the Appointment of Jennifer Jenner to the position of Recreation Advisory Committee has left.

That's okay. Um, Council Member Courtney is feeling very ill and she just left the meeting. Okay, for the record, at 9:35.

Sorry, Jennifer.

I would like to make a motion to approve Resolution Number 2622. Second. Any Well, they all like to interview, so I'll—. Yeah, they like to ask questions.

Go ahead and let's start with Lisa.

Oh, fair enough. Okay. Hello everybody, thanks for having me. Hi. Uh, So one of my first questions is I just wanna make sure your name matches the resolution.

Is that a P-H-E-R? Correct. Okay, so we'll have to correct the spelling on the resolution. It's Desi Robb. Has left.

It's a I-F-E-R on the resolution, so we'll just have to correct the spelling on that. How long have you lived in Houston? My husband and I bought my uncle's homestead up Armstrong here about 4 years ago, and I owned a business in Anchorage which just closed down after almost 50 years, not under all— always under my control, obviously, but decided to move out here full-time and kind of go into semi-retirement with an Airbnb business. Business on our property. And when I saw this position open, I came down to introduce myself because I did see a post, ironically, on the City of Houston page.

Not about— I saw that post as well, but about if you have a business in Houston, come down and introduce yourself. So I said, well, I guess I'll stop by City Hall and say hello. And I had also seen that ad, and Charlie brought it up with me once I told him what I was, what my husband and I were doing up here. And I thought that would be a really great way to get involved in the community. And I grew up in Palmer.

Houston was literally my family's playground when I was a kid. I grew up on the Little Sioux. I know what kind of recreation we have around here, and I really believe that we should be using it more to our advantage. Um, and I think some pretty simple things could probably help make that happen, just start. I'm incredibly creative.

I've got a lot of ideas. I sometimes need to be edited, which is why we have you guys. But, uh, I would love to get involved, and I'm excited about it. And I, I love that you wrote here that you, um, this— you want people to enjoy the city of Houston as a destination, not a pit stop. So with of the many ideas that you have going around in your brain, what do you think is one of the most important things the City of Houston can focus on for Parks and Rec?

Like, what, what do you see as being a draw for people? Okay, you know, I thought about this actually before I even came to this meeting because I'm like, well, we're in a state that has— I mean, almost every place in the state has fantastic, you know, park and recreational opportunities. I think when you— if you want people to come to Houston as a destination, you have to pick 3 of— maybe 2 or 3 of your best features, and you have to have somebody market them. And maybe a little cleanup, like trail markers. I grew up— you go into Raleigh Lake and out there, Red Shirt and everything, and I remember as a kid there was a nature trail out there that I absolutely adored that had little plaques that explained maybe the plant life or the wildlife, birds or something, simple things like that.

And highlighting them, I think, would really make people feel like, oh, I could go spend a little time in Houston. I mean, it's always been, this place has always been an experience for me. Knee-high to a grasshopper, as my father would say, when I got ice cream every time at Miller's when I came to town. So yeah, I hope that's a sufficient answer. Absolutely.

Yeah. And one of the biggest problems we have with our boards is people committing and then never showing up. Can you make the time to show up to the meetings and be here for the community? That is why I'm in Houston. Yes, I have no problem showing up.

Thank you. That's all I've got.

Anyone else?

Are you aware of what an enterprise fund is? I'm sorry, are you aware of what an enterprise fund is? An enterprise fund? I am not.

The, the—. Our Parks and Rec is set up financially a little bit differently than the rest of the city in that it runs out of an account of its own. Okay. Where, you know, revenue from the campground, for example, goes into a fund that doesn't go into the general fund of the city. Oh, they call that an enterprise fund to allow the Parks and Rec to be able to generate revenue and then be able to spend that revenue sort of autonomously in its— with its own steering, unlike anybody else here that can spend anything autonomously.

Um, I was just wondering if that was something that you'd caught. That—. No, I just— I'm kind of— I'm, I'm pretty green here. You're gonna have to forgive me. But, uh, so I only have a small correction.

Okay. What are you saying there? Uh, Council will, we will, the Public Works Director would work with the Parks and Rec Committee. Your guys' recommendations would come through him and it would make it to our annual budget and those would be through the mayor and all that would be put together how to spend money collected throughout the year of the O fund Parks and Rec money. The council still have— will have to approve that.

I mean, that is one of the functions where we had it in even in this year. We are hoping that the motivated Parks and Rec committee that you're going to help make will come up with great ideas for helping fund those things. And, uh, that gentleman back there has a lot of good ideas, and I Hope you guys—. Excellent. Yes, absolutely.

Another thing I wanted to mention, and I'm not sure how— there's a lot I have to learn about how the city works, but, you know, thinking of planning to open this business next summer, hopefully with at least 2 cabins. I've done a lot of research on recreational activities that I can present to my guests locally, and I'm not sure why, but it seems to me, and maybe I'm just not finding them, that we don't have the guided services or, or, you know, I mean, like, just trying to get somebody to take my guests up and down the Little Sioux on a float trip, I couldn't find anybody that would do that. And I don't know why that is. Is that— I mean, does the city charge. No, guy, I, I don't know how that works, but I think it would, it would be really cool if we could develop something that made them want to come here.

That's the commission needs to do right now. The only way to get onto the river is go up the truck road unless you go on someone's private property, right? You're going here, you're going to end up—. If you miss the one exit, you're going to end up—. No, that's not— we have property property up there that I picked up from the borough.

That's on my street, ironically. She's on— it's not developed, but you can— it is public land. Yeah, and you can launch a boat with a fee over at Miller's Market there. Yeah, but that was the one thing I had a difficult time was finding, because people that come to the town, if they don't necessarily know the town and they're looking for activities, it would be really nice to have—. There's snow machining.

Oh yeah, there's so much. I know, there, you know, I think like you got dogs, you know. I, I know that the horse— I did talk to someone at the horse ranch over there. Yeah. And asked about trail rides, and she said she used to, but she, she stopped because she was feeding horses that weren't being used, and I'm not sure why that is either.

I don't, I don't know. I just think there's a lot of opportunity here. Okay, I agree. Yeah, so, so do a lot of people, I'm sure.

Any other questions? Oh, I'm not supposed to ask that, am I? Sorry. Anyone online have questions?

Hearing and seeing none more, clerk, go ahead and do the roll call. Motion's been made and seconded to approve Resolution Number 26-22, a resolution of the Houston City Council confirming the appointment of Jennifer Jenner to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission, Seat E. Council Member Lewis. Aye.

Council Member Mitchell. Aye.

Council Member Khan.

Aye.

Councilmember Johansen.

Aye. Deputy Mayor Breece.

Aye. Mayor Kohl. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. You're going to give her the oath?

Yep. Don't, don't move. Not moving. You're getting the oath. I know.

Welcome aboard. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Congratulations. What do I do?

You do what Tawny says. Okay, that's fair. Retina scan, blood sample.

Oh, okay.

Sure.

I, Jennifer Jenner, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, Constitution of the State of Alaska, the laws of this city, and that I will honestly, faithfully, and impartially discharge my duties as the Parks and Recreation Commission.

Okay, thank you so much for waiting, man, and congratulations. Congratulations, and I can't wait to help put you to work.

Okay, brings us to item 11. Records placed on the table, we have two—. The photo thing and the Deputy Mayor, um, last passive recovery, um, list here. Help us understand all. I think that should be part of the record.

Um, anybody in the audience who want to make a comment? Our audience dwindled on us. You want to make a comment? No? Good job.

Keep going. Almost down to none. Okay, head this into executive session. This is Tani's, um, the clerk's evaluation, and I have it here. Would you like it in private or do you want it in public?

I will waive executive session and request it be in public. Okay, I will pass this down to these guys first, and then as it goes by, you guys can look at it and make some statements. I will since I have to work with her almost every day. Um, Tani's come a long ways from where she was when she first came here. Um, still working away on some, some things, but, uh, I— she doesn't make me cringe nearly as bad.

When I say that, I'm saying that very jokingly because There was sometimes, in a nice way, there was some times that, uh, we make each other cringe. Yep, there you go. That's fair. That some of the organizational things that I'm quite Anybody knows me, it gets to be that firsthand I get very, um, I gotta have things a certain way, and if it drives me crazy if it's not done correctly.

She has not only met those things, she's surpassed what I was actually looking and actually organizing the clerk's position And I don't wanna offend you, much better than I thought she could. And I think some of it, Charlie has kind of helped bring her visions to reality. They were, I knew they were in there, it just, it was who we have working actually matters and getting, I call 'em the dynamic duo now because they are able to, Uh, you guys haven't seen everything yet like I have, but they have a— they were spoke—. She would—. I gave her this opportunity early, she didn't take it, so I'm going to do it for her.

They have an in-trial, uh, automatic calculating form that they put together that helps the business people that can't do the math. This one will do it for them. It's all All they have to do is know how much they made and how much to exempt, and they— the form will fill out everything for them. So they won't have mistakes and all that other stuff going forward. That's one of the things, and it's trial, and it's going to be, um, it's so far like 10 people have tried it.

Is that—. Yeah, roughly. And, and the, the feedback's been very good. So that's one of the things, um, Her go.gov thing there that she found to put us on, I thought it was just— this is still one of my most favorite things on my phone. I don't have to go searching, it just lets me know there's something going on at the city.

And I just—. I—. If people would just put that on their app, they would know exactly what we're up to every day. So, um, that was a good— she found that all on her own. She went out and found a way to communicate to the public.

So she's got a lot of good ideas. Some of them we can't afford yet, but she has really started to mature in that position to where I like calling her clerk now. Before, there was times, not so much, that I, I had more difficulty. So I thought we, I gave a fair evaluation where we're at for now. And I can only tell you, I think in the next year or two, as she continues to progress and she's starting to find her ground, it's just gonna get better for the city.

The public now is, I mean, she's got the public relating to her much better now.

It's a win for the city, and I had to be honest.

So now anybody else can weigh in what you guys, uh, have and saw. And I mean, I don't have any frame of reference to know, but I, I'm pestering her constantly. So I, I mean, I, I, I, I, it's just become habit. I go to her for things probably more often than I should. I don't know how often you guys are reaching out to her, but she's a constant source of the right answer for me.

So I, I appreciate it. She works for you guys, and, uh, well, for all of us, for the public too. And, uh, she has become that resource thing that I want the clerk to be for everybody. And she's developed— she's—. They—.

Her little group there is really maturing, and I'm very thankful of it.

Uh, I— Jason, I know you can hear us, but Uh, you can't really participate in this because you actually have to be here for— well, actually, no, you can participate in this. He can. You just can't see my evaluation, I guess, um, because it's got to stay private or somewhat private. Yeah.

And she does like to point it out when I'm wrong. She will certainly tell me. Well, I enjoy that myself. I'm sure that's fun.

Many people in this city That's a good one. Good. I'm nice about it. One time I recall, uh, where Tony went above and beyond, and there was one criteria on there as far as like attendance, and think of it as just like overall, overall conscientiousness, um, sense of duty. When it was 47 below and she was the only one in the office, I think the public works director had let everybody off that day, and, uh, I She was in here making copies, preparing for the meeting, with her car running outside so it would stay running.

I think that that's a testament to the ethic and the sense of duty. So I very much appreciated that. Always remember that. Thanks. Forgot about it.

Well, they'll all be here from now on.

We have little electric plugins now that we're working on. It should be done next week, so that excuse will never fly any longer unless it's 65 below, right? Yeah, that might not start then.

Oh, we've had snow days. I mean, if it's 6 feet— or, well, one day it was 4 feet. And I remember the initial—. Yeah, we do.

Yeah, winter before last, I guess, on the front page, or 2, 2, 3 days out right off my truck trying to get to Finnegan. So, I mean, our roads were Our back roads were actually plowed, um, but from King Arthur to City Hall, yeah, took the surface belt right off my truck. Just pack snow, push it off, just pack, pack snow, push it off and pull it. That's a fur.

Well, I guess I can just make a motion that the council accepts, even though you guys initialed. I guess I think we should accept my evaluation of the clerk.

Yes, you may. She wants to say something. As long as you don't talk about me.

I actually am going to talk about you. Um, the mayor and I have come a long way, and for a long time I did not enjoy coming to work. I didn't want to be here, um, but I didn't have anywhere to go, and I stayed.

Um, but when you get the right combination of people, things just sort of fall into place, and I thoroughly enjoy coming to work. Now I enjoy hashing things out with the mayor, whether we agree or don't. It's still fun. We laugh, um, we're not mad at each other.

But my right magic combination is that man right there. I couldn't do what we're doing without him, and I can't take all the credit. He's a big part. He's, he's my right hand. All right.

Um, and I'm finally confident and comfortable not being here because I know he can handle the position and do what needs to be done. And I'm actually going to take time off and know that I'm not going to have to come back and there's going to be a pile of all kinds of stuff that needed to be done because I'm—. He'll do it because he can. Um, I'm—. He's teachable.

I learn from him, he learns from me, um, and we just, we work. It just works. So we're getting all those things done procedurally that the mayor insists on. No, the code is—. Well, code, I know, but your code, um, but all the procedural things are getting done or And we're reorganizing, you can see it on the wall.

We're changing things up, we're making things more accessible, we're able to help the public more.

And I know I don't live here, but— Even though I don't, Houston is my town, my city. These are my people. I'm here to help these people. And I think they finally are understanding I am here. I'm not going to just— I'm not going away.

So I'm really happy to be here. And I appreciate all the comments. So thank you. You're most welcome, and you earned them. Very much appreciate you.

Okay, now can I make a motion? Yeah. All right, I'd like to, uh, make motion to that you will accept the mayor's, uh, evaluation report of the count—. Uh, Clerk? I'll second.

Any comments? Seeing none, hearing none, um, let's vote.

Council Member Mitchell? Aye.

Council Member Johansen? Aye.

Council Member Khan?

Aye. Council Member Lewis. Aye.

Deputy Mayor Brazell. Aye. Mayor Kohl. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.

And thank you, Donnie, for all your work, and I do know the hours and time you put in.

Okay, brings us down to Church comments. I think I just said them all. Oh no, um, tomorrow's Canvas, um, it's at 1 o'clock. There's 23 votes to count. It'll be really fast.

Um, and Monday is the certification of the election.

At 6 PM. That's all that's on the agenda, just certifying the election, the results. So it'd be a quick, quick meeting, 15-20 minutes.

That's it.

Okay, let's, uh, Let's start with Councilmember Lewis.

I'm kind of running on fumes, had a very long day, so I'll be short. Had some very difficult decisions this evening, and ultimately what it comes down to is making the best decision you can based off of the evidence that you're provided. And, uh, and, and that's, that's all, that's all I can say that we should do individually as council members, and the public should do equally when making, when making judgments and decisions and so forth. Try to separate yourself and be as objective as possible. It's not easy, uh, it's actually very difficult, and it's something that we all struggle through each and every day.

But that's the, that's, that's the joy of life in a way. That's all I have. Oh, one, one more thing. As always, very much appreciate every perspective that we hear from the public and everybody who participates. That's essential for this, for us to make, uh, the decisions that we do.

Council Member Khan.

Um, I thank everybody for coming out. Um, thanks, Tony, for all your good work. Uh, Chief too, for what you do and the rest of the Council for doing our discussions between all the comments and stuff through all the stuff that we speak on and stuff like that. Yeah, I'm running short on fumes too, Dan. I'd just like to say thank you guys all and yeah, have a good night.

Thank you. Council Member Mitchell. Several things. Thank you, Senator Rosier, for coming and speaking to us tonight, as well as Representative McCabe. It's always good to have our local politicians involved in our city hall.

That's awesome. And good updates. Sounds like a lot of things moving forward.

I also want to thank Alaska Housing for coming and giving their presentation. Personally, I'd rather see DNR land in the city limits of Houston be turned over to the City of Houston. That's my opinion. I'd rather be there to manage it as a city so that the people have a say in what— I mean, it seems like they are willing to work, and it didn't seem like they'd be difficult to work with, but So yeah, we've had a kind of an issue with this process of DNR not filling us in or putting us in the loop before they make these decisions. And so I'd like to see that change, especially when it pertains to property within our city limits.

But also want to thank, uh, is it Patrick Simpson, um, for the extensive amount of work and hoops that he has gone through to provide the evidence that he provided. The purpose of a conditional use permit hearing is to not, not just to hear the public. I understand there's a few members of the public that spoke out against it today, but some of the comments can be invalidated with proof, and I think that's what we saw today. I'm very thankful for the extensive report that was provided. Um, I'm thankful to have a, a good business that does a good thing, uh, moving into the city of Houston.

I think that's an awesome opportunity for, uh, the city. So, um, and for builders— I'm a builder, I, I like building products. Um, pretty much most of this building is built with plastic. Um, if there was a fire in here, this whole thing, the vinyl plank flooring, the vinyl windows, a lot of PVC the lights, there's plastic everywhere. And so, you know, there's, there's a lot of valid reasoning, but there's also some that aren't as valid.

And I think he's proven extensively that his— he is going to be as safe on the environment as any other business that runs in town. And so thankful for that. Um, thank you to Tawny. I just really appreciate you. I think you're awesome.

I'm glad you stuck around. This The city is blessed to have you. You have endured storms that most people should never have to endure. You've endured harassment, not just from the public but also from— yeah, I'm not going to go into that. Um, you've endured a lot and you stuck around to serve this community, and that means something.

That does speak to your character. And I've seen growth, I've seen improvement, I've seen You fall into this position where you're much more fluent in everything that you do, and it's, it's an awesome thing. So thank you so much for being here and serving Houston.

Um, I think that's all I have. Oh, and I did, I did have one more thing. Thank you to the City of Houston and its residents for a nice quiet election season.

That's all I have to say. All right, with that said, I— there was a reason I kept you in the back, Lisa, was because of the election. Um, feel free to speak, it's over now. So, um, oh, uh, one more thing, uh, an unofficial congratulations to Lisa and Jeff. That's it, I'm done now.

I just want to say thank you to all of the public who came out tonight and who also watch online. I get comments all the time about online and how people really appreciate that. So I thank everybody for taking the time out of their evening because I'm like Councilmember Lewis said, a lot of us have long days. So I appreciate you guys make the time to come out here and to to speak and to echo what my fellow council members said. When I have the facts and the evidence in front of me, that's what I have to go with.

So that's why I voted the way I did. Thank you to the senator and the representative and Alaska Housing for coming out and speaking to us. Miss Jenner, congratulations. Thank you for stepping up and can't wait to see what your visions are because I agree. I think Houston, I mean, our city motto is, you know, where the real Alaska begins.

Let's do something with that. Let's show people the great opportunities we have for recreation out here. I mean, it's limitless, guides, everything like that. Completely agree. So congratulations, and thank you for sticking around because it was one of our longer meetings that we've had lately.

So thank you, I appreciate it. Um, real quick, this Saturday at Station 91, we have an open house and a bake sale from our auxiliary. All of that money goes right to our fire department to benefit the firefighters on things that they need. The fire department is also hosting a trunk or treat on Sunday, October 25th from 3 to 5. The open house is 12 to 3, so if you'd like to have a trunk, uh, contact myself or Chief Hartley, um, and just bring the family down, bring yourself down, bring your dogs down.

We can't wait to see you and Last but not least, Connie, thank you for everything. Um, I'm not one of those kind of people who's always like, oh, good job. Like, I kind of tend to keep that inside, but I, I do appreciate you. My brain is always firing on 8 million different cylinders, and you're always willing to help me kind of like rein things in, answer questions. I do think you should have gotten dinged for all the purple, but whatever, whatever.

Have you been in my office? I try not to. I don't like purple, so— but no, I, I, I may not say it, but I see what you do, and I do appreciate you, and thank you very much for everything.

Um, yeah, so even if you don't hear me say it, I do appreciate it. Thank you. And, um, that's all I've got. Okay, Council—. Oh, Deputy Mayor.

One of the benefits of being the Deputy Mayor is you go, you go towards the end and everybody beats you to everything. So, you know, I won't, I won't repeat over and over again. But, um, I, I think that 2620 was a big win for the city tonight, and I want to thank Council Member Johansen for drafting pretty much the entirety of that. All I did was modify it a little bit into being temporary and try to work on the language some. Um, but that gives us an opportunity to get our renewed planning and zoning folks on track with plenty of time to make that happen, and, and I think we're gonna come out the other side of that in better shape than had we, you know, gone the original direction.

Um, thank you for staying so late. Um, this is not a normal thing. We are not sitting here at 10:15 at night on a regular basis. Um, this generally happens when Carter comes up with a 500-page docket. Um, so that's why we're here.

We all saw it coming. I'm sorry you weren't earlier on the agenda.

Um, I think that's all I have for tonight. All right, I'll make it quick and short.

Um, this—. You guys actually impressed me tonight in, uh, the fact that, uh, you stayed focused on a very difficult thing. I, I had probably 4 or 5 days longer than you guys to read the packet. When I— most of it I helped put together, so I knew it. But this whole section here, I, I went through it pretty, pretty good.

And, um, I, I'm so— I'm a little bit, um, disappointed in our residents that they didn't see the due diligence that our guy put into this, Mr. Patrick there.

He obviously wants to be in Houston, and I commend him for it, for having the vision and the forethought to see what Houston has to offer.

Um, I, I think he's going to be a great business. Anybody that does this self-reporting like he did and made those— that information known— and those residents didn't even know that. I mean, that's information they didn't have. And I hope when, uh, you guys bring back your planning and zoning thing, or well, through planning and zoning, that that is a model that we used to go. I mean, we We had a good, frank conversation, and it— to be quite honest, I don't want to run out too long here, but Public Works has got to do a better job of vetting that stuff before it comes to us.

And that's why I'm holding out as long as I have to find the right director, because I don't want to have packets that come to us acting— if you read it, it's kind of scathing on our Public Works Department because it was brought originally to planning and zoning as a junk dump or a plastic dump. It's farthest thing from it. So we have to clean that up, and we're in a process, and we're going to have stuff for you guys.

Well, that's my other thing. If, if you guys, uh, after the election gets certified and we have basically the same council that returns I will not be here during the, um, I'm gonna call on, uh, Deputy Mayor Brazell to hold that meeting. But I did want you to hear it from my own mouth if, if, uh, uh, we come up to that. If the council wants me to return, and I'll be on a phone call or try to, if I'm not able to connect, uh, on the 9th 19th. Uh, what happened on the 19th?

It's the 19th. Yeah, the following Monday. Uh, so, Holly, mind where you guys have to vote for a person to sit in this chair. If the council wants me to return, I will. Uh, I hope I can log into, but if you don't, that's fine too.

We'll, we'll continue to move on. I'll still be on the council. So either way, I'm— I can live with whatever you guys decide. But I had to go on this. My wife had made the trip when I wasn't having to worry about that, so I couldn't really change her plans that she'd made so far ahead.

With that said, we're going to be done, and I always have an open door to all of you. So it's— we're going to adjourn at 10:10— well, 10:18. So following Monday.