January 8, 2025 Assembly Finance Committee Meeting

Call the Assembly Finance Committee meeting for January 8th to order.

Um, Madam Clerk, will you note the roll? Thank you, Madam Chair. All members are present with the exception of Mayor Weldon. The quorum is present. Thank you.

That brings us to approval minutes. We have the November 6th Finance Committee meeting minutes. Any comments, edits to those minutes? Seeing none, that is so moved. Um, which brings us to agenda topics.

We are going to shift just a few things around tonight. We are going to move, um, item 7, the Juneau Economic Development Council grant to our first agenda topic, and we're going to move the assessment ordinance to our last agenda topic. Um, so that is going to bring us to the JEDC Council grant. This is Mr. Barr. Miss Flick, thank you, Miss Wall.

Uh, the This item is number on page 49 in your packet if you want to look at it. Um, it was an ordinance introduced on Monday. Um, it is for a supplemental grant to JDC. Um, they did not meet the requirement of, um, filing for their tax exempt on their property, um, in a timely manner, and there's, um, not really an appeal process for that. So, um, this is similar to what we did with another organization earlier this year.

So happy to take questions, but, um, we referred it here in case there was discussion before sending it on, um, for public. Any questions?

Go ahead, Mr. Bryson.

Um, what's the ownership of the building? Is it CBJ or JDC? Who owns the actual physical building. The parcel is owned by JADC.

Any other questions? Mr. Smith, do we have a motion? Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I move Ordinance 2024-01BAC from the Finance Committee to be introduced at the next regular assembly meeting. And ask unanimous consent.

I believe it's already been introduced, so it'll have to be public meeting.

Okay, I'll amend my motion, uh, to set it for public ordinance 2024-01 BAC for public hearing at whatever assembly meeting makes sense, and I ask unanimous consent.

Seeing no objections, that is so moved, which brings us to BRH CIP ordinance for emergency department addition. Um, Mr. Warner, I think we may have questions for you. So maybe if you wouldn't mind joining, joining us, I will see. I don't think we need to. Um, I think we've talked about how this got here, but this is really an opportunity for the assembly to ask questions that they may have.

So, questions from the assembly? Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just— I mean, we've heard about the project and the need for the project. I guess the certificate of need piece comes to mind.

I guess I'm just wondering, like, where in the appropriation process that needs to be issued before we appropriate. Anyway, I just Didn't know if that's something we need to be considering or if it's—.

Or not.

My understanding is in discussions with the state, the CON is slated to be either moved on the middle of January. So Finance moves it from this meeting to assembly, it'd be in February. So that would be the starting point for moving on our CMR project. If that makes sense. And so that's the quickest we can get this project moving forward, is, um, kind of how we kind of— how you guys are moving it forward.

Does that answer your question? So if you guys move it from here to assembly on February 3rd— is that the next meeting? So second, the CON should be approved, which would be the middle of January. If the CON is not approved, we would request that it be bumped to March potentially. Um, but we're— our goal is to move this project forward as swiftly as possible once we get all the approvals in place, both the CON and the appropriation.

Okay, thank you.

Sue Scandies. Uh, thanks, Madam Chair. A quick, uh, you're a little bit hard to hear. When you're saying CO, you are referring to certificate of need? Certificate of need.

Perfect. Okay. I was hoping, thanks for that response on the timeline. Could you talk a little bit about where you are in the process? We started to look at this before, but we didn't have it.

But could you just characterize what those conversations with the state have been like? I'll leave it there. So you want me to go into what conversations with the state have been like? Is that your question? Yeah, I think if you could just describe where you, you're in the process, you've been waiting for the certificate of need, you, this started to get calendared, we didn't have a certificate of need.

So if you could just describe to us what's happened thus far, what those conversations have been like, that'd be appreciated. We've had multiple meetings with the state and conversations about the CON and multiple other subjects, including our critical access request. At the last meeting with the state, they said that they'd move on their certificate of need in the middle of January. So that's why we think it should move here in the middle of this month.

So to follow up on that, conversationally, the state has already shared it's going to be approved, it's just going to follow the state timelines, and that will be in the middle of January. Is that correct? They said they'd make a decision on it in the middle of January. They never characterized it as that approval. Okay, thanks for that.

Mr. Kelly.

Thank you. Um, I think I, I would keep my fingers crossed about us getting approval in the middle of January, but let's say we don't. Um, I noticed that the, the text of this ordinance basically restricts it from being, um, spent until until the— or appropriated until the certificate of need is obtained. I guess this might be a question for staff or for the attorney. What happens if that would be delayed past the end of the fiscal year?

Ms. Flick, do you have—. Mr. Kelly, I'm going to take a stab at an answer to see if it's really the question that you're asking. Um, this is a capital project, so once the assembly appropriates, makes an appropriation for the capital project, it care— it stays active until the capital project is done. So that could happen at any time. And if the— if for some reason the CON didn't happen until July and you waited to take action until then, it's— the appropriation would become active in July and it would stay with the CIP project.

Thank you. That does answer my question. Ms. Hughes-Scandies. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Warner, we were just talking about this a little bit, but could you characterize the hospital's overall financial experience over the last several months? Obviously, it's been tumultuous little bit here, and I think it would just be helpful to have for context. Yes, thank you for the question. This morning, my CFO closed out the month of November, so year to date, Barlett has margin of $5.9 million to the positive, which is a difference of $10.9 million from where we were at the same point last year. So we were at negative $5 million through November last year.

So we've had a substantial swing in operations. Most of those were done through changes to staff, contracts, plus closure of multiple services that the assembly knows of. Does that answer your question? It does. I'll wait and see if anyone has any questions.

Ms. Hall. Thank you, Madam Chair and Mr. Varner. Knowing that construction costs have skyrocketed in the last couple of years, you know, post-COVID, is— are you accounting for that in your proposal and in your estimates? Some of that was considered in the estimates.

That with every construction process, you can't be exactly right when you come up with an estimate. Um, we've had multiple discussions with the engineering department, uh, so as we go through the CMAR project, um, we'll kind of set this as the guidelines is where we're going to keep the project within scope of these dollars. Ideally, we don't have to come back and ask for additional appropriations, um, but as you guys have experience with capital projects, that's not always the case. Okay, and if you wouldn't mind, one more question. Um, I understand there had been a much larger ER remodel project proposed a few years ago.

Um, I, I wasn't part of that process, so kind of in a nutshell, could you tell me how this differs and will it meet your needs, or, or in a few years down the road you'll need to be revisiting, uh, addressing issues with the ER and perhaps another upgrade. I wasn't here for the whole ER project before either, but my understanding, it was a much larger project in scope. The CON was approved for that project, and I believe the budget was a little over $20 million. Deb might have the background on that. What this project does is it basically minimizes it to what the hospital absolutely needs.

It drops it down to the bare necessities to bring us or get us a modern ER with negative pressure rooms, um, airway protected rooms, and, uh, have, you know, safe space for staff for mixing pharmaceuticals. Um, barring any large increase in population in Juneau or massive changes to the cruise industry, this should meet our needs into the future. Okay, thank you.

Mr. Kelly, um, thank you. This is to follow up on, um, one of Miss Hall's questions. And so you might have answered it, but I'm not sure because of the, the acoustics in here. Um, so I guess considering, relating to the project estimate, um, do you feel that you, you've estimated high so like it's not likely to exceed given inflation or, yeah, I guess, is what you've estimated most likely a maximum? The estimate does include a contingency, so there was a buffer built into that.

Thank you. I'm going to get one in here. Really appreciate the memo. Thank you for the background there.

Definitely curious about the certificate of need. I do not— I'll admit I don't know what criteria the state uses to make that determination. My understanding is it's taken longer than we expected. Can you maybe walk us— and I realize you're not the state, but maybe walk us through kind of what your understanding is of how they make that determination? Are you feeling confident that we're going to get there?

And if not, what would be the reasoning. I'm not 100% up to speed on the certificate of need. We did submit the certificate of need application back in August, and typically they respond within 30 days. We got an extension almost immediately upon submitting that. This was in the midst of us going through the closure of RRC, the closure of the crisis center.

I don't know if that played a role in it. The state has been concerned, and as well the feds have, as to the financial viability of Bartlett. Having been able to post, you know, 7 months of positive financial lines, I think helps our case with this. As to whether it was needed, they demonstrated from a patient care standpoint it was needed when they approved the first CON, so I don't think that's a consideration. I think they want to make sure that Bartlett's viable.

That's my take on the situation. Thank you, super helpful. Miss Hughes-Candice, did you have a Another question. Thanks, Madam Chair. Yes, and thank you.

That was very— that helped paint the picture a little better for me. Just jumping back to the overall hospital financial picture, because that's been something that's given me pause. You know, we first saw this when things felt less secure.

We just saw the negotiated contracts in our packet on Monday.

You seem pretty confident that we've turned a corner and we're in a much better place than we were. That includes that— those are baked into that picture, right? Yes. So we made the increase for this year effective on July 1st. So the increase for the contracts already built into those numbers that we've talked about.

That's great. And can I ask just one more?

Thanks. And then looking ahead to the— how this fits into your overall capital picture, obviously if you own a building, there's just the habitual— you have to be doing capital projects just to take care of it. In some ways, I think maybe the original scope represented more of an expansion, whereas this seems to paint more a picture of improvements, necessary improvements. Could you talk a little bit about not summarizing what your 20-year capital outlook is, but do you think that this represents maybe a pause on capital projects that aren't just operation and repair. Basically, do you expect, uh, capital projects?

Is the board looking at anything that's an expansion, like, that is a capital project? Uh, in our last planning committee meeting with the board, we actually discussed going through our facility master plan update. So the last update that we have was actually done in 2011. They did a refresh in 2021, which was mostly just updating the old plan. So we're in the process of going back through a a full planning process so we can understand what the needs of the hospital are.

There is nothing on the near horizon that I can say for sure that's coming up. We have some facilities that we need, I mean, there's updates that have to have, we have some aging facilities and some of that will come up. We also have to come up with some plans on how we utilize the Aurora Behavioral Health Building, which we're trying to put together as well. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Any other questions? Mr.

Smith, would you like to make a motion? Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. I would move that Ordinance 2024-01BI be set for public hearing upon receipt of the certificate of need from the state of Alaska. And I'd ask unanimous consent. Any objections to that motion?

Seeing none, that's so moved. Mr. Warner, thank you for being here. That was really helpful. Thank you. All right, that brings us to assembly goals.

Um, my understanding is that we have not seen these since the retreat, so our intent is to make sure these reflect our discussions. For now, there are areas that are highlighted that we know still need work. Those have been assigned to you all, and this is just a reminder to everyone to get those moving. But maybe I'll see Mr. Barr. We have a deadline for that.

And am I capturing this correctly? Thank you. Thank you, Chair Wall. You are capturing it correctly. Our staff hope tonight is that You as a body will look at the goals that are before you that you came up with at your retreat, and the ones that aren't highlighted, we would intend upon your direction to start using those as we begin the work of 2025.

And I don't necessarily have a timeline per se on the highlighted ones, but sooner the better, right? So happy to engage on any of those three with the Assembly members that volunteered to work on those as well.

Any questions or things that people noticed that they wanted to change or otherwise discuss?

Go ahead, Mr. Smith. Thank you. Mr. Barr, when— what's the schedule for when will we see these at a CAO and then adopt them at a regular assembly meeting? Is that kind of how we do it, or just at a regular assembly meeting maybe?

Thank you. Through the chair, I think that's will of the body. We could certainly bring them to Um, the, the city manager would love to adopt these at the February 3rd meeting, but certainly that meeting will be, uh, busy. And, um, if there's still like working that you guys need to do to work through, then it would be more appropriate, uh, to probably punt final adoption to the 3rd and have that as a conversation on the, um, the February.

Berry cow. So I think it all just depends on the comfort level of the body and kind of moving. And I know you have— I know you still haven't seen 4 of those goals, but, you know, the public has asked, like, what would they do with their retreat? And having this document and concurrence on this document gets 90% there, right, where we can say, here's what they, they've, you know, agreed to at this point. And then having finalized goals will just help staff as we work on our work plan.

Go ahead, Mr. Smith. Thanks. I guess just related, now that I've seen these all laid out, I mean, in the retreat I was kind of aware and counting and just could tell that we were adding more as opposed to subtracting. Anyway, we added more than we removed. I mean, are you, from a staff perspective, are you feeling that this— anyway, is this too much?

I mean, I know you're always prioritizing, but I just want to get a check in with you all. Anyway, so from my perspective, uh, you did a lot of work in making the goals a little more tangible, a little more focused to a 1-year time period. And so I appreciate that. And I think, um, you know, even though there's still a lot of goals, um, being able to focus it on tangible, like, milestones, um, still maintains that, like, bigger overall assembly so that implementing actions are more tangible. And I'm sorry, I get those two confused all the time.

So we still have the overarching goal and then the implementing actions are more tangible. So I think that helps us as staff just be able to implement the body's will.

Anything else from the group? Ms. Hall. Thank you, Madam Chair and Manager Kester. So does that mean that the 3 highlighted ones you need a little more fleshing out of those 3 by the 3rd of February, is that correct? Thank you, yes, through the chair.

So those 3 that are highlighted, those are 3 that were indicated at the retreat that you would wanna tweak the language on the implementing actions a little bit. And so the language that's included It was my best stab at the language that you indicated that you wanted to tweak at the retreat. But on those 3 in particular, the initials that are next to those 3 represent the initials of the Assembly members that indicated they might want to further refine that language and then bring back to the full body. Okay.

Mr. Smith. I was just gonna say that from looking these over and then now hearing from staff on the implementing actions, and I'm fine with considering the ones that are not highlighted, saying you could move forward with them, and then working on the two highlighted ones that I neglected to do my homework on, but we'll do before the 3rd of February. Personally, I don't actually, I think we could just address it at that meeting. I don't think we need it at a CAL or another meeting at all. So that's just my feedback.

Thanks. Good feedback. I agree. Ms. Yucianus.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I was just going to offer similar timeline. I think this is fine since we know we have to touch it again. Ben will really thumbs up what I would say. Sure if this is, you know, needs to be looked at for guidance, go nuts.

And then I would just say I had a really good conversation with Manager Kessler and we were talking about the goals just ideologically and our process for them. And I think now that everybody on this body has gone through that process and seeing what that's like, I don't have suggestions tonight and it's you know, there's pros and cons to— we want an elegant way to do it without a lot of work. Our meeting's already busy. But also, we know that by the time we get to the end of the retreat, there's a lot of crash and thrash on voting on the initiatives. And then we do this.

So just to plant in all of our minds, uh, in case you guys come up with great ideas of, you know, Should we revisit these ourselves? Not to change them, but to be thinking ahead for the next year.

Should we, you know, have a CAL near the end of the year where we like do the fertilizing for the retreat to come? Those I'm just brainstorming out loud, but it's— it was a really good conversation with the manager and it led me to believe that And since I can talk to you all, since we're in a public meeting, I would love you guys to be thinking about it as well. Anything else on this topic? I'll just add, maybe it would be helpful for staff to give the folks a deadline so that you can get their suggestions into the packet before our meeting. So, um, No, you can do that in email.

That's fine. Because we won't remember if you tell us now.

I'm going to move us on to legislative capital priorities. Miss Kester. Thank you. In your packet, you have on page 23 and 24, you have the draft legislative capital priorities. This is the product of the ranking exercise that you did over the holidays.

I just want to point out that this process starts in September when we issue the legislative priorities to the boards and commissions and advisory groups for their review and input. And then it works its way through that process, through the Planning Commission, through all the different committees. You'll see, you know, in the packet that you had for your homework assignment, you had comments from JCOS, Historic Resources Ad Hoc Committee, Planning Commission, PRAC, Docks and Harbors. So just wanted to point out the extensive public process that this list goes through. This is your opportunity to ask questions about the different projects.

Maybe the assembly as a body would like to move one up or down the list. This is a ranking, but that doesn't mean that it's, you know, it's a starting place for you to think about that. The intention would be that we would take any kind of movement that you made on this list and bring a draft to our legislative breakfast on January 23rd, because of course we will have our lobbyists there, both our state and federal lobbyists, and representatives from the federal delegation and the state delegation there. And it'll be an opportunity to talk about about those lists. Just so you know, from a timing perspective, the portal, the portals are open.

There's a portal for CAPSES, which is the state system, and that's open and closes shortly after the February 3rd meeting, which is when we're aiming to have this officially passed. And the federal government also has their— Murkowski's office has her portal. How we treat these projects is we will submit this CAPSES, this list as it is prioritized into CAPSES. So we'll just, like, every single project gets a number and a ranking in CAPSES. However, we do it a little bit differently when submitting projects for the federal delegation because there are only certain pots of money where there may be eligibility.

So what we do then is we kind of work with the lobbyist to figure out what, you know, is there money through HUD? Is there money through through Department of Justice, or where are the kind of buckets of money for appropriations that would be appropriate for the priorities on the list. And then we just work in priority order. So, you know, if there's a bucket of money that matches our glacial outburst flood mitigation, then that would be our number one priority that we would submit to Senator Murkowski's office. And then we'd work down the list.

I believe, you know, in the past, It's been limited to 5. It may have been limited even more this year. I can't recall. But just to let you know how we operationally use this list when we request funding from different governments. We also, of course, use this list just to prioritize what we're spending our time on, what we're finding grants for, and the like.

So happy to answer any questions.

Start with questions, if there are any questions, and then we can Move to comments.

I've got a question. Um, I was a little shocked to see the position, and this is always weird. We're all— we all do different philosophies for ranking, and so it's never going to be perfect. And I probably do a different thing every time, so I'm imperfect also. But I was shocked to see how low the chemicals Civic Center was on this list.

And I, you know, I, in the past, I've questioned how much money we have already invested in that project. But I do feel like if we've invested as much as we have in that project, then we want that project to come to fruition. And I'm not sure it'll come to fruition without federal dollars. Does having it, I know there are other people lobbying for it too. Does having it in this place on your— on our list, you know, in your judgment,.

Make it that much harder for this project that we've invested money in to come to fruition?

Yeah, I mean, I think the answer is yes. Certainly you want a project to be higher, uh, higher up on the list. In the past, Capitol Civic Center has been— we have submitted it as a project both to the state and federal delegation because there's been a bucket of money that kind of corroborated with that use. It's a highly competitive bucket, for lack of a better word. Congressionally directed spending gets funneled through things like teen homeless centers and the Interior, and you know, those types of like facilities.

There's not a lot, at least in my experience up until now, there hasn't been a lot of funding available for this type of project. So I would say it's, you know, always better to have a project be a higher priority. It's always better to have have, you know, more, more local funding appropriated to a project to make it, uh, more competitive. Um, but it's certainly still in the running on your list.

Mr. Bryson, then Mr. Steininger. Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I have waxed and waned many times over the, uh, Capitol Civic Center. There have definitely been times when I've been more supportive and times I've been less supportive. And the fact that the Juneau voters just adamantly two years in a row told us we should not be building a new building.

I didn't think this might be the most appropriate time to try and build a center. Um, I have advocated for them to be attached to City Hall, and the further they get— I don't want to get into the semantics of it, but that was one of the reasons why, uh, why I saw that it might be a little bit lower on the priority list. Just because of the way the voters responded the last building ask. Thank you for the time.

Mr. Steininger. Thank you, Madam Chair. And your question kind of brought something to my mind. When I was putting in my rankings, I was thinking a lot about what was achievable at the state level, not necessarily federal level. And I think honestly, if we're, you know, sending one list to the state, one list to the federal level I might rank differently.

Just think about how things— what's achievable at the state level appropriation-wise, you know, both dollar value and thinking about the types of projects that can make it through the state level. And I think that really influenced a lot of my choices, especially with like Capitol Civic Center and a couple others. So, again, I don't really have a question or much just thinking that, I guess, when we look at this and think about how we posture with the feds versus the state and the types of things that we ask for, you know, just because something falls lower on the list doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't be trying to advocate for it and prioritize our time. I guess it's more about what actually is achievable or gettable with the legislature. And then to follow on, also, you mentioned that you'll be loading these into CAPSYS.

Are you also doing outreach to the executive branch to make sure that they're aware of these projects? Know they can ask us if they are drafting a general obligation bond package to put in front of the legislature. These lists are kind of one of their primary, you know, pieces that they go to, and it might help to do a little bit of kind of advocacy in advance for those. Yeah, okay, so I'm going to take your second part first. Yes, we work with Kevin Jardel, our lobbyist, to make sure that, you know, all levels are communicated with of state government.

On this, the first part of your question, the federal process is more iterative because it is exactly that, trying to figure out, okay, what are they funding as it evolves. So You will have an opportunity to ask those questions with our lobbyist and staff from the delegation at the legislative breakfast. So it's my hope that we'll be much closer to like, okay, here are the kind of categories and here's what we would submit based on this list. And that would give you an opportunity to, you know, opine on where something might need to be a little bit higher. I mean, in In my experience, it's a little bit different than— well, I don't know that it's different than CAPSES because I spent years working on the other side of CAPSES where you're just like, you know, what do we like and what fits what's available?

So it's kind of the same on the state level. I would say that the delegation is trying to look at our projects and figure out what meets. And I know there are many of you who have had that experience as well. But, you know, a lot of our competitiveness for congressionally directed spending will really depend on like how much funding is available in a bucket. For example.

So, like, even if, even if Glacial Outburst Flood Response is our number one priority, if that's a very small bucket with lots of emergency response pressure on it, it might not be, you know, the most competitive project. So, it just, it just varies a little bit from, like, you know, even though we rank it, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's how the, the staff for our respective delegations are reviewing it. They're trying to plug us in, right, to the best opportunities that we can.

Mr. Kelly, Mr. Kelly, do you have a question? I realized I asked kind of a loaded question to start. So I want to make sure people get their questions in before we go to comments. Actually, I was kind of wondering if we were approaching comments yet. So I'll just see if anyone else has questions.

Miss Hughes-Candies. Uh, thanks, Madam Chair. I did realize I had one question. The FOG project, uh, we just love talking about FOG around here, so it's— but it had nothing to do with our bonds, correct? Our wastewater project, because that was a roofing thing, correct?

The bond was for improvements to the clarifier building at Juno, uh, Douglas wastewater treatment plant. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? Mr. Steininger? Um, I'm just noticing that there are two number 12s. Were those just equally ranked amongst the group or a fill-down error? Uh, no, uh, that would be an equal ranking.

I will tell you that the 12, uh, the second project listed there is decimal points ahead of the first project listed there.

Mr. Smith, so just, just to confirm, there, there are 19 projects on here, right? Okay, just so they're noted, there's 2 12s. Okay, thanks.

All right, we'll move on to comments. I saw Mr. Kelly first. Thank you. I was also noticing that I thought Capitol Civic Center was ranked a bit lower than where I would expect given the investment we've already made. And I think a lot of the opposition, at least according to my perceptions, and maybe this is incorrect, A lot of the reasons, a lot of the opposition has to do with taxpayer money going towards this.

But this, what we're doing here is requesting state and federal money, and it looks like the amount requested column actually matches the total project cost, and there's another $8 million that's already there. So I don't know where exactly we want to move this ahead of, but I would be supportive of moving this project. Ahead in the priorities, the Capitol Civic Center.

Miss Hughes-Scandies. Thanks, Madam Chair. I—. One thing I just wanted to comment that I noticed more than one project being higher or lower was the, uh, movement among the projects themselves. And I was going through just now and, you know, comparing it to the year before, and this one moved up this many, and this one moved down that way.

And I just want to say that I think it's a great thing. I mean, for one, obviously we— there's a lot of focus on flood right now. So that would have obviously knocked everything down. But separately from that, I think it's good to remember every time that we do this, when we see a real shakeup sometimes in the ranking that's reflective of our new members, and that is reflective of the public's will. So perhaps that's just one opine that I'm opining.

And then since we're talking about the Capitol Civic Center, I just wanted to note, Mr. Kelly, you just referenced the total project cost. And for some folks who have been, you know, working on this project for a while, that would, for myself, like, I would be skeptical of that as a total project cost. So I wouldn't say that makes a project whole personally. And I won't dig into that, Chestnut. So I just wanted to reference that about movement.

They're never 100% perfect to each individual member, but I think this looks fine.

Um, go ahead, Mr. Smith. I guess I could do comments and then see if anyone else has other comments and then try a motion. But, um, you know, having worked on these now for a number of years, I, I can understand sometimes I'm like, oh, I wish this one was higher or lower. I think we could probably spend a lot of time if we start to try to move things around. I would Knowing that I think our very intelligent and engaged staff and delegation and lobbyists are like looking for opportunity and, you know, reading tea leaves with us as they have to do often.

It's like, I don't know, I feel like, I mean, it's some, the only thing that only gives me a little grief is just like how long the list is. But I mean, we have a lot of needs, so, you know, whatever. So I guess in my opinion, I'd probably just move the list as presented and just, you know, keep moving ahead. And that would be my suggestion. And it can be motion if we—.

Maybe you should kick off with a motion. Someone can amend it if they would like. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would move the FY 2026 draft legislative capital priority rankings as presented here to the next appropriate place or adopt them or whatever you want to— sorry.

Yeah, I think they would be moved to the February, uh, 3rd, um, regular meeting, understanding we'll be talking about them on the 23rd. Yeah, okay, sounds good.

Any comments on that motion?

Miss Yaskindis and Mr. Steininger. Thanks, Madam Chair. I don't have comments. That was a question. I had the same question.

Can we just adopt them in committee? Do we need to bring them to the public meeting? I feel like in the past we've just run with it. Yeah, so last year we adopted them in a regular meeting because I think that'd be the best practice according to the attorney. I think You know, the— I think your new city manager probably uses this list more than your old city manager, so I would appreciate them being formally adopted.

You got it. All right, Mr. Steininger, then Mr. Kelly. Um, can I move to amend the list, um, simply by changing the Eagle Crest employee and tourism workforce housing to 13 and renumbering down? So we don't have a tied for 12th situation that might confuse people.

Any objections to that amendment? Seeing none, that's so moved. Mr. Kelly, um, thank you. Um, I, I think for the most part I sympathize with our, um, with our acting mayor, um, but I think I would like to see the Capitol Civic Center just move up a little bit in our priorities.

I think Last year looks like it was prioritized at number 11. I would like to move to amend by placing it at number 11 again this year, so moving it ahead of the Aurora Harbor Drive down float and below the Standard Harbor wave attenuator. Great. Any objections? Mr. Bryson, can I speak to that, ma'am?

So, uh, as I previously stated, um, it— well, it seems like it moved on the list to go from 11 to 13 with, uh, 2 new items on there. It didn't really move. It's in the exact same spot that it was in, um, but now we have the issue of the Aurora Harbor drive-down flow and glacial outburst flooding. And, uh, the reason why I'm going to object to moving it further, because if you code that stuff up higher, um, it's all important. And, uh, Deputy Mayor Smith was, uh, correct.

We could spend a significant amount of time— same thing happened last year. We've looked at this list I don't know how many years, and moving one number has had zero bearing on any funding that we've received? Actually, I can make that a question. Has the placement of— has our ranking had any additional bearing on governmental funding for it? That's a difficult question to ask, but I can give you an anecdote.

Your last priority last year was ED, department, and that was funded to the tune of $4 million. So that was the very last priority, the ED department. And so that probably indicates, you know, it's on the list, so it's, you know, it's good. I'm going to maintain my objection. Thank you.

Ms. Huescandiz and Mr. Kelly. Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, Mr. Smith said it very well, and Mr. Bryson makes another good point. Just say like we would have expected all of them to drop down because of the flood. And then, you know, we could do this all day.

Mr. Kelly, uh, thank you. Um, I was actually already kind of on the fence about moving this anyway after Mr. Smith's comments. So if there's no objection, I'll go ahead and, um, move to withdraw my amendment. Any objection? Seeing none, That brings us back to the main motion.

Any objections to moving this to our regular meeting? Seeing none, then so moved. Thank you all, it was a good discussion. Oh, Miss Kester, I just would like to add, because it seems germane to this conversation, that I am working with Capitol Civic Center on bringing a project update to this body so you can really get into those, uh, questions. We've got a really full agenda.

You got a lot of topics to uh, to str— to, to wrestle with. But we are, uh, we realize that that conversation is ripe and, um, are working with them to bring you an update.

Thank you, Miss Kester. That brings us to dockage fees, which I think is Miss Pierce who is online.

Ms. Pierce, do you want to try your sound and see if we're hearing you?

Can you hear me? Very faintly. Can you speak any louder? I will try to project my voice, which is really challenging because I'm homesick. So I will do my best, and please let me know if I'm not speaking loudly enough, and I'll endeavor to—.

It does seem like it's not your voice and more your audio. I don't know if you have a different microphone or We have a different one, but I can tell you're speaking loudly and yet you're quiet. We're going to work on our end too. If you could just give me a moment, I can call in using my phone as audio and that should solve the problem. So, Madam Clerk, when you see a phone number pop up, please move that over.

And if you will just bear with me for a minute, I'm going to grab my headphones.

All right, she is going to call in, and we're going to take, um, this moment to go get some cake. We'll be back in 5. Make sure Ms. Pierce knows we didn't disappear.

Back to order.

Miss Pierce, thank you for allowing us to use that as an excuse to get some cake. Um, all right, Miss Pierce, we have your memo and your materials, but if there's anything else you want to start us off with, that would be helpful.

Sounds great. First, thank you, Madam Chair. First off, I'm very sorry to not be here, be there with you, and to especially miss the cake. As you said, in the interest of time, you have all read your packet. This contemplates raising fees by either the lineal foot and registered ton, which is how we calculate dockage fees now, or by lower berth capacity of the ship.

It's important. It's an important distinction that we are not charging per actual passenger. That's a passenger fee and subject to everything the passenger fees come with. I want to call your attention to the spreadsheet and I'm going to share my screen if you bear with me, because Ms. Hall caught a typo. In, um, in, in my spreadsheet that I submitted to the packet.

It does not change the seasonal overall seasonal revenue. That was a different formula, which I.

Highlighted. It does change the revenue for the $7 per lower birth per call. I just— I had a typo in my formula across that whole line, unfortunately. But that said, I do want to call the body's attention to, if you can see my mouse, these two options. Doubling our fees effectively for lineal foot and registered time and charging $7 per lower berth puts us pretty close to the same amount of revenue.

As you can see, doubling the fees for— under our existing structure is quite a big penalty to the smaller ships, the, the luxury fleet. So that is the rationale for the new or revised scheme that, that you see here. I also included a $5 option in case we wanted to, to make an incremental change, but would advocate for the $7 option. And you will also see here some of the types of projects that can be funded with dockage fees, things like shore power, the small cruise ship terminal, things that we have been applying for grants for, for, for many years. We have some major maintenance to do on the seawalk.

Of course, we have some seawalk projects that we're looking at funding through passenger fees. And then also, we learned today, Mr. Yucatel learned today that the Archipelago lot is coming up for sale. If that were to be Dobson Harbor's property, that may be an option as well. Interrupt you, but—. Yeah, Madam Clerk, just to note for anyone on the assembly as well as anybody watching online, the The screen that Ms. Pierce is sharing is in your supplemental materials in, um, with the supplemental documents that were provided, and it's under the supplemental materials in the online packet.

That's correct. Thank you, Madam Clerk. And under the supplemental materials, um, in that version of the spreadsheet, there is a typo in the $7 per lower birth line. However, the seasonal revenue line doesn't change. So I will stop sharing.

I think you get the idea. And— challenges working on a very small screen here.

I think you—.

I, I just want to make sure the body is clear for a second here because we have multiple tables. So let me— I'm going to test to make sure this is correct. The table that is being corrected is the one in the end of the packet, the supplemental materials. The version online has been corrected. But the one in our hands— No, this is Not—.

This is the first time that you were seeing the corrected version, and it's—. So it's not online, it's just on our screen. It's not— it's just on my screen. You're making sure everyone— yeah, what was going on. Thank you.

Keep going. And we will make sure that that is updated online. Um, basically, The dockage per call numbers were miscalculated in the— but it did not affect the revenue per season line. So, so—. Nick, can I ask one more word?

Oh, we're not— that's okay. I was just going to see, is there a way for us to zoom in so that the full assembly can see those numbers. I don't know if that is possible.

I— let me try.

Um, and you are hoping to see the, um, I think that is big enough. If you could just point out which ones are being corrected. I'm sorry, you're doing a great job. We just don't have eyes on all of it. So we're just trying to get on the same page.

Okay. I apologize. So the revenue per call and the revenue for— per season under the $7 has changed in the bottom line.

However, the revenue per season under the $7 has not changed. So I have highlighted that number as that's the number that's important. The— these two are examples of some of— one of the largest ships we have and one of the smaller ships that we receive.

And the seasonal number where we are looking at a comparison of— sorry.

Currently, we're charging about— we're collecting about $2.5 million in revenue. And either doubling under our current scheme or moving to a $7 per lower birth scheme would put us in the neighborhood of $5 million in revenue. Excellent. I think I'm clear. Everyone else clear?

Okay. Ms. Pierce, you can keep going. Thank you for walking us through that. All good. Can I stop sharing my screen now, or is there anything else that you need to see?

I feel like I was a little premature before. You can stop sharing your screen. Okay. Always a little bit difficult to read the room remotely.

So moving on to the types of expenses that we can use stockage fees for, I had a list in your packet.

I think Director Flick is well equipped to describe that in a more eloquent way than I can. So rather than moving forward and having her correct me, I'm going to defer to the director on that, if that's okay.

Thank you, Ms. Pierce. Through the chair, When we collect fees for a service such as dockage fees, the revenue generated needs to go back to that service. So we would need to keep those fees within the dock enterprise and utilize that revenue for things associated with the dock.

As with any of our special revenue funds and enterprise funds, there's a lot of things that you can do the direct service, auxiliary services around that direct service. But we couldn't spend it on something completely different or outside of kind of the DOC arena. In like a really horrible, crazy, kind of example, you couldn't, um, you couldn't raise fees at Bartlett, which is an enterprise fund, and shoot the additional revenue over to the docks. So you would want to, you know, if you raise fees at Bartlett, it should reside within Bartlett and be used for that service. So if we raise dockage fees, we would want to expend those revenues within the scope of the docs.

Miss, just a quick question on that. Miss Hughes-Candies, maybe I'll wait, Madam Chair. It's not so quick.

Let's, let's make sure staff has said everything they want to say on this topic, and then we will open it up for questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That, that sounds great. Um, what I am looking for tonight is some direction on how the body would like to move forward, and then law will draft an ordinance which will come back to you. Um, I also will note that, um, we have received a letter from CLIA requesting that, um, We provide 2 years' notice before raising these fees.

So I think now is a good time to open it up for questions, and I'm happy to field them.

Thank you, Miss Pierce. I see Mr. Bryson. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Miss Pierce. Um, what was CLIA's attitude or sense, uh, or their response to the $9, uh, versus $7? And then what was your expectation, um, from the assembly?

Were you hoping that we would support the $7, or were you hoping that we would support the $9? Through the chair, thank you, Mr. Bryson. It's actually $5 and $7, with $7 being the, the higher number. I am hoping that you will support the $7 fee. I think that's consistent with other regional ports.

Um, Skagway has recently raised their fees. They have a, a port tariff. Um, the way they do their fees is a little bit more complicated, but there are additional fees on top of that. Um, and I, I believe that, um, this adjustment makes us more competitive with the rest of the facilities within the port.

Thank you, Ms. Pierce. And to answer the second part of your question, we did not receive any pushback on the actual number, just the request on notice.

Ms. Atkinson, then Ms. Hughes-Candice. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Pierce, you mentioned the clear request for a 2-year sort of lead time on any dockage fee changes. I know we are talking about 1 year. I guess I know for some of the bigger sweeping changes with like, you know, per daily limits and that kind of thing, we've typically done 2 years in advance.

What are your thoughts on the 2-year versus 1 year? Do you think this is equally impactful if we were to do it only in 1 year?

I've had previous requests for a 1-year period for this type of thing. And so I will leave that answer there. I think that any notice is— that notice is helpful to the industry in terms of making and adjusting their budgets. But, you know, we also need to move forward with our fee changes. So.

I probably stand by what's in my memo with 1 year.

Ms. Hughes-Scandies and then Mr. Steininger. Thanks, Madam Chair. My question was for Mrs. Flick or Ms. Flick, and it was back to what we were talking about with the dockage fees because you looked down for 1 second and I started to lose you, and I feel like it's useful context for this conversation. So dockage fees being different than passenger fees, for example, in terms of the restrictions. But could you restate— you used the example of Bartlett.

You raise fees. You want it to be used in that area. Is that a matter of code or best practices, you know, the user should pay for the associated costs? Through the chair, Ms. Huskandies, I would classify that as best practice. I don't think it's in code, but that is general best practice financially that if you are charging fees for a particular realm of service, those fees should go back into that realm of service.

Gotcha. Just wanted to make sure I understood what you're saying.

Mr. Steininger. Um, so I have a question for you, Miss Pierce, on your recommendation. It seems to be to move to the $7 per lower berth rather than the doubling of the existing fee structure of the foot-ton basis. Um, kind of based on the numbers, it looks like that is advantageous for the more expensive, you know, the larger but lower density ships than it is for the higher density ships. Based on my kind of back of the napkin math, it looked like about a 20% reduction in dockage fees for those more expensive, or those, you know, smaller passenger count vessels, and like a 128%, roughly, increase in fees for the higher density ships.

Um, can you speak a little bit to, you know, why you're making that recommendation? You know, just thinking about how these fees get passed on to passengers, you know, I, I would think it would be more noticeable to a passenger on those higher density ships that's paying a smaller cost for their cruise, that then that additional fee getting passed in there, it's a larger percentage change in the total cost of the cruise and then providing savings to the more expensive cruises, kind of how that impacts the cost of a visit to Juneau for a cruise passenger if our fee structure incentivizes more expensive, higher-cost cruises. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER ARKOOSH] Yes, of course. Through the Chair, thank you, Mr. Steininger.

When you think about how these fees are passed on to passengers, it's in— they're included in the cost of the cruise, as, as you said. And, um, I mean, in, in the realm of the price of a cruise ticket, we're talking about $7 here. It's not, um, not really significant. Of course, these fees do add up when, um, other ports charge, but I see this as more of a rationalized approach where each passenger— well, this is not a passenger fee, but there, there is an impact to the services that we provide at the docks, and we're spreading them equally across the lower berth capacity of the ships rather than big, you know, kind of incentivizing the larger ships. You know, larger ships do take a bit more, a bit more work for the Dawson Harbors crew, you know, harder to manage, but that's not really what's behind this approach.

It's really trying to have a structure that's kind of evenly spread across the impact of the ships docking in our community and evenly spread across the people who visit Juneau.

Other questions? Miss Hall. Looking at this, um, the smaller capacity ships, uh, currently would bring in about 131 with the foot-ton calculation. Moving to this, um, with the reconfigured numbers, they would, um bring in less with the $7 lower berth fee. I get the, um, for the season I get $107,016.

But anyway, so I'm wondering, would it be a major headache to have one fee structure for the smaller ships and another one for the larger? You know, stick with the foot ton for the smaller ships, or is that Fair.

Through the chair, I think that becomes a question of where you draw the line. What do you consider a small ship versus a large ship? And, you know, we've, we've had different definitions of that over the years. We've had 950 passengers as a large ship. We've had over 500 passengers, we've heard 250 passengers.

And so I would struggle with that, you know, also recognizing that in terms of the amount of money that we collect, the small ships are kind of disproportional to the large ships.

And we, we see more small ships at anchor. We would also be charging these fees for anchorage, which, you know, we may have an anchorage for a short amount of time or a long amount of time, depending on what the body decides to do with the Hoonah Totem Dock proposal. So, you know, I, I would struggle with that. I think having kind of a rationalized approach across all of our docks and all ships makes sense. And, you know, we, if for some reason this isn't working, we always have the ability to revisit and revise.

Ms. Hughes-Scandies. Thanks, Madam Chair. This is a follow-up on Ms. Hall's question, which is an interesting one. We have spelled out the delineation of what makes a small ship and what does not under our current MOAs. Is that correct?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, we use 950 passengers in the MOA. Sorry, through the chair. Okay. And, oh, it's right here on there.

So for, in this particular example, with the Silver Nova, capacity is 728. I'm sure in the work we've done, we have some sense of how many small ships would, I think that's an interesting idea.

Más. I'm gonna get in a question here, um, and I'm coming back to Miss Flick and that discussion about what these funds can be used for. Um, I certainly understand the practice of keeping the funding related to the users, but in my mind, the users show up You know, they're paying for access. Yes, they're walking on some wood to get to our community, but then they're in our community and they're using a lot more than our DOCS. I feel like DOCS Enterprise, you know, we've made up that rule about what is included in the DOCS Enterprise.

I'm not really sure I see any philosophical reason that we couldn't, as an example, use some of these fees to help improve the user experience or mitigate the impacts of people coming ashore. Does that not jibe with your, you know, best practice?

Thank you, Ms. Wohl. I think the, I think the challenge with applying a specific fee to bringing a boat to the dock and, um, and the services provided in that. Um, it— you might be— we might be able to make an argument where it's okay to pay for certain tangential services, but we're, um, we're— we should be collecting fees to cover the cost of providing the service that the DOCs are providing. That's, um, you all have engaged in conversations recently about water and wastewater and their rates and needing to cover the cost of providing those services. We're talking about an enterprise fund.

The rates and the revenue that we collect should be used to offset the cost of providing those services. There are amenities and certainly things on in the dock area. There may be improvements that can be made where these fees would be easily attached. I think if, if the body's desire is to utilize dockage fees to offset other costs in the community that may be general funded or other special revenue funded, We would need to be able to make that nexus and create that alignment as to why that's justifiable. And not that it can't be done, but it should be done very intentionally and, you know, be able to pass the red face test and make sense why there's a fee applied to these people and are they getting the— or these businesses and should they get the benefit.

From that and how do other costs maybe relate or not relate. I think there are a lot of ways to accomplish that. But I think, you know, holding true to the fact that the DOC is an enterprise, fees that we charge within that enterprise, we should honor that service, that body of services that the DOC is providing. And I think there are ways that We can probably address community impacts, and we would just need to be very thoughtful in how we went about that.

Mr. Bryson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Miss Flick. We kind of already were in this lawsuit. We've already gone through this conversation. We kind of know what we can and can't connect to the ship.

We provide— we're able to use marine passenger fees to supplement bus busing, or, uh, and Madam Manager, I'm kind of asking these in a question. I believe that we are providing money for buses, uh, or we should be able to. Bathrooms, Capital City Fire and Rescue, I thought we were able to allocate some money for like an additional ambulance that's available downtown, or even the hospital should have a connection to that. And then I know we pay things like crossing guards, so how much of this new revenue, would it go with those same rules that— because we cut— my understanding is we have an MUO with CLIA that says, okay, you guys can use— it doesn't have to actually touch the mail ship, it has to be a service that's connected to the ship. And these things that I've listed, I know we at least have a small list of acceptable things.

Is this the same pot of money, and are those the same regulations for that pot of money? Madam Manager, um, Miss Pierce has got her hand raised, and I'll— Miss Madam Manager, if you have addition, you can add on.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, these are not the same pot of money, and, um, I think the distinction is that passenger fees And per our settlement agreement, um, as a reminder to the Assembly, the outcome of the lawsuit was yes, we can charge passenger fees. Yes, we can collect passenger fees at private docks, but that they needed to benefit the cold hard steel of the ship. That didn't work for anybody. So we drafted a settlement agreement that signed a settlement agreement that allows us to use them for impacts on the community.

Basically, dockage fees are more to support the DOF enterprise. We currently subsidize the DOF enterprise with passenger fees because we don't charge adequate dockage fees to fully fund the DOF operations of the DOF enterprise. That's the type of thing that I would like to get away from so that we can use passenger fees more for those larger sort of community impact projects and use dockage fees to fund docks and harbors as they should be funded and as the private docks operate by charging market competitive dockage fees. Madam Chair. Go ahead, Mr. Bryson.

So by collecting the appropriate amount of passenger fees, we can then cover all of docks and harbors costs. So that'll free up general funds that we won't need to then allocate to docks and harbors. Is that what you just said to us, Ms. Pierce?

Through the chair, almost, Mr. Bryson. By collecting an adequate amount of dockage fees, that frees up passenger fees. There's no general funds in this discussion right now. I'm sorry, to clarify, the passenger fees are the fees that can go to, like, extra buses and extra ambulance, extra EMTs. So we then would—.

That's correct—. Control over the things that do impact. This is how we get the impact on our community. Um, I don't need to discuss anymore. Let's go with that $7.

Mr. Kelly. Thank you. I actually kind of like where Mr. Bryson was going, but I also wanted to ask kind of another follow-up question on the best practices. So assuming that we do get something of a surplus from these, would it be consistent with best practices to also maybe expand the services beyond just the timeframe of when tourists are there. For example, like having the— I don't know if this is still the case now, but I remember when I used to live in West Juneau, I would walk the docks and like the— especially because it was during the pandemic and the docks were pretty, you know, free and open.

So like during the wintertime, they would all be covered with bags and unusable. Would, would it be consistent with best practices to, to use these extra funds to have, you know, emptying usage of these trash cans or, or the bathrooms or other things that maybe the community members can use year-round but still consistent within the confines of the, of the dock itself?

Sorry, Mr. Kelly, through the chair, um, those are great examples, um, of, of expenses that could be borne by the DOC enterprise. And so revenue collected by the DOC enterprise could then be used for services such as you named, assuming that DOC is the one that, that does, does all of those services. And I think they do at least some of those. But yes, absolutely, if we when we collect fees for any of our enterprise funds, we can enhance the services that we provide for. We—.

I know we're going to have more fund balance conversations, but there needs to be some ability to replace items and utilize fund balance for, you know, repairs, replacements, improvements. And so all of that within the context of the DOCs would be appropriate.

Great questions, everybody. I think I'm probably ready to entertain some motions. We have a few things we could, uh, take some direction on tonight, but we'll, we'll start in the order provided here by Miss Pierce. So, um, first is, um, whether we want to raise dockage fees, how we want to raise dockage fees, and the amount we want to increase dockage fees. Anyone want to start us off?

Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I'm— I think by— I think my motion will hopefully answer all three of these. Um, I move that we introduce an ordinance to change our dockage fee from its current rates and fees to a $7 per lower berth fee.

Do you have a time frame in mind if you want to add that to the motion? I can do that. I wasn't sure if people wanted to do those separately, but I will— I'll do it. I'll do it as one. Um, and I would ask that those take effect for the 2026 cruise season.

Objections to that motion? Mr. Bryson. I'm in support of the direction we're going. The cruise industry has responded to everything that we've asked of them. 5-Ship limits, the not— no more hot berthing, and passenger limits.

In like a 2-year time frame, they agreed to all this. They're not pushing back on us raising our costs. And if there was ever a time that we could— I know it's $2 million that we're talking about, but if there was ever a time that we could extend a hand of graciousness to show our appreciation that they have been good partners, they haven't told us no every time. And I know that we are not a completely cruise line friendly I know that that's a hot topic right now, but we are in discussions of all the things that they have agreed to do for us. They've asked one thing, give us 2 years.

Um, could we make it the 2027? And that'll be my amendment. Thank you, Madam Chair. Is that a formal amendment? Any objections to the amendment?

I saw This hand first. Then those guys. Sorry, I'm trying to see everyone and I'm struggling, so I'll do better. Go ahead, Miss Hughes. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I will object to this. I think the 1-year timeframe sounds good. We've heard from Miss Pierce that that was previously what was requested. I would push back on the notion that the cruise ship industry has given us everything we asked for. I, I feel like staff would probably be able to provide some examples of, uh, we continue to work towards negotiation versus litigation, but it is not always a rose and violet-filled path.

Uh, I can think of some very spicy letters we received as we tried to pass our own budget, threatening, uh, essentially litigation for, um, using passenger fees for things that, uh, following the, the terms of our settlement, um, uh, suddenly weren't good enough. But I don't feel like I need to provide a super long list here. Um, I will also just speak to timing as in terms of whether there's never been a better time to extend the hand of graciousness. We had a ballot measure from our community. There was a lot of money put into the campaign to vote that ballot measure down.

It was a very close vote, so So I think it is time to continue making sure that we are adequately funding the enterprises that serve the cruise ship industry. And I feel like that is a hand of fairness. And I'll maintain my objection. Ms. Adkinson. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm also going to object for a lot of the same reasons that Ms. Huskandy has mentioned. So I'm not going to retread those, but I do want to emphasize that The sooner we get this going, the sooner we have more passenger fees to work with to improve visitor experience and also work on mitigation, mitigation of impacts on our community. And Miss Huskini has already mentioned it's a very contentious ballot initiative that we just had, and I think it's important that we respond by, um, doing what we can with, uh, this funding. So I will have an objection on that. Mr. Smith and Mr. Steiner.

I don't No need for me to comment. Thanks, Mr. Steiner. I'm going to actually speak in support of Mr. Bryson's amendment, not necessarily as a result of the request from the cruise industry. But when I'm looking at the Docks and Harbors budget, you know, yes, we are giving $700,000 of marine passenger fees to Docks and Harbors to subsidize their budget. You know, having them, you know, have a fee that is letting them be self-sustaining is definitely what we should be shooting for.

However, within that, their budget is expected to put about $500,000 back into their enterprise fund at the end of the year. So with that $700,000 subsidy from marine passenger fees, it looks like we're giving them a roughly half-million-dollar surplus. So a $2.5 million increase in fee collections, you know, basically means they'll be running at a $2.3 million surplus in the coming year. And, you know, when you think about that and the statements that we can't really spend that money outside of docks and harbors, we can't use it for broader community needs. You know, it's not money that's available for some of the immediate needs that we know we have in next year's budget.

I think we have the ability to either maybe phase it in or just delay it until the following year, as Mr. Bryson's amendment, you know, suggests. It's not a critical need in next year for Docks and Harbors to receive this additional revenue in order to operate. And so I have a hard time, you know, doing this when we know that it's not necessarily, you know, needed to meet— make ends meet, and will be moving us into a position where we're making surplus revenues without necessarily a concrete plan on how those will benefit the community. Um, I'm in support of moving to the $7, certainly. I just think that the delayed approach might be, you know, it's, it's feasible and doable, and you you know, isn't all of the ranch.

We have a motion, we have an amendment, and we have an objection to that amendment. Madam Clerk, will you call, um, roll on the amendment? Thank you, Madam Chair. For the amendment to have the effective date is the 2027 cruise season: Mr. Bryson? Yes.

Miss Hughes-Scandies? No. Ms. Atkinson? No.

Mr. Kelly? No. Ms. Hall? No. Mr. Steininger?

Yes. Mr. Smith? No. And Chair Wall? No.

Motion fails. We have 2 yeas and 5, uh, 7, excuse me, 2 nays, and I can't count today, 6, 6 nays, excuse me.

Great, that brings us back to the original motion. Any objections to the motion?

Seeing none, that's so moved. That brings us, um, to additional suggested assembly action on this item. Um, specifically, what.

To do with those increased dockage fees. So, Miss Pierce has laid out 3 potential options for that, and I'm happy to take a motion from someone who has an opinion. I see Miss Hughes-Candy's hand first, so she gets to go. Y'all, uh, thanks, Madam Chair. Um, I very much appreciated all the backup materials, especially the historical information that was really interesting to me, and I had not seen the Bitello letter before, so thank you for including that.

Or maybe I had never read it in depth before.

Based on that assumption, now that we have raised the dockage fees, out of the 3 options that are there, I would move that we fund the dock Operational budget— oh, sorry, I'm misreading this. Um, I would move that we continue to fund restrooms and security for all docks with passenger fees.

Just, are you— which, uh, of these options are you choosing? Just—. And that would be if you're looking at the page 27 That would be— that would be the first one is what I just read. Okay, um, any objections to this motion? Mr. Kelly, then Mr. Bryson.

I don't think I need to speak to— I'll yield to, uh, Mr. Bryson.

I was going to ask a clarifying question to the maker of the motion, I think. So you, instead of using just dockage fees to take care of the all cruise line stuff—. Yeah, sorry, let me withdraw. If, if I may, let me withdraw the motion and reread this because I think I've crossed my wires here and So I jumped right to it. Someone else have a motion?

Mr. Bryson. I'm right in line with Miss Youskandies. Um, I would make the motion, uh, for the third option. We want to use dockage fees for as many dock operations as possible. That's where I was asking with my previous question, freeing passenger fees up can do more like buses, bathrooms, ambulances.

And Option 3 uses the maximum amount of money of dockage fees for the dock, and those are late activities. It frees up money for us. I believe that's why I would, uh, my motion would be for Option 3 of that assembly action. I see Miss Hall, then Mr. Smith.

Um, thank you, Madam Chair. I object to that motion, um, is what this does is the, in the agreement, the funds would go back to the cruise, uh, you know, back to the dock owners to provide the restrooms and security. So this additional maintenance fee would not be going to Docks and Harbors or to, you know, it would be going to, um, as I understand it, I may be incorrect there, so You know, what are they using it for? There's no transparency on that. And also what agreements they have with the cruise lines.

We, you know, maybe if we do that, we could add that we would like some transparency on their arrangements with the cruise lines.

Thank you, Ms. Hall. So were you objecting? Were you Yes, I'm objecting to the motion. Okay. Ms. Kessler, I saw your hand.

Did you have some clarification for us? Thank you. I think that Assemblymember Hall clarified how to interpret these different options. I think that the key question that we're looking for feedback on is do we keep continuing to subsidize with passenger fees dock, um, restrooms, and security as we always have. I will say we, we probably anticipated that maybe the body would, uh, choose to implement, um, fees this year.

And so this question certainly is more germane if your dockage fee increase would have taken place in the 2025 season. Um, but I think that with, uh, delaying that to the 2026 season, you Any feedback you can give us is welcome, but we can continue with our kind of status quo because those dockage fees won't be in place till next year.

And if I could add on to that, Madam Chair, the goal here is to just have a rationalized approach to this for future passenger fee budgets. We have a year-over-year debate over whether and how to fund private docks. Dawson Harbors adequately funded for the 2026 season. That kind of removes their subsidy from, from the passenger fee budget. Everybody's in the same boat, whether it's— there's, there's no subsidy, there's a restroom and security subsidy, or there's restrooms and security plus some sort of maintenance funds.

Again, not, not as germane with waiting to fund until 2026 and something that, that we can certainly revisit. But I wanted to provide that, that point of clarity.

Mr. Smith, did you have an objection that you wanted to speak to? I think it got cleared. I was— my objection was just for a question, and that was number 1 is kind of maintaining the status quo. Number 2 is essentially saying not support restroom and security, um, like it's kind of operations of those things because they own the infrastructure, I believe. And then number 3 would be expanding, you know, increasing the maintenance, adding this maintenance view which we don't currently provide.

So that was— but I think that's now been cleared up in these conversations. So Um, I'll still— I'll maintain my objection though. Miss Atkinson. And I would say for those of you objection— objecting, it would be helpful just so we can move this forward to state your preference also. Mr. Smith.

I, I would maintain— I, I would prefer to maintain the status quo. Thanks. At item 1, maybe Yes. And number these 1, 2, 3.

Um, Miss Adkinson. Okay, now I'm—. I've confused myself again. Um, I apologize. So, uh, maintaining status quo is number 1, and we would then each year decide if we were— we could potentially not fund, uh, restaurants or security at all when we do the marine passenger fee discussion.

That's correct. Okay. And then the set maintenance fee would be for deferred maintenance of those facilities And so that's the difference between 2 and 3.

I'm sorry, can I provide some clarity again? And I'm going to pull my memo up here. So, item 1 is continuing to fund restrooms and security. That's what we do today. Item 2 would be to not provide any funding to any dock, public or private, for operational stuff.

We are raising our fees. We can cover that with our own fees. Nobody gets any money. Option 3 is—. What would be helpful is you have been not specifying the difference between passenger fees and dockage fees.

So if you could repeat that and clarify when you're talking about passenger fees, I think that would everyone. Okay, thank you, and sorry for the confusion. So through the chair, we are— we're talking about passenger fees, and we're talking about using passenger fees to provide subsidies to our docks, public and private. So currently, we provide restrooms and security— restroom maintenance and security services funding to the private docks. That's been our program for the last several years.

In the past, we funded them differently. We've given more money. We've done other things. But since I've been in this role, and for a few years before, we have provided marine passenger fees to the private docks for restroom maintenance and security services, and we have subsidized the public docks with marine passenger fees. With the new dockage fees, that subsidy would go away.

So we're talking about all 4 docks being on the same program. So, um, are we continuing to provide the subsidy for restroom maintenance and security services to all the docks? Are we not providing any funding, any marine task.

Expenditure fee subsidy to any of the docs, or are we providing restroom maintenance and security plus some sort of subsidy to all 4 docs?

Does that help? Yes, it helps me. Okay. Okay. I'm going to— okay.

Mr. Brason is removing his motion. I believe that Mr. Steininger has a question based on his facial expressions.

I want to make sure— yes, will an at ease help people?

Maybe. Let's take a 5-minute at ease and someone can— I'm going to take a 5-minute at ease. You all figure out what you need, talk to people, or you can come say what you need when we come back in session. All right, um, Mr. Bryson, do you have a motion for us? It's okay if you don't, someone else might, but you, you indicated maybe you did.

Yes, ma'am. Um, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, my motion would be to go with option number 2, uh, which, uh, I believe provides the the most decision-making power of the money in the manager's office. And so I'm going to go with, uh, uh, my motion would be, uh, to adopt, uh, bullet point number 2. Thank you.

Miss Adkinson. Thank you, Chair Wall. Just because there's been a lot of confusion, Mr. Bryson, as you understand it, uh, option 2 is no marine passenger funding for, uh, public or private dock, restrooms or security, and Docks and Harbors, uh, Docks operational budget will pay for our public dock needs. Is that correct?

Yes, Madam Chair, and I realized that I needed to include once dockage fees increase, uh, to bullet point number 2. So once dockage fees were implemented, then yes, dockage fees would pay 100% And then that would put most passenger fee money in the— I believe in the manager's office hands. I remove my objection. Thank you. Did I not say that correctly?

Um, the, the marine passenger fee expenditures are approved by the body, not by the manager's office.

Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Steininger. Um, I believe I'll object. Um, my, my preference is to see the dockage fees fund the dock operations and marine passenger fees continue to fund the security and public restrooms, which I think is option number 1.

Right. Mr. Smith, did I see your hand? And then Mr. Kelly, maybe— sorry, maybe I didn't. I, I did raise my hand for an objection, but for the same, I think, reason that Mr. Saniger just said, that I, I'd prefer to see those activities, the restrooms and securities, paid for with passenger fees at all docks. So I'm supportive of number— option number 1.

Thank you. Mr. Kelly, did you have an objection? I'll withdraw my objection. All right, I'm going to speak in favor of Mr. Brayson's, uh, motion, um, for the maximum flexibility. But also, I think this is what the— what I have heard from the public, and I, um, know there is a desire to, um, you know, maintain a positive relationship with, um, all of the dock owners, but, um, you know, the public rightfully wonders why passenger funding has been used in this way.

So I'm—. I'll support Mr. Bryson's amendment or motion.

Uh, Mr. Smith, so Should this motion pass, would Ms. Pierce not include passenger fee funding for bathrooms and security at the private docks? But we could make an amendment in that at the marine passenger fee discussion too, if people wanted to try to bring it back. Okay, very, very good. Seems I can understand the point of maybe not having this discussion until we actually raise the dockage fees, but here we are, so we'll go for it.

Thanks.

Anyone else want to speak to this motion? Mr. Bryson. Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to speak to it briefly. Um, Mr. Smith just made my point for me by setting it up by adopting number 2.

We can do every single thing that we've been doing We just have more control over the purse strings by going with option number 2.

We could set it up where nothing changes, but we have the most control and decision-making ability over it. Thank you for the time. Great, we have a motion and objections. Um, Madam Clerk, will you call roll? Thank you, Madam Chair, for the motion to Um, go with bullet number 2, fund the dock operational budget with dockage fees but do not provide any passenger fee funding for restrooms and security to any dock.

Mr. Bryson? Yes.

Mr. Smith? No. Mr. Kelly? Yes.

Ms. Atkinson? Yes. Ms. Hall? No. Ms. Huscandies?

Yes. Mr. Steininger? No. And Chair Wall? Yes.

Motion passes 5 to 3.

All right, nice work everyone. We'll probably leave it there though. I think there are lots of other actions we could take given these new developments in the future.

Um, that brings us to potential bond projects.

Um, Madam Manager, thank you. Ter Wall, I draw your attention to page 51 of your packet. The purpose of this agenda item is not to get final decisions on bond projects, but rather to get some feedback from the body on your appetite for pursuing potential bond projects, and if so, establish a process for vetting those projects and what that might come back to you. So, you know, the first question is, is there appetite to explore any general obligation bonds on the fall ballot. And certainly if there's not, then I think, you know, we can close the conversation for now until the body wants to bring that back up.

However, if there is, I have a couple of categories of projects highlighted here in your memo. The first one is water and wastewater infrastructure. Of course, any amount of funding that you can get for capital projects for water and wastewater projects will help relieve the pressure on rate increases. And the general rule of thumb that's been calculated with— through the rate study and with the finance department is about every $10 million of capital investment reduces 3% per year of rate increases. And the rate increases with the bond that just passed are still pretty steep— 12.5% increase annually for sewer and 10.25% for water.

There is kind of a capacity level that the utility can manage. And so, you know, the utility can manage anywhere from $9 to $12 million in capital projects annually. That does leave room for about, you know, a $10 million— a second $10 million utility project. So my recommendation would be, you know, if a utility project is interesting, then the body would ask the Utility Advisory Board and the Public Works and Facilities Committee to come up with what that looks like and frankly some greater detail on how that would, the impact that that would have on rates, 'cause that's really gonna be a pertinent question. The second category that I think is probably ripe to talk about is school district projects.

So there was a moratorium on school debt bond reimbursement projects that ends on July 1st, 2025. So the timing could be really, really good to start talking about these projects. We all know that the, that funding of that is still subject to appropriation and approval by the governor, so certainly not a sure thing. If looking for some.

School projects is something that you would— you'd like to explore, I would recommend referring that to the Joint Facilities Committee. And there's a, you know, a lot more information that they would then be able to dive into about what types of projects the district needs, what types of projects would be eligible, and that type of, of conversation. I just want to make sure that we keep in mind that there are many large projects on our horizon that need— that could need bond capacity. Those include, of course, any bluff mitigation. We still are working on the Juno Douglas North Crossing, things like Centennial Hall.

I mean, we've talked a lot about Capitol Civic Center, but that's exclusive of some of the improvements that we need to do to Centennial Hall. Certainly, what do we do with Marie Drake? Do we demo? Do we partially demo? Do we renovate?

That's another pressure on the budget. And since the packet has been published, I received a memo from the Parks and Rec Director making a really compelling argument for improvements to Jackie Renninger Skate Park. Now that they've got a master plan that really outlines all of that and improvements to the HVAC system at the Diamond Park Aquatic Center, totaling about $15 million in parks and recreation bonds. So again, no shortage of things to spend your money on. I'm sure you guys can think of other things that the community has asked you for.

The second page of the memo is just a recreation of a slide that you saw last year. This is really just an exercise to show you debt capacity, and we've taken some projects kind of rather randomly, put some dollar amounts and some terms on them to see— so you can just see how that debt service mill rate floats if these projects were to be approved. So again, it's just a list It's just meant to illustrate what some of those decisions would do to that mill rate. And then the last part of the memo talks about a timing, a timeline that gives a couple of months for those committees to do some of that legwork if the assembly is interested in developing a bond proposition for the fall ballot. Happy to answer any questions.

Let's start with questions. Mr. Steininger. Um, thank you, uh, Miss Kester. I see the timing list with, uh, July 1st and July 28th as kind of proposed approval of a bond package. Is that July 28th the drop-dead date, or is that— is there still some time?

So I'm really— I'm thinking about school bond debt reimbursement, if the moratorium's extended, if that happened, like if session got significantly delayed this year, you know, and that moratorium got extended after July 1st, do we still have time to pivot and change and not put debt service out to the voters? Through the Chair, Mr. Steingart, July 28th is the last day we can take any action be able to get a ballot created as well as being able to get it in the mail in time for the election. If you were to— I mean, we have introduction prior to that meeting is June 9th, so there's almost 2 full months there if you needed special meetings to work on things. But the drop-dead date is that July 28th meeting.

Mr. Bryson, I think I try to figure out how to put this into a question. Um, I think this is for the manager's office. How much higher do you anticipate our mill rate request is going to be to cover all of the new or the expensive things that we have to cover moving forward? And there's outburst flooding money that we'll need to do.

As we're having this discussion about asking to borrow more money on the citizens' behalf, I'm curious, at the same time when that election happens, we're going to just release the budget. How much higher do you anticipate the budget's going to be with all of the numerous things that have come up and the extra ask What is it gonna be like asking for a bond at the same time that we're having, we've just done great for 3 or 4 years in a row dropping the mill rate and we're absolutely raising the mill rate this year. And I hate to say that out loud, but I can't imagine how you're gonna do it without raising the mill rate. How does that fit into this discussion, ma'am? Thank you.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So Director Fleck may have more detail, but I can tell you we don't have that answer specifically without going through the budget process. I can highlight the pressures that you're gonna have on the mill rate. The fact that we did a lot of one-time expenditures in the current year's budget, the fact that we funded some of the current year's budget with general fund to relieve pressure on the mill rate, the fact that we have Floyd Dryden and Marie Drake, that will be challenging to get full utility out of. So it'll be challenging to get full lease rental rates to pay for the cost of those facilities. Certainly there'll be a lot of pressure for wage negotiations.

And I think, so I think that the answer is I have no idea what exactly what that will be, but you certainly are aware of those pressures just like I am.

Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair. Sorry, this one's kind of coming out of the blue, but how much should we, How much do we and/or the school district— well, I guess and the school district— how much do we spend on maintenance of school facilities every year? Is your question how much we spend on like operations and maintenance or on deferred maintenance?

I guess probably the— if you have numbers for both, even though I understand one may include the other. Yeah, anyway, so, uh, the assembly appropriates $1 million a year for deferred maintenance for the school district. The spend is variable because you also appropriate special projects, like when you appropriated the money for the roof projects, you know. So it, it's more than that when you annualize it over time, but that's the deferred maintenance spending. And aside from the shared services agreement that you passed last year, you don't spend anything for school district operations and maintenance.

Did I miss anything, Director Flick? I don't know that you missed anything. I also don't have my budget book right in front of me. Yeah, that's okay. Thanks.

I have another one unrelated though, um, and I'm sorry if, if you said it and I missed it. So in your memo you said for every $10 million that the utility receives— and this is water and wastewater— It would decrease the proposed wastewater portion of the rate by 3% on average. And then the— is there— sorry, did you say if there's a similar thing for water or—. Yeah. It would be similar, but we haven't done the math for water.

Wastewater is really our cost driver. Okay, thank you.

All right, seeing no other—.

Well, sure, actually. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, you know, I think the wastewater, knowing that those rates are due to skyrocket, that anything we can do through a bond to bring that down, I think would be well received by the public. Like Neil said, I think with the Juneau School District maybe waiting until further into the session to read the tea leaves on what might be needed there. So those are just my comments.

Thank you. Good segue into comments. Um, yeah, happy to hear from— I'm hoping that we can set some real direction here, um, in terms of where we want to go so we don't do a bunch of I know this takes a bunch of work and I don't want to have a bunch of people working on stuff that doesn't necessarily come to fruition. So I'm hoping folks have a thought on the pathway they want to go and no pathway is also a reasonable pathway. Miss Atkinson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, I think it's worth looking at, um, some wastewater bonds, uh, for water, wastewater bonds. Excuse me. I think if— I'm, I'm also comfortable looking at school district things, but I think we should— this body should do it with the, um, assumption that we will not get any reimbursement from the state. And that's a just a blanket, whether or not it happens this session or later.

I think that we need to go in with that attitude. Thank you, Miss Atkinson. Other? Mr. Kelly.

Um, I partially agree with, with Miss Atkinson, um, on about 75% of that. I, I, I think that what pressure we can relieve on, um, on wastewater, um, I think that would— on rates, I think that would be anything that we can do with that I think would be good. So I think I would be in support of those.

Of bonds. I think we can go ahead and start the process for the school district, um, bonds once we get a better idea of what their needs are. I think that would probably be a higher concern than whether or not we're going to get reimbursed. And then once we— we're looking at July 1st and July 28th, both of which are after the start of the current fiscal year. So if we are looking at the possibility of not getting reimbursed, like if the money has been vetoed or if the moratorium has been extended, I think we can make that decision at that time.

But I think I would like to at least explore what interests, what needs there might be with school district bonds.

Mr. Bryson. Thank you, Madam Chair. I won't fight real hard against us doing bonds, but I don't necessarily think this is a great year to do it. Well, I don't deny the needs. There's no question about it.

The wastewater, um, we absolutely could use that money, but we had a City Hall bond fail twice. We did two bonds last year for very important projects—wastewater and police radios. Giving the Juneau voters a year of not asking to put more money on the credit card is not a bad thing. And it's— and I kind of mentioned the first— when I first, uh, started talking about this and asked about, um, what the mill rate increase— we have literally had mill rate decrease for the last 3 years. I don't know how that's going to happen again this year.

So to come out with a bond again at the same time that we're not going to give them the great news that we've been able to give them in the past, this might just be the year to not ask for a bond and Next year will be upon us before we know it, and we'll have a better idea of where we are with those needs. This is about the much effort that I'm going to push against it. If you guys all really come up with something that you think we need to pay for now, I'm just concerned about the city of Juneau agreeing with us to pay for it now. Thank you.

If you're gonna— I need a hard— yeah, all right, Mr. Steininger and the Miss Hughes candies. All right, I'll, uh, I'll chime in and say that I'll share Mr. Bryson's concern on putting additional debt forward to the voters this year. Um, but we'll say that we should absolutely prepare a bond package for school capital improvement projects so that we are ready to put it forward should the moratorium expire. Because, you know, it may only expire for 1 year and that'll be even if the appropriation for the debt reimbursement doesn't come for several years.

Having that in our back pocket in the future will be beneficial. Ms. Huscandias. Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I'll just add, I agree with that. Be ready to go.

I also agree, be ready to pay for all of it. And yet we know from Floyd Dryden and from, Marie Drake. You know, we have handfuls of school buildings and they're all old and not well maintained, and unfortunately we're going to have to pay for them at some point. Um, I feel like the elephant in the room is, will we have to bond at some point for something really big? Uh, the flood, my, you know, least favorite topic, uh, just because we know these things are coming.

I wouldn't want staff to do a ton of work, but I think to get my— my feeling would be yes, let's start looking at that for schools. And, and I think water and wastewater, you know, if we bond or we rely on the utility to pay for itself. So I think we should bond and try to provide some relief there. And I'll just say that I'm not enough of a financial nerd to be be able to speak to it with any knowledge or sound like any kind of intelligence, but I do think the use of our municipal debt is, you know, it's a bit different than a credit card. So in general, I think using our capacity is a good thing because the need is overwhelming.

I'll speak if that's okay.

I'm not supportive of the wastewater project this year. Obviously, if the body goes that direction, I'll champion it because it's important. I think none of us can predict the voters. My fear would be that we raise prices and then we ask voters to spend more money on wastewater in the same year, which could backfire on us, even if we know that it would save money in the long term. That argument doesn't always work, um, well in the wrong circumstances.

I do think that exploring, um, schools is a good idea because there's always need. There's, I think, always voter support. Um, I wouldn't want to plan on reimbursement, you know, if, if folks aren't ready to feel like they want to commit to this year, we should just be very clear going into working with this committee because because, um, the school board and the people invested in our schools will want to know if we're really interested in a project or not, if we're going to put work in there. Um, I don't want to explore both. I would say either do nothing or more move forward with schools would be my, my choice at this point.

Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question, and it's, is the school district's just operational maintenance budget staying the same even though they're now charged with significantly less square footage? Like, should they be doing more?

I don't have an answer to that question. However, I know Superintendent Hauser has talked about a lot of meaningful reductions that they've made in their budget. I would assume that that would include some, I mean, at least fuel oil and electricity. Sure. I was just trying to think of like this transition year, maybe they're anyway are going to get a better grasp on some of their maintenance and things.

I guess where I stand, and I'm not sure if it's a perfect plan, I totally hear everyone's, I'm concerned about a bond failing, I guess I'm just very concerned about the increases to the utility rates. I mean, I get it, the mill rate, but I mean, those— if those go into effect at the amount they are slated to, I mean, we're talking like $100 more per housing unit regardless if you have a big house or a mobile home or a condo or something. So personally, for me, my biggest push would try to be do something with wastewater, just because those rates are so impactful to cost of living. So my actual thought would be, I would just do— I would just propose this. I mean, this is just my plan.

I need to work it through, and I totally would take feedback. I would just go for wastewater this year, maybe think about schools in the future or next year or something, but focus on wastewater for this year and maybe allow schools to kind of work through some of their— I mean, we know there's enough maintenance even though they maybe have more people to deal with less square footage, so it's— there's obviously a need. But that would be, that would be my thought. But, um, definitely appreciate hearing everyone else's and open to hearing feedback too. Thanks.

Do you want to make that a motion? And do you want to add a dollar amount that to start with, just to actually get a little further in this conversation? Sure, I can, I can try, I guess.

I would move that we evaluate putting a bond to— putting forth a bond to the voters to— for the wastewater and/or water utility for $20 million. I don't know, I'm just throwing a number out. We did $10 last year, right? Yeah, anyway. I realize it's— yeah, anyway, just as a place for discussion.

Yeah, and we will have lots of time to refine that number, but I think my understanding is staff would like kind of a general sense of the number. So that's helpful. Objections to that motion?

Yes, Miss Hughes-Giannis. Thanks, Madam Chair. Just for a question, just I'm looking back at the timing of this and I want to obviously give staff time to do whatever they need to do. Is this— I mean, this is really— it's on the agenda, so this is really when we need to try to nail down. We can do whatever we want.

I think it takes a while to do these, so my personal preference is to try, but you all can say we're gonna wait. All right, I'll— since I have an objection right now, I'll just— I'll say I'm not sure that I am I heard everyone go and we had different thoughts and I love that. I was like, oh, that's true. Oh, that's true. And it had me changing my mind back and forth.

So I don't know that because I think that's a really good point that people might be angry and vote that down. I also think that it would bring the cost down in the long run.

I'm not going to maintain an objection, but, uh, maybe you can do another one for the schools.

Miss Atkinson.

Thank you. I'm just going to speak in support. I think that this conversation, uh, does show a lot of good points, and I think, like other people, I heard lots of good points that were directly disagreeing with what I said that I also ended up kind of agreeing with. But these kinds of conversations are a lot easier when we have something concrete in front of us to look at. So I think that, um, giving staff time to bring us that and making that decision a little further down the line with that concrete thing in front of us is a better idea.

So I support this motion. Mr. Kelly, did you have your hand? Sorry if I missed you. Um, I, I did, but I think, um, Miss Youskandee's covered my concerns. I'm gonna— strong, Mr. Steiner, strong fingers.

All right, go ahead. And maybe I wasn't listening to the maker of the motion closely enough. Did your motion just cover the wastewater, water wastewater, and not the school district as well? Are we going to entertain a separate motion for the school district after? Okay, thank you.

Then no objection.

I will object. I think I spoke to this. I don't think it's a great idea. I also think it's going to be a lot of work to try to do 2, and my preference would be the schools. So, um, I think we have a motion and objection.

Madam Clerk, please call roll. Thank you, Madam Chair, for the, um, direction to staff to eval— evaluate a bond for the 2025 election for water and wastewater utility in the amount of $20 million. Mr. Smith, how do you vote?

Mr. Steininger? Yes. Miss Hall? Yes. Mr. Kelly?

Yes.

Miss Adkisson? Yes. Miss Hughes-Scandies?

And Mr. Bryson? Yes. Miss Wall? No. Motion carries 7 to 1.

All right, are there other motions? Miss Scandius. Uh, thanks, Madam Chair. I would start the process on a school district bond of say $10 million. Um, same thought that it'll be pretty obvious when we get more information back on whether that's the right way to go or not.

Any objections?

Mr. Brayson? Uh, Objection, just for a statement on that. I would be supportive of exploring the school, even though I think Ms. Atkins is probably going to be accurate that the likelihood of them doing some school bond reimbursement is low, that I would support a school bond only if there was language in the state government that they were going to be working on some type of school bond reimbursement program. Otherwise, I don't know that I could be in support of it, but I'll remove my objection.

Miss Youskandis. Thanks, Madam Chair. I actually have a question for staff because I'm looking at the 6-year priority list and it's hard to pull a number from the air. Is there a general best practice regarding how many years out you would be going or related to bonding, Ms. Slack?

Yes, Ms. Huskendis, you don't want your debt timeframe to outlast the useful life of the asset. So when we're talking about, if you're putting a roof on a building and the roof has a 15-year expected life, you wouldn't want to bond for 20 years. Other things to keep in mind is how large the bond is. So, for instance, the bonds that we just— that the voters just passed, $12, $13 million and $10 million, doesn't make sense to run those for 30 years, even though the asset might last that long. So it's a combination of really the best practices around— you don't want your debt to go out longer than the, than the asset is going to live.

But then there's just also strategy in how large is the debt, how quickly do you want to pay it off, etc. Okay, thanks.

I would just like to add to that, that this list that you have, uh, the reason why you see all those giant zeros in future years is not because the school district doesn't believe those are emergent needs, but because They are essentially laying out a realistic plan of actual available funding for the next 5 years. And then they're like, and then there's all these other things. You also notice that this has Marie Drake on here because this was from last year's budget cycle before consolidation. So, you know, Mendenhall River renovation is probably like that. Mendenhall River and Marie Drake were the 2 things they asked for every year in the legislative priorities before the assembly said, give us something that's not $45 million that we can actually work with.

So just to give you a little bit of background on kind of like the size of the projects or potential size.

All right, we have a motion. Mr. Bryson, do you remove your objection or— yeah, all right. I mean, I will object because— sorry, Mr. Steininger.

Um, so not objection, maybe a proposed amendment. I believe I heard you say $10 million. Um, it might— I don't know if it's more helpful for staff to start at a higher level and winnow the list down at a later date, or to build it up at a later date. Um, because I, I do think if the moratorium expires, it may be our one opportunity to get this kind of financial advantage from the state. And we may want to consider more than $10 million should that happen.

So, I guess I would propose an amendment to increase it to 20 to match the wastewater bond package. Any objections? Mr. Bryson, I'm sorry, I don't think that the community would support $20 million for the school district. I could see, like, important school projects happening. But the latest news that the school district has brought upon the community is not setting the community up to be willing to throw a ton of money at the school district.

So I would be more in support of, uh, if we were doing something for the school district, it would have to be in a more reasonable size, or I don't believe the, the public would support it. Thank you.

Any other comments? I saw, oh, Mr. Smith. Thanks, Madam Chair. I appreciate, I think, where Mr. Steineger's going and starting big. I'm trying to decide how much I let the cows out of the barn on this one with my vote.

I'm open to it, but at the same time, I'm— but I also don't want to make people do a bunch of work for potentially nothing or raise people's expectations. And that if I— and probably if I may not support it future. So, hmm, thanks. I'll end with a hmm.

Miss Hughes-Gandies. Thanks. I think I'm supportive of that because it's hard to pull a number. I'm looking at this list, the need is vast. I don't know if that is easier for staff or if it's not easier for staff, but until staff says it's not— and good, so Someone's going for a microphone.

Then I would say, sure, start big and work down. So that's my thought slash question.

Thank you for that question about what's easier for staff. I guess there's two parts to that question. The first is, I think the intention as we presented this memo was that we would do the committee work through the Joint Facilities Committee, UAB and the Public Works and Facilities Committee, which is the public and the school board. And so while there is certainly staff support on those boards, it's where you're really asking a lot of those advocacy groups. So that's where I feel like giving them a sense of like the assembly's threshold for a dollar amount is valuable because we saw with the Zantuckahinee Playground, that when we didn't provide that direction, it really became a little bit untenable, and then the school board was frustrated by, by that process.

And so I guess the two questions that I— or the one clarifying question that I would have for the body is if your intention is that we bring this back to you more fleshed out before you send it to those advisory boards, or if the intent is to provide this guidance tonight and send it on to the advisory boards.

Um, I'm not sure where we are right now. Um, we have a motion and an amendment, and so I will— let's start there and then we can handle these other questions. Um, any— we do have a current objection to the amendment. Do others want to speak to the amendment? Mr. Kelly, Miss Atkinson.

Thank you. I, I think it's a little premature at this point to, to raise the, um, the amount that we would be proposing to put on a bond before voters. I think if we put forward too much, that is, there's a possibility that we could endanger, uh, the bond from passing, and I don't want to see that. I want to see as much support go to our school district and their needs as we possibly can. I might be interested in raising this amount at a later date after I've had a chance to hear more from the school district and/or their advocates and see where their needs lie.

But I think at this point, I feel it's premature to raise what we would be asking for.

Ms. Atkinson and Mr. Steininger. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, uh, if this were a hip pocket concept that staff worked on for us in the event that we were seeing a change in— or we're not seeing, uh, extension of the moratorium from the state, then I think the $20 million, uh, number is more appropriate. If we're going to be taking this to advocacy groups and going down that route, I think $10 million is more reasonable. We don't want to set expectations, and I'm, I'm I kind of doubt we're at a place where we want to move forward this year with a $20 million bond package for the school.

So since we're not 100% sure where we are right now, I'm more inclined to go to the 10 right now.

And I can count, so I'm going to withdraw my amendment. But I do want to just make the statement, my intention was to see a package that would put us in the best position should the moratorium not be extended, because I do think that will be our one opportunity and it will go away quickly after. And but to Mr. Kelly's point, we can change it at a later date. And so the expectation setting issue is very real. So I'll withdraw my amendment.

And I can, as the committee chair, I can make sure to set expectations appropriately that about this conversation that we're starting at a number, we're looking to zero in on it or narrow in on it. Okay, we have a motion and we have—. We—. The amendment has been removed, so we are back to our original motion, which is a $10 million— well, I'll— I'll— oh, do we have objection? Yes?

No? I'm—. I was going to object, but I can also count. I think it's ridiculous that we're going to put this much work on us and our staff to explore these two concepts and our boards. But I will— I can count, so I will not do that.

And so that moves unless Mr. Smith, you have another motion or a stronger hand. Well, I was going to object, but I guess I could count too. Um, what? Oh, I was sorry. Are, are there any objections to, to the motion?

No. Anyone other than Mr. Smith? Yeah. Okay, so that is so moved.

Anything else on this topic? Ms. Hughes-Scandies. Thanks, Madam Chair. I understand your frustration. I just was going to say, I think it's, it's very challenging.

I think having clear guidance on this topic, it's obviously that's needed to calendar these things and get them through the year. And I see that we have the timeline that we do, and you stated earlier we can do whatever we want. Which is a terrible phrase we've all taken to heart and staff wish we hadn't. But I just want to acknowledge it's very challenging from our perspective to be asked to set, pick a number and, you know, decide our willingness. And the intention is not to bring extra work.

And Madam Manager asked for kind of clarification. Should we not send it there? Should we talk about it more here? And it does make our timelines tighter. But I would be okay with talking about it here more because I think this is a, you know, it's 8:10 and we've been talking about a lot of other things.

But if we simmered on it here before it went any further, I would be okay with that because I don't feel like I really clearly know where we should be going with bonds. So I just want to share that with the body. Um, we should— thank you, Miss Hughes-Caney, it's a good point. Um, do others have strong feeling on that. We, you know, the suggestion was sending it to committee, but we definitely can keep it in committee, sending it to those other committees.

We can keep it in committee, and I just want to know where people are at. So, Miss Atkinson, thank you, Madam Chair. I, I don't hesitate to create more work for staff, but I think that since I think everyone is pretty undecided with where we're at, it doesn't make— I don't want to put it on volunteer boards on to do this work when we are certainly not committed to moving forward with bonds at all, much less which bond package we're moving forward. So that would be my preference.

Anyone object to that? Can I ask a quick question? Do staff feel like they have clarity on how they would want this conversation to move forward if we're to keep it in Finance. Thank you, Chair Wall. I'll just reiterate that what I would do with this guidance is bring you back a memo at the next Finance Committee meeting that talks a little bit more about the types of utility projects, a little bit more about their impact on rates, a little bit more about our capacity to actually manage those projects.

And then I would, for school district, probably talk to you a little bit more about the types of, those types of projects. I have less information on the school district because obviously I don't manage the school, but I do manage the utilities, so I know a lot more about them. But mostly it would just be to have you guys have some time to think about it. So I guess I would ask that if you want more than that and what kind of questions you would need answered to help you kind of decide on whether or not to take the next steps, you just reach out to the Manager's office, and I will add that to my list. It's not an overwhelming amount of work to give you more time to think about it.

Thank you. And I'm sorry too, this was a long agenda, and I was— we were probably ambitious about the type of BD topics that we could all make decisions on. So, um, okay, are we done with this topic? I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop looking at your faces and only at your hands.

Ms. Hall. That was fake. That was fake. Mr. Steininger. I guess I just want to make one brief comment just on the nature of the projects that we're looking for from the school district.

You know, as was mentioned by Mr. Bryson, you know, they've undergone a lot of change, and I'd really want— it personally would want to see projects that are specifically tied to how the school district is pivoting in the way that they're delivering education. The way that their facilities are changing in terms of the populations that they're serving. And I think that if it is a bond package that is more tailored towards the change and evolution of the Juneau School District and not just, you know, smaller projects that might be, you know, ongoing maintenance needs that they have, but ways that it can shift in our delivery of education.

Noted for the committee. Okay, I'm going to, um, skip the last item here. On our assessment ordinance, we'll bring that back. Um, yeah, I heard it was going to take 2 seconds, but I don't know about this group. Is it going to take 2 seconds?

Yeah. Um, all right, well, we'll see if there's any questions on it then. Um, will bring us to assessment ordinance update to SB 179. You all have read it.

Any questions?

That is, um, I am going to not— I, I think this, if people have questions, this deserves a very quick— okay, go ahead. I just wanted to, you know, make the body aware, um, as part of this, I intend to work on an amendment to bring to the full assembly related to one portion of SB 79 where it requires that the assessor ask any reasonable— answer any reasonable question. I've kind of worked starting talking with Ms. Flick and with the assessor about a way to kind of define a little bit better what a reasonable question is and a set of information.

That the public should be able to expect the assessor to provide, because I feel reasonable question is a little bit too vague to provide a, a reasonable public expectation of the information that you can receive. That's all. So more information when I actually have an amendment to deliver to the body.

Okay, any other questions? Mr. Smith, do you have a motion? Sure, thank you, Madam Chair. I move Ordinance 2025-09, um, from the Assembly Finance Committee, um, and set it for introduction at the February 3rd regular assembly meeting, and I'd ask unanimous consent. Any objections?

Seeing none, that's so moved. I do not have an updated agenda, but I believe— oh, there it is. Executive session is the next item. Um, Ms. Wall? Yes, Madam Chair, I just want to bring up— point two things out while I have the body's attention, uh, related that are scheduling in nature since we're kind of the next meeting date section of our public meeting, and that is that we are working on holding the February 3rd meeting off-site at the Thunder Mountain Auditorium.

There's no availability at Centennial Hall, but we anticipate there being more people. We just got confirmation that that space was available, so we will of course publicize that, but wanted to let the body know. Second piece is we do need to have a very brief special meeting to introduce a bond ordinance, a bond refinancing ordinance. It's the bond refinancing ordinance you just passed, but now there's an updated timeline, and by passing a new one, you could save, you know, $10,000 or $20,000. So we will be scheduling that around the legislative breakfast on the 23rd.

Won't affect, you know, you won't be asked to show up at any different time, but I just wanted to make sure You were aware of those two things, and of course we will publicize them. Thank you for that update. Um, so that brings us to executive session. Do you have a motion from somebody?

Mr. Smith? I'm assuming Mr. Hargrave is here somewhere. Okay. Thank you, Madam, um, Chair. I move that the Assembly Finance Committee recess into executive session to discuss things that may— to discuss collective bargaining negotiations, the immediate knowledge of which would adversely affect the finance of the municipality.

And I ask for unanimous consent. Thank you. Any objections? Do I have to ask the public if they object or something? That's just during a regular meeting.

Um, it would be asking the public if we had anyone from the public present to ask. Okay. And because we have a different process for online public, then that's not part of this process. Okay, thank you for that clarification. Okay, any objections from the assembly?

Seeing none, we are in executive session and we are staying here, or—. That's what I was going to clarify, is, um, we don't anticipate any other committee action after this. Is that accurate? Okay, so for the listening public, we will end the official Zoom, um, transmission at this time, and the rest of us who are not going to be in executive session will clear the room and leave you guys to it.