Assembly Work Session of August 14, 2025

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] All right, let's get started. I will call the Thursday, October 14th Borough Assembly work session to order. We are going to begin with citizen comments tonight. We have a full house. Thanks for coming out, everybody, on this gorgeous day.

If you would like to make a comment, you can come on up to the microphone, sign in, give us your name. You have got 3 minutes. Um, if you'd like to call in, the number is 907-486-3231 or 1-855-492-9202.

Is there anybody who would like to make comments tonight?

My name is Carleen. Good evening. I just saw in the newspaper that there would be a public hearing on the ordinance for zoning related to assisted living residences, and so since it wasn't very specific, I just came to learn what that's about since I'm up there in that age bracket. Thank you.

Thank you, Carleen.

Good evening, Borough Assembly members and Borough staff. My name is Mindy Pruitt. I'm with the Kodiak Island Housing Authority. And I'm here tonight to express our gratitude and our opportunity to present an opportunity for repurposing of Northstar Elementary. And I'm just very proud of the work that the Shoonac Tribe has put in to the presentation this evening.

And if there are any further dialogue that we can help with We just want you to know there are many members of the community that are in support of this proposal for your review this evening. So thank you very much and appreciate all of your time tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mindy. Anybody else?

Hi, good evening. Um, my name is Anna Dale, um, and I'm here to speak on the proposed expansion of Aleutian Tooth Jake Daycare into the North Star Building. I currently have one child attending the daycare. Um, my husband and I are foster parents, and because I'm Alaska Native, we are an ICWA home, preferential placement for Alaska Native children being taken take it into care. There is a foster care shortage across the state, and we typically get 3 to 4 calls a week, sometimes several calls a day, to accept children.

I have lots of experience calling every daycare in Kodiak only to be told that there are no openings and we have to say no to placements, which sometimes means that children who are taken into custody in Kodiak have to move off island away from their home community and parents.

Along with being a foster parent, I'm also a special education preschool teacher, and I have my master's degree. I've also testified as an expert witness for court in the areas of child development and the impacts of trauma on children. I've seen the teachers at Elite Teen Chu use evidence-based practices to teach students not only pre-academic skills but social-emotional skills such as sharing and self-regulation. I love the cultural activities included in the curriculum as well. Elders are invited for storytime.

Miss Taku teaches Alutiiq, and they learn Native values. Miss April and the teachers have created a welcoming environment where children are celebrated and loved. I was very excited to hear about the proposed expansion for Lutinchuut, and I fully support Lutinchuut leasing part of the North Star Building. Kodiak needs more child care openings for our children. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Madeline Schwarz. I don't think I have much longer with this guy until we have to run. I just wanted to come and speak in support of the Eluding Cut expansion into Northstar. I obviously have a child who is a member at the daycare there, and I cannot speak highly enough about the staff. This is an absolute investment into your community for all residents.

It's the best choice you can make. So I really hope you will support it. Thank you.

Thank you, Madeline.

My name is Nation Sega. Good evening. I am here to show support and solidarity with the school, and it's just— I just want to say it's an honor and due diligence to be in the positions that we are in. And we have a great team. So that's all I just wanted to say.

Thank you for your time. Thank you, Nation.

Good evening. I'm Sadie Coyle. I'm Miss Taku. I am the Lutic language teacher at the Aleutian Jute, and I'm here to support the expansion and hopefully review of being able to move in eventually into North Star. So I'm a little bit emotional right now, but I'm just really happy to be here.

And I hope, I hope you take a second chance because I have so many students on my waitlist right now that I could be teaching and I could be passing on my language and culture too. So I hope you— I hope you hear us out. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Good evening, I'm Beata Daley. I'm the president of the Kodiak Middle School PTSA, and I just wanted to take this opportunity on behalf of our organization to thank the assembly personally for your support and your nonprofit funding for our private pantry project and for our art mural club that we're doing in collaboration with artist Miss Bonnie Dillard. Um, our theme for this year is building stronger communities together, and I really can't think of a better way to start off this year with support from our borough. Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

No phones? All right. Okay. All right. Well, we're going to move on to our agenda items.

Um, first is the Discover Kodiak report to the assembly. Um, it says Megan's up here, but Seema, you want to take it? Okay. Um, please welcome Brock Simmons, who will be giving the fourth quarter report for Discover Kodiak.

Can you guys hear me now? Okay. Um, this is the chance I get to have come before you guys and update you about what Discover Kodiak's been doing for the fourth quarter of fiscal year '25. Um, this, these dates that I'm gonna go over, what we worked on between April 1st, 2025 and the end of June, June 30th, 2025. Um, obviously one of the things that gets really busy during this time is the cruise ships.

Our first cruise ship arrived here in Kodiak this year on April 29th. The Viking Venus came and ported up for the first day. During the fourth quarter of 2025, the period I'm talking about, we welcomed 12 different cruise ships into Kodiak with a combined number of passengers of 14,790 people. We are still in the midst of our cruise ship season. We'll be welcoming another cruise ship here next Thursday.

It seems like we're picking up some speed with the cruise ship industry.

We also this year had members from at least one cruise ship company out of Japan that is setting their eye on coming to Kodiak starting next year. So the support of the community in the borough in providing tourism to these people that want to come and visit our lovely island is very important. So appreciate the support that you guys give us every day and the continued support that you give us into the future. Also, we've worked a lot in our office this year with different kind of website development and also social media contacts. Um, today we— I guess I could rewind a little bit.

Obviously, we launched a new website in February of 2024. Um, to date, uh, that website has hit, uh, the number today of 466,512 hits. Um, so we're averaging about 1,000 hits per day on our website. Um, and it's— I mean, it's just a, I think, a real benefit to our membership that there's one website that people can come check out and see all the offerings that Kodiak has as far as tourism, retail, restaurants, and different activities that can be done here. Helps people plan their trip every day.

Facebook is obviously a very known entity in this day and age, and it's become kind of our business calling card. Today we have over 39,000 followers on Facebook. We might— we spend a lot of time updating our Facebook site and sharing photos, sharing stories of people, and their experiences here when they come to visit. My brand manager, Sabrina Hicks, standing behind me, does most of those updatings. I think she does a really good job, so I really appreciate her being a part of our team.

We also have over 6,813 followers on Instagram, which I, I don't know if you guys are familiar with reels and that sort of thing, but reels have become short little videos that get posted on that platform and really entice a lot of people We have constantly engagement of over 60% of our engagement on Instagram are non-followers of our page. So we're getting a lot of people that we're enticing through those reels, through the, the experiences they're seeing, to come to Kodiak and enjoy the community we have and the amazing things that we have to offer. We also, this time of year, we work with a lot of partnerships. We work with, uh, obviously the Chamber of Commerce. We work with the Alaska Tourism Association, Industry Association.

We work with Travel Alaska, and we also started recently working with Alaska Magazine, which has featured us several times on their Facebook site. We also interact quite frequently with one of the senior editors who's decided to call Kodiak home for herself, so— and that's Michelle Thiel. She comes in and gives us a lot of support. We appreciate that.

We also have to talk about our sponsorship with Alaska Airlines. It's been an honor to be the partner with them for the last 3 years. They've at least sponsored one of our events the last 3 years and they continue to do so. They just bring a lot to our community as we all know when we try to leave and come back to Kodiak. We definitely need to maintain a good relationship with our Alaska Airlines providers.

Membership. Membership is the core mission of Discover Kodiak. Our core mission states that we support and promote our membership businesses by advocating for and thrive to— advocacy for thriving visitors industry in the Kodiak region. We currently have to date 158 members, 31 of which we've added since me and my team started back in April of 2023. I think that it speaks for our hard work, it speaks for the way that we promote our membership.

We are the, the number one marketing agency for Kodiak to share people outside the community and try to entice visitors to come and experience their businesses. So Membership is a huge thing for us on a daily basis. Again, thank you guys for your continued support. We have a reciprocal relationship. Obviously, the more successful we are in attracting tourism to come to Kodiak, the easier it is for the bed taxes to help us fund our programs.

So again, thank you guys for your support, and I'm happy to answer any questions any of you might have this evening. Thank you, Brock. We will be taking up the the tourism development contract later on. But are there any questions or comments from the board? Larry.

Thank you for your presentation. Yes, Mr. Liu.

I had the— as part of my career, I spent several years in Juneau, and, you know, some days they would have 10,000 people show up. But the question is not so much the fact that they came up, is that the community really took advantage. There was a lot of entrepreneurship A lot of people earn their living, especially young people, providing tours, selling things, very organized but very individually based in some cases. Has Discover Kodiak ever thought, and maybe you've done this, to put on a forum about how individual people and, you know, personal entrepreneurship, if you will, can take advantage of these tourists coming into town to sell and to find out what they need to do to have a booth, tours, but to engage the community so that some of our young people who— or anybody that could take advantage of these people coming in town— could make some money and make a living. Seems like it would be a good thing to do.

Yeah, we haven't done a forum ourselves directly, but with our partnership with the Chamber of Commerce, they have a small business group that they meet with, I think quarterly, and I've been a part of several of those different meetings. Specifically, on one meeting about 6 months ago, it was all about tourism, and it was businesses that are here in Kodiak and developing their business around tourism. And I did participate with that meeting. I think I'm more interested— if you will, I understand what you're saying, but that's sort of at a level that a lot of people miss. And so I'm not talking about basically, you know, kids selling Kool-Aid on the— or lemonade on the side of the road, although I think that's pretty neat.

But it is a a chance to invite our community to become more participants, you know, in what's happening and spread the economic wealth among people just by trainings, you know, putting a seminar where you invite people to come in saying, here's how you could make money, here's the things you could do, here's, you know, if you wanted to have something on the dock when the boats come in or along the side of the road, or, you know, how do you engage the thousands of people that are coming to Kodiak? Yeah, one of our deliverables that's on our contract with the city of Kodiak this next year will be putting together a digital survey for a post-tourism information gathering. And hopefully that survey will be held out to a lot of the tourism businesses so that we can start thinking about that and developing strategic plans for business entrepreneurship around tourism or getting small businesses off the ground. So I think it's something that we're willing to participate in. But, you know, we're kind of in the baby stages of what that looks like right now.

Also, I would say it seems like a really easy thing to do. Sure. You know, yeah, it seems like the people that are involved in tourism and bringing these ships into town, it's something they could easily do and people could receive it and take advantage. I mean, I don't think a lot of times what happens is, again, it's at this level, you know, and people, they're not invited per se just because, you know, people are shy. But to something that really targets people, it seems like you'd— there would be a lot of support for lots of people coming into town.

And—. But really to take advantage of the money coming in, it's not just bed tax that we're looking for. It's supporting our people that live here. Absolutely. Yeah.

I agree 100%. And we're happy to help in any way we can with that. Well, somebody needs to lead it. Sure. Sure.

Thank you. Yeah. Ryan. Thank you. Thank you, Brock, for the presentation.

I do like data and the data deliverables here are solid, so I appreciate that. One of the things that I really look for with a presentation is when we're handed a sheet of paper, this talks about all of the, you know, the exterior and the sparkly and the shiny. Would you feel comfortable talking about any of the issues that you're having and anything that we could do as a board Borough to help you overcome any of those issues, maybe not necessarily illustrated in this report? Sure. Um, I think— well, let me scour my mind here for a second what the first thing I should bring up is.

Um, I think that one of the biggest things that I see on a daily basis is communication. Um, we have a very big break in communication when it comes to cruise ships contacting the harbormaster's office, going to the port agent, and then we're getting the information last. I think that this is something I've been talking to Chris Paulson with and also Josie at the city about, just open communication when it comes to tourism. It just doesn't seem like it's a free flow. And so I think the development of certain chain-link emails so that everybody's on the same page when we have tourism events or cruise ships coming in and it's not separated out to different entities would be very, very helpful.

Um, so open communication, I think, is the thing that in the— in my daily routine that I see is a challenge. Um, but I mean, that's— that can be overcome with a couple conversations and a couple handshake agreements. So I'm hopeful that that will happen and take place. Um, you know, the city didn't understand that we don't have anything to do with the formation of the CRUSEP.

Schedule. Basically, my staff and I watch the state website, which is constantly updated, and then we type up our own little format and send it out to our membership. So maybe also becoming part of some of that scheduling, because then we can let our membership, who includes like the, the, um, Alutiiq Museum, the Kodiak History Museum, the wildlife refuge, we can coordinate those efforts all for days that potentially we're going to see a lot of tourism activities going on in our community. Um, so again, it just goes back to communication, all being on the same page and on the same side of the fence when it comes to, uh, taking advantage of those opportunities.

So what I'm, what I'm hearing, what I'm going to dissect out of this, and, um, I guess we're just going to kind of have an open dialogue if, if you don't mind. Sure. We just are on the heels of approving our nonprofit funding. What it sounds like to me is, as we revise our— maybe our nonprofit applications, if that is a museum or public space or some form of tourism-related activity, that we could have something on that application that perhaps ties communication in with this investment that we're doing might help solidify some of those issues. Again, I'm going to just kind of dialogue that, um, I see Discover Kodiak as more of like a tourism bureau.

I would actually go to you for that information rather than trying to pull from all these different agencies. So how could we help you position yourself into an information depot. Yeah, I think again, when we talk about different entities that might receive nonprofit funds in the town, if there is a way to tie us together in some kind of form of communication, whether that be deliverables in a contract that, that emails have to be sent when different information comes in, or whether that means that we have to meet quarterly to sit down and talk about the lists of different things, items that need to be addressed and notated to make us more successful in the future. I think that potentially those things can help. Um, that's great.

Thank you very much for that. If you want me to expand, I have a couple other things. I would love to hear what other, other issues you might be having and how we could help. That's a, that's a very simplistic approach to maybe tying some of this together. You know, and I think one thing that is, is become Obviously, where is, is our business space?

We have a 520-foot, 520-square-foot office, and at times we have over 60 to 70 people in there on a cruise ship day. We want to be a visitor center. We would love to have a space where people can come in off of an entire school bus of cruise ship passengers and start looking at things to do in Kodiak, maybe maybe some historical pictures, interactive things. It would be great in the future. I know that obviously budgets are tight and property is tight, but it would be something that I would like to see Discover Kodiak work towards in the future is just having a bigger space to provide a bigger welcome to tourism.

Anyone else? I just have one question, and I think it just has to do with scale. It seems like tourism is increasing, but even then, you know, the United States, the tourism industry seems a little volatile also with what we're hearing about, like, Las Vegas, you know, for instance. But if it continues to grow at this pace, what Have you talked with the city, or maybe a forum is a good idea where we have a community conversation about what, what do we want tourism to look like and what does that cap kind of look like for us? Because if we're going to start to put pressure on public safety, health services, if we're getting, you know, thousands of extra people a day, what does that look like for stores?

I went to Safeway on a cruise ship day and I didn't see one person I recognized and they were buying my lettuce. So, you know, so have you had those conversations, or is this something we should look at? I have had conversations more so with the city because of the downtown area being within the city of Kodiak. I think that Kodiak is a self-balancing community when it comes to tourism. Unless—.

Until the canneries, which is our main fishing industry, start selling off property to cruise ship companies to develop other kinds of enticing retail stores and whatnot, I think that we're going to be balanced out. Also, our geographical location as far as where we are in the world, we are technically just a repositioning port. The cruise ships that come here come here in the spring from Japan. They come through Kodiak because it's on their way to the southeast which they're going to be going down the Inside Passage towards British Columbia or Washington State. And then in the fall, we get really busy with those returning cruise ships going back to their Asian routes.

So based on our geographical locations and the balancing, I would say the self-balancing of our major economies in Kodiak, I don't know if you'll ever see us turn into a place like Ketchikan or Juneau that is welcoming, you know, 5 to 10 cruise ships a day. But only time will tell. But I think it's definitely a conversation that needs to happen, and we need to stay on top of what the community feels comfortable with as well. Have you— with the Arctic opening up, have you heard anything about what that might mean for tourism? We actually do get a couple of what we call adventure class ships, and these are the smaller ships that have actually gone through the Arctic.

And they, you know, they've been to Nome and then they're coming to Kodiak after Nome. So it's beginning and we'll just kind of see the development of that itinerary in those industries. And again, I think that the vessels that come here, those adventure vessels, only have between 200 to 700 people on them on average, which Kodiak can handle. It's the bigger ones we get a couple times a year, over 2,000 passengers, that I think really congest downtown. But, you know, some of the things that we're working on with the city is wayfinding signage projects and some downtown restoration type activities to try to make it more attractive to tourism, which I think might help.

A lot of times, you know, you get a lot of big groups of people downtown asking, well, how do I get to the Aleutic Museum, or how do I get to the wildlife refuge? And with that wayfinding signage project, I think that'll clear up some of that and make it more efficient. Cool.

All right. Okay. Thank you so much, Brock, for coming in and for your presentation. Thank you guys for your time tonight.

Okay. Up next, another presentation. This one from the SHUNAC Daycare Work Group. Sima. The SHUNAC— sorry— Daycare Work Group has requested time to propose leasing space at the North Star facility for use as an expanded daycare.

CHUNAK currently runs a daycare out of St. Mary's Catholic Church buildings in the location where St. Mary's School was previously located. The school has outgrown the space and they are looking for opportunities to serve more community members. CHUNAK has partnered with Kodiak Island Housing Authority and Kodiak Area Native Association to assist as applicable. Please welcome Jeanine Marsh. And she will conduct her presentation and do more introductions, right?

Sure. Yeah. All right. Good evening. My name is Janine.

I go by JJ. I can't stand Janine anymore. Marsh. And thank you for having us and thank you for giving us the opportunity. As you could see this evening from some of our teachers that came up to the mic, they were nervous and scared.

Very emotional. They're dedicated and kind and they love their job and I think all of us are very fortunate to be working for Shoonac Tribe. I've been tribal administrator for the last 11 years. Grew up, born and raised in Kodiak. I was one of the St. Mary's brats also.

In fact, Sister Diane came to Kodiak last year and I was able to bring her down and show her the classrooms that we had for Lutenshut, which was pretty cool. But I'm going to allow— I'm going to let April McBride come up. She's our child— Lutenshut child care administrator, and she's going to do the presentation. But I just want to say how proud I am of all the teachers and April and everybody else that has helped us, the families especially, for believing in us. It's been a long time coming.

We've We've had, since I've been down at Chinac and before even at Chinac, I worked for Canna, preschool was always something that we wanted and we believed in. We, you know, this became an opportunity for us.

It was not easy in the beginning, but I'd love to have you guys come tour our 3 classrooms and see how amazing it is. But when we walked through Northstar School and we saw the vacancy and the library that could be a gym and the classrooms.

They each have restrooms in them and are big enough. We—. And the beautiful school that's vacant, we just got so excited, and we'd love to have an opportunity to lease a portion of the school. So I'll let April come up. Thank you.

Good evening. Hello to my— I'm April McBride, and I was born and raised here and left for a little bit and then brought my 3 beautiful daughters back to raise in this community that helped shape who I am. When I was given the opportunity to start working for the Shunak Tribe, I was at St. Paul Preschool and I just saw an opportunity to step up for the community and to provide a service that was much needed in the community. And Shunak had already started that process.

I stepped in, I helped to complete the licensing process. So we are state licensed and I was able to open a preschool that helps to reflect the culture and values of the Shoonac Tribe and to help fill a vital need that was in our community at that time. We provide a safe and nurturing and culturally rich environment for our students, and I want to continue with that passion moving forward. And it's just an honor to be back in Kodiak and to provide this service for our community. Oh yeah, and I do have the remote.

There we go.

So opening up and— or not opening, but expanding is a shared community need. It's not just about parents missing work, families leaving the island, or businesses struggling to fill positions. It's about our children, and it's about missing valuable opportunities for them to learn, grow, and thrive right here in Kodiak.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Tribe is dedicated to building tribal unity, strengthening cultural identity, and preserving ancestral ways of life. We opened with one classroom in June of '22. We were licensed at that time for ages 3 through 5. We had a full classroom for that first year that we were open, and the following year I was able to expand to a total of 3 classrooms and expanded our license to bring on those 2-year-olds as well. As the need in our community is huge for those younger ages.

We currently rent the space in St. Mary's. Like I said, we've got 3 classrooms, but we have reached our max capacity. St. Mary's is also— works with the ROC, and so the ROC, they have their other classrooms that are there.

We would love to be able to expand as our waitlist is approximately 48 students right now, and some of those families have been on there for a year.

Like I said, we are a state-licensed preschool with extended care, so we have hours from 7:30 in the morning to 5:30 at night. We offer kindergarten readiness through rich play-based approach. Our program nurtures children's social-emotional, cultural, cognitive, fine motor, and gross motor development. At Daloogijin Child Care Center, our youngest learners are receiving culturally relevant early childhood education. With opportunities to explore their Lutic language, music, dance, and traditions.

This blend of early learning and cultural enrichment creates a strong foundation for children as they prepare for the exciting transition into kindergarten and into our school district. Sorry. The need: Kodiak Child Care's needs are not met. Places that are available are at capacity. Waitlists are long.

Currently, there are about 8 in-home providers on the island and 2 centers, one of us— one is being us, and then the CDC. Childcare must be a reliable cornerstone of our community, something that families can count on. By expanding our ability to serve more families, we not only support parents but also strengthen our community and contribute to the local economic growth. This is an opportunity that we must view from a community-wide perspective. Recognizing that when our children thrive, our entire island thrives.

We are open to all families, so not just Native.

Anybody can join us and we provide all of that for everyone.

Through Stun'ak Tribe and the workforce, 477 department. We are trying to build that capacity within our community. 25% Of Alaska child care providers closed since COVID 77% of Alaska parents missed work in the last 3 months due to child care issues. That's approximately $165 million economic loss. $165 Million economic loss.

14% Of Alaskans quit jobs because of child care challenges. We are open year-round, um, and so we are only closed very few federal holidays. Um, I wanted to make sure that our hours were conducive to families who have to work to support themselves and not have the stress of the, uh, child care uncertainties. So we have a solution. Um, we have been collaborating and working towards an expansion.

And it's not an expansion for the sake of growth. We are working to meet the need that already exists here within our community. As a nonprofit organization, we provide safe, nurturing, and educational environment for our families. Our tuition rates are intentionally set so to ensure that whether or not a family qualifies for assistance, they can still comfortably afford to pay for quality care.

The North Star—. North Star facility, it's an ideal location for child care. It was originally designed as an educational space, making it a natural fit for early learning programs. The building offers features that directly support young children's needs, including classrooms within their classroom bathrooms. Safety and security layout, drop-off area that ensures smooth and safe arrival and departures.

It also includes valuable amenities such as a library and a gym, which would enrich our program and provide children with diverse learning and play opportunities, and a fenced-in playground that adds another layer of safety while supporting outdoor exploration.

The Shinnecock Tribe currently pays $5,000 a month in rent to St. Mary's. Tuition is set at $925 for my preschool age and 800—. Excuse me, for my younger ages too, and preschool age is $875. These rates cover approximately 220 hours of age-appropriate learning and care each month, along with 2 snacks per day that we provide for each enrolled student.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Because the cost of leasing space at Northstar has not yet been determined, we can't assess whether or not tuition rates would have to be increased.

That would be something that we would have to take into consideration, of course. As a nonprofit program, all tuition revenue is reinvested directly into the center to cover expenses with no profit margin. Everything that we bring in goes right back into our students and those early learners. Our program exists solely to meet the needs of families and we actively seek grants and other funding sources to help keep costs affordable to all of our families. The tribe is fully committed to maintaining this vital service for our community and will continue to allocate resources to ensure its sustainability.

These are some of our supporters so far in our community. To build a strong program that can care for our community, we need all the support.

So we ask if you, as the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly, can join in the movement, support working families, strengthen local businesses, give children a safe and nurturing start in life. Our students, students will enter the Kodiak Island Borough School District with cultural empathy. A strong foundation of skills, and a genuine joy for learning. When prioritized, early childhood education has a profound and lasting impact on economy, generating long-term benefits for individuals, families, families, and society as a whole. We respectfully request that the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly consider leasing a portion of North Star Elementary to the Shoonac Tribe at a rate at which supports and strengthens the child care needs of Kodiak community.

By making this space available, the Assembly would be helping to ensure that more families have access to safe, high-quality, and culturally relevant early childhood education, a benefit that will have a lasting positive impact on our children and our community as a whole. Thank you.

All right. Kuyana, April. Dave is first and then Scott and then Larry and then Ryan. Thank you. If you will indulge me, I have a couple of questions and comments from that presentation.

I think initially is when can we start? I can't imagine that we are going to be able to do this.

I can't support this. I can't say how much I support this. When I left the school board my last meeting, I specifically stated the biggest challenge in our community is child care, and seeing local organizations step up to the plate to provide that is exactly what we as an elected body should be enabling. With that, my concern is For us is that we don't let perfect get in the way of good enough. I've heard it said many times, if you don't want to make a decision, you form a work group.

And I would hate to see good momentum in the direction of a really positive outcome get stalled up because we decide it needs to get pushed down to a bunch of committees and work groups to then tell us whether or not it's a good idea a year later. Um, if I misspeak on this one, I'm sure Dr. LaDuke can correct me, but I recall from my time on the school board that we talk a lot about standardized test scores, and from my recollection, one of the best indicators of early childhood, um, reading skills acquisition is access to quality preschool. So as a community, when we demand better of our schools, incumbent on us to find ways to help those schools. And if it's true that a quality preschool program is going to help those K-3 reading outcomes, then we need to be doing what it takes to get there. So the only questions I have on this, um, from this presentation— you've mentioned ages 2 to 5.

I know there's also a, a dire need but a licensing nightmare for younger ages. Would there be any potential to expand that in out years if the facility were— if the space were available at the facility? That's definitely something that we are taking into consideration. As like you said, the need here is huge. So yes, that is definitely something.

To move into Northstar would be applying for a whole new license and moving forward. So right now they can stay with us until they turn 6. For those late start, you know, kindergarten age groups. Great. Thank you.

Yes, perfect is the enemy of good policy or something like that. There's a statement out there, and I, and I would quickly add to— yes, access to preschool is important, but also access to second language acquisition is huge in literacy too for young kids. Scott, you're next. Hi. Have you thought about anything expanding to after school as well?

That's a big problem for a lot of families in terms of working. Their kids get out of school and they have no place to go. Yes, and that is also something that we have taken into consideration again for future, um, but, you know, being able to offer that environment for the students to come to after they're done in the school district and, and providing that that need for even that cultural relevance, the homework support, the just being, you know, not alone at home. Yeah. Second question is, there are two wings on Northstar that have six or so classrooms apiece.

How many classrooms are you talking about? If I can pull the slide back up.

How well you can see, but so the front of the school is right here by the picture of the, um, the jellyfish. And so that wing going off to the right would be what we are looking at, the whole wing. Okay. And then the library, which is that middle center part, because The gymnasium, you know, we're hoping would be continued to be used for city, you know, Parks and Rec or other entities that might need to step into that gymnasium, still keeping that available for the community. The library is, you know, a big enough space that with our little toddlers and preschoolers, we could still do those gross motor activities in there.

And then of course utilizing that amazing playground. There's also a kitchen there for preparing food. Are you going to feed these kids? So that is also something that we can look into, and the state does have a food program that we could join as far as getting some support there. And we do have to have a kitchen that is a licensed kitchen to be able to move forward with that.

So yes, that is definitely something that we are interested in as well. Are you trying to partner with other groups in town in order to get students for your program. You say you have a waitlist of 48. That might fill 1.5 classrooms, but there are other empty classrooms in the area you're talking about waiting for other students, and there are plenty of them in town. Yes, I think that if we were to, you know, be able to move into Northstar, I could feasibly fill 5 classrooms right away.

Moving forward, once we were there, the space was available, I definitely feel like more families would come out of the woodwork and give us a call. I think so too. Thank you. Larry.

I remembered this time. My wife always tells me I forget to turn the microphone on.

Well, thank you for your presentation. It certainly brings a lot of joy to my heart to see the building being utilized. Um, the community of Kodiak voted to spend $10 million to build North Star Elementary, and they built it such a way that they could add on 6 more classrooms. I know a lot about the building, but, um, it was built for kids, and our community paid for it for kids, not the school district, the borough. The citizens of Kodiak voted to build it.

Today, if we put up that building, it would cost us over $30 million if we did it today. So it's an incredible asset. Any dialogue to sell it that I've heard doesn't make any sense to me because we're going to grow. I believe that. We are going to grow.

It's just the most wonderful place in the world to live. All you have to do is to look at 115 degrees in Phoenix or anywhere else. This is a great place to be. To be, and we're going to grow. And to sell one of our biggest assets for— somebody said $7 million— is ridiculous.

The other thing is, um, what people said tonight about reading instruction and language development is all true, but reason early education, I believe, is so important, and what you're doing is so important, and I think most parents will understand this, and most teachers especially will understand this. If you see all the kinders coming in on the first day of school They're happy. They don't care about anything. Everybody's their friend and they're excited. And I used to say maybe they look at someone's lunchbox or something and feel different.

But the first thing that we do is we assess them. Some of the kids can stand in line. Some of the kids can write their name. Some of the kids know how to say hello. Some of them can name their colors or count to 10.

And what happens with kids as we start assessing them is that they develop a self-attitude. They sort of develop an academic or social academic hierarchy of where they fit in. And those kids who know all those things have all been to preschool or they've had intensive instruction. The kids that have not don't know that. And so by the time they get out of there, they have already figured out where they fit and it stays with them.

Early learning for all kids sets the bar equally for kids. So when they go into school for the first time, they know how to stand in line. They know how to do all those things that many of you take for granted, because many kids can't do it. And it's critically important. Everything from prison to reading is all related to early learning.

The data is clear. We need it, and it's hard to do. And if the district wants to raise their grades, as as you mentioned, they know right off the bat is support early learning. And I believe the district is doing that. But I also believe that as we look at the asset of Northstar, because for some it's just going to come down to dollars.

It's going to cost us anywhere from— I don't know, I've heard different numbers at different times for fuel and utilities, but it's a borough asset. And even if the borough put $100,000 of tax dollars in, which are hard to find, to tell you the truth, into maintaining the facility for 10 years for $1 million. And then we need it. We have a $30, $40 million asset that we have readily available. And so I like it's early, it's cultural, it's planting trees, which is my business.

You know, it's working with, you know, the little ones. Couple of things. There's— if you partner with the school district, there's an incredible amount of grants available with school partnerships with early learning.

Abby Hensley.

Do any of you work with Best Beginnings or Abby Hensley? There's a lot of money out there to support this. Part of my job when I was commissioner was to manage early learning programs around the state, and there's an incredible amount of money available for those kind of.

Partnerships because they're looking for communities to work together. And Abby could help you, and there's different organizations. The other is maybe you can think about, and you probably already have, because I— is doing a training program, because as you mentioned, the licensure for early learning workers is really complicated, and it's very expensive, and it's very onerous, but probably maybe necessary. But to work with the high school, perhaps or even homeschool programs around the state to maybe add in a training program. At one point in time, there was a program set up where students would work with Small World to get training.

And, you know, just a whole— I could go over the whole thing, but there was a partnership program.

The other is when I— the first several years I was at Northstar, we had an early program and an after-school program. So parents could drop their kids off as early as 7 o'clock in the morning and they would work together as a group under leadership and then they could stay until 5 o'clock and parents could pick up and drop off. And that was a very popular program. It was actually associated with Small World. Some of you may remember that.

And then when they went out of business, that program disappeared. It was a very— so training programs, home school, and so it's not about dollars to me. And we'll hear a lot about that probably because we have to maintain the facility. It'd be nice if the city helps out with the gym and, you know, the school district and we develop a partnership and we lease, but I doubt we're ever going to get our money back. But that doesn't bother me because we're using the building for what it was designed to be used for and having kids in there.

I will say this though. During previous discussions, I've indicated that however we use the building, there should be a 2-year breakout that if we need it as a school, you know, with 2 years warning, but doesn't mean we wouldn't stop a partnership.

Okay, so I like it. I wish I could help. I—. Sounds like you have an incredible team here working for you, and I hear all the right things, and there's so much you could do. I just And so nice job.

Thank you. And I'm, I'm all about the collaboration. So thank you for some of these ideas. And I have been in talks with the school district at the high school level, you know, to help those students who are going through their program for childcare to come to our facility and get their hours in training. So I'm all about collaboration.

Do you work with Head Start? I have not. I did have some of their employees, though, that were working for me this summer, and they are amazing. So I definitely hope to build that relationship more. Just a last comment.

The library, if you look at your map there, it shows a computer lab. That computer lab has been walled off for 20 years. I built the wall before school started one day. It really— I don't— looking for our facilities director. Have you guys taken down that wall yet?

You probably need to because it's held together with pencils. Saying that with the building inspector sitting there, but literally, it's a— it's a retired building inspector, but he was there when it was done. But it probably— it would open up that whole library to be bigger because it's really not what it looks like right now. We just needed a room. I didn't even know that was there.

Hardly anyone knows. And just the wall is still there. I could take it down in 5 minutes. It's only 3 screws. I'll give you a call.

Thank you. Ryan. Thank you. Well, you picked the right night to present when the panel is nothing but educators except for me, so I have some non-educator questions to ask.

So I'm also a product of St. Mary's, so as soon as you said Sister Diane, I immediately cringed. I'm not gonna lie. Sister Bridget, Sister Diane, love you guys. I thought it was your high school experience.

Let's see. Made him cringe. So you had mentioned something about a 477 permit. What is that? The 477 department of SHUNAC, it's the education and training department within the SHUNAC offices downtown.

Okay. They help do lots of different programs in town with the youth, training for, you know, the adults, and trying to support the families within the tribe.

Perfect. JJ, I— so I even wrote this down, if JJ's involved, we will succeed. So, you know, we just need to get through some of the, some of the nuances and the questions, because I also agree with Dave that we don't want this to die in a committee. So I want to just get all of my concerns and questions. They don't necessarily need to get answered now, but maybe when a proposal comes forward, if those are addressed, I could see this not dying in a committee someplace.

So let's see, how many do you currently have in St. Mary's right now? We have 3 classrooms, and I am licensed for up to 60 students. Um, right now I have got 32, um, currently, and we'll have about 8 or 9 students going off to kindergarten, and that will enable me to bring in some more students. Um, not enough. 32 Now, 48 waitlisted, so 80 kids total, and we're looking for space for 72.

So we're going to go into still a waitlist scenario if you're going to put 72 here? Possibly. So it depends on the square footage of the classrooms. I have to have— oh gosh, what is it— 3 feet, 3 square feet per student in the classroom. And so it just depends.

Like, there's one classroom that's open, so like 2 rooms could be one big classroom. Some of the classrooms, I think room 4 is a much smaller size classroom. Which were maybe— I could comfortably put like 6 very young children in there. So it just kind of depends on the layout. And then room 7, I was kind of looking at it as my office, so that wouldn't be as a classroom.

So that— this brings to question— so some of the concerns that I have is, should we move forward with this, this does limit the option for other tenants in, in the facility. And so bearing that in mind, my question that I do not need answered right now, just something for you to consider, is what would it look like for you guys to go to Critical Mass to fill the spaces so that we don't have to worry about another subtenant in the classrooms? And then what that looks like for an integration. So that's, that's one. The other thing, and, and I will say this until I'm, um, blue in the face.

The Kodiak Island Borough is not very good at maintenance. And so one of my largest concerns is that anyone that takes over the facility would need to have some sort of a maintenance program in place. We're just not necessarily equipped to maintain the facilities at a day-to-day basis, but we're getting pretty good at capital improvements because we've deferred maintenance for so long. I say that tongue-in-cheek because that's not the way it's supposed to be. However, that's the reality of taxpayer dollars right now.

Um, on the last slide— Nova, can you get to the last slide, or somebody get to the last? Okay, right there. Oh, this one. Yep. Um, supporters in the community— what, what does that mean?

Are these organizations that are giving you guys funds, giving you guys compliments? I mean, what—. This is the people that we've— we also have Providence, Redken, and I think a few others that we didn't have time to add on. These are ones that have employees that need childcare that would be willing to utilize our childcare.

So yeah, Canada is a big one. Canada's— they actually did a program a few years ago on the Karis Federal Reserve. They supplemented their workers, I think it was like $500 a month, so they could help them out with childcare because they had employees coming in that didn't have any childcare and didn't have the funds. But we also have, you know, our Native organizations too, our nice support of our tribe. Native is the Kodiak Is'xunax Tribe.

So, yeah. And of course Mindy was putting up on housing as well.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So supporters and potential collaborations.

Okay.

I— to be honest, I wasn't quite prepared for that answer. I was thinking that these were financial backers, these were organizations that had a fiduciary interest in the success and/or failure of this. Of this initiative. And unfortunately—. JJ, come on up to the mic because—.

I'm sorry. Unfortunately, a lot of these organizations don't have like funding for these kind of things. You know, we can look at grants in the future. We can look at like Rasmussen Foundation. There are grants for like we were thinking about the— I talked to Mindy about the kitchen, utilizing the kitchen.

We can get a grant for something like that. But a lot of grants are really competitive. So like April, you know, we did say that this is any money that we make and we, you know, if we increase the amount of children, we're going to put it right back into the program, into our school. We're not looking at making any— we haven't made any money off our preschool. We want to provide it for our community.

That's A number one for us. So yeah, so we've asked these people to support.

And be, you know, there if we need them. But as far as funding, I think we're pretty much on our own other than grants, and we can, we can apply for grants. We're more than happy. So my suggestion, if I may, Mr. DPO, my suggestion would be when a proposal comes back, we, we have an alternate proposal that makes this look more like a co-op. That makes this look shared.

In, in my ventures in life, a co-op or shared success or failure is a lot stronger than trying to run something on your own. And that would, in my opinion, strengthen your proposal exponentially. So co-op, be it with the borough, with your supporters in the community, letters of, you know, again, fiduciary interest. I did some quick math. If you guys are charging between $1,125 and $1,175 on a staff of— I'm sorry, at a max capacity of 72, you're netting $81,000.

These are exponential numbers from what you guys are going off of with St. Mary's as far as your overhead is concerned. So I've got some real business finance concerns with what this looks like. And that to me is my lack of educator knowledge, but really diving deep into the business. I'd want to see how this looks from a sustainability standpoint, because we don't want to tell somebody else no if they have stronger financial backing, uh, and would be able to create a maintenance program, create, you know, sustainable metrics that also help the community. So there's a lot that goes into this from a business perspective that would satisfy my curiosity.

That's all I've got. I appreciate the time and great job on the presentation. Thank you. I can say that we did start from scratch. You know, we've done, we've done a lot since 2022, and it's, it's become a realization that our tribe and our group are more than capable of running a preschool and If JJ is involved, we will succeed, I promise.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I promise. Yeah. So thank you. I am going to— Larry, I have you down, but Siema asked—. I just wanted to say that in anticipation of your approval, Amy did put forward a similar use determination that is being heard at the PNC Commission right now.

[Speaker:MS. WRIGHT] Can I add one more thing? I'm sorry. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER DIXON] Absolutely. [Speaker:MS. WRIGHT] So the one thing I forgot about, the big thing, is Kodiak Island housing.

Shinnecock Tribe has money in Kodiak Island housing, so we're allowed to use a certain portion, percentage of funding for children who are eligible for— like if we have a child, a Chinook child that's eligible for Kodiak On Housing Authority, or the parents, and they've done loans or they're in the programs at Kodiak On Housing Authority, we can actually use a percentage of funding for each child towards our preschool. So that's another one, and we're working on the numbers right now, but so yeah, just want to put that in there. I went back to Mindy and went, "Oh." I have a couple of things before handing it back to Larry. I have a few things.

My sister-in-law is a kindergarten teacher, and she had a kindergartner last year that had come from the preschool, and they were going over numbers, and this kid started counting in the Lutik, and She turned it into this, you know, enrichment moment for the entire class. And, you know, that's like— this is exactly what the, the democratic project in public education and education is, is, um, that kind of, um, education through enrichment. Um, and, uh, side note, sign me up to teach some theater games with these kids. That would be fun. I got some stuff.

Um, okay, serious things now. Uh, no, So have you— Larry was talking about partnership with the school district. Are, like, in future plans, have you thought about charter school?

If you want to go into kindergarten and primary grades, that's a whole other thing. My wife can help you out with that. But that might be something, again, not anytime soon. But something to look at for future development. This clearly fits within the Bureau powers, education and economic development.

So I think we are on good standing there.

If the concern about other tenants in the building, I think we talked about, I brought that up at our last workgroup and I mean, if Larry Ledoux can build a wall out of pencils, —then I think that is something to consider, though, to think about. One thing that we haven't really talked as a body is we don't have a long-term plan with the school district for how we use these buildings for facility use. We have Main and East that are much older than Northstar. And, but again, right, we don't want it perfect to be the enemy of any of this. But I think this is a good place to start to encourage those conversations with the school district about— we— it's not that we're necessarily bad at maintenance, we're just bad at planning.

We haven't been doing that well either.

I would— I think this is going to be kind of a similar use and a lease contract. I don't— I personally don't want to get into the weeds of your business plan necessarily. I'm not interested in that. Others might be interested in that, but I don't know if that's really necessarily within our purview, but we can talk about that. I would propose, though, that our Next steps or direction to the manager is depending on how, right, this conversation with Planning and Zoning goes, that we ask them and Engineering and Facilities to go ahead and work with JJ on putting together some kind of proposal or contract proposal including facilities maintenance plan, rent, or whatever that looks like.

I'm comfortable with with giving the manager that direction. And then also encouraging the manager to work with the school district on an overall plan for the school facilities anyway.

Let's see, Larry. Thank you. I'm not— I'm going to— I always rely on Assemblymember Sherrod to talk about business because he knows it well. Sort of sets us down. I don't believe that you using the facility, that you would take responsibility for maintenance because you couldn't afford to.

The boiler system alone, the electronics that run everything, somebody breaks a window, the district has to keep— excuse me, the borough has to keep the building We all know you can't turn off the heat and the electricity, you know, and let the building sit there. They have to heat it. And if the boiler breaks down during the winter, they have to fix it. To put anybody in there and expect them to take on that kind of financial responsibility, you just couldn't do it. It just wouldn't happen.

So, but we're doing it anyway, and we would have to do it whether someone's there or not. And there's other things that you would have to take responsibility for, the annual inspection of the alarm systems and the sprinklers, valves, which are also very expensive, things that have to be done pretty much anyway. And if the borough doesn't do that, they would have to shut down the building. And those are things we would have to do for our licensing yearly as well. Yeah, it would have to be there.

There's pretty strict guidelines with early learning. So, um, that all has to happen. Even the key systems are a real pain, you know, changing keys around. Um, the borough, our primary responsibility is— we heard from our deputy presiding officer— education is one of our primary responsibilities. I think we do it well.

We support the district, but education is number one, and it's where we spend most of our money. Um, I appreciate what you're doing because this kind of collaboration, um, Kodiak's needed for years and years. But what's the one thing that has stopped all the dreaming and all the actual planning, the business planning, is there's never been a facility. Because somebody will bring it up, great ideas, where's the facility? There also is another organization in town that I think spoke to us that is trying to set up a daycare facility, and they're— they have a large group that they're working together too, and they're also looking at— I have talked to the manager before, I believe, to, um, to do that.

So in any case, um, I don't want to.

To get lost in a good idea, let's talk about it for 10 years. The heat's on. The program is in need. I think what I heard is submit to the borough a business plan. But finally, I would say, you know, I don't view North Star as a money-making event for the borough.

I view it as an asset that we have possibility, and more closely it's aligned to its original purpose that the voters voted on. [Speaker:DR. BRYAN SLINKER] The more honest we are with our public— I'm not going to— I already talked about the real need for it. But so I'm very supportive. I'm glad that you're there. I hope we get a plan to look at very soon and that we can lay it out.

But I will tell you up front, those of us who want to break even on leasing out the facility, that's not going to happen, you know, by anybody coming in because you couldn't afford it. I don't believe you'd have You know, it just wouldn't happen. But that's our business, and we have to heat, take care of, and manage the facility anyway. I don't know, do we have to pay garbage even if we're not using the building? Yes.

Yes, there's garbage. I can't believe that. Anyway, thank you.

Thank you. Dave and then Ryan. This is, I guess, more a question for SEMA, and I apologize for putting you on the spot with it, but it was something to get clarification as we continue navigating this process. I know the city's rules, so I assume the boroughs are similar. Any lease prepared by the manager's office to come to the assembly has to start at the market rate.

Is that right?

I'm sorry, I don't know that. Yeah, and that's a—. Finance and ENF and everybody's here, so.

Sorry. So I'd have to check, but Title 17 or 18 does require any disposal of property, which leases a disposal of property, does have to. But I do know that you can suspend the rules when you, by ordinance, to change that for special circumstances. Thank you. And that was what I wanted to point out, was just—.

We've done that before. I just didn't want the initial sticker shock of what market value comes out at to be— because that— the manager's office isn't going to have the authority to negotiate that lower. That's up to the assembly to make a decision on. So I just wanted to put that out there now so there's not a panic as we navigate this process in the future. We appreciate that.

Thank you. Good point, Dave. Ryan. Thank you. Um, so I'm not trying to get into your business, okay?

Uh, I have enough of them. I don't need to get involved in any others. Um, but I do need to again bring the reality check to this, is we as a governing body already have a taxation model in place through the public education system that we fund through taxpayer basis. It would be unfair to ask the public, those again without kids in the school system, to again support another form of taxation or augmentation to provide for 72 other kids. I don't think that that's fair.

I don't think that we'd be able to pass the red face test. I, I have to re-emphasize what a co-op would look like for facility sharing, maintenance sharing, sprinkler head replacement. I just really encourage you guys to explore that route for all the reasons that you heard today through excess cost. And, and Mr. LeDoux is correct, we, we do have to heat the building. There's a big difference heating it at 50 degrees and heating at 73.

There's a big difference between water dripping out of a faucet to prevent freeze and using several thousand gallons. So there is exponential usage costs that go into a decision like this. And so I just, again, I would, I would caution you guys to think outside the box, knowing the objectives of smart taxpayer basis and looking at what is this going to cost the taxpayer and what does the public look at. We represent the public. There's some confusion that there's self-interest up here, but in, in reality, we have to represent the public and transparent spending and fiscal management.

So I would just take all those things into consideration and put— do all this full Well, I'm not sure what bullshit he's referring to, but I'll just go ahead and continue on.

I guess with that, I'll just go ahead and stop. Thanks. I appreciate it.

Scott, I believe that the school district had to pay rent on the building, but I don't think it had to have a co-op or any of these other things that you're talking about. I suspect that the answer to that comes from the manager, not from just off the top of our heads. Thank you. Larry, the school district itself doesn't pay, doesn't pay to use a facility. The borough does charge the school district for, for use of any part of the school system that does not involve classroom instruction.

For instance, the school district has to pay the borough for their administrative wing. Some— at one point it was over $200,000 a year. I called it blackmail myself when I was superintendent. But in any case, so it's a borough facility used by the school district, built with— I think at the time it was 70% you know, state funds, so we paid for 30% of it. So it was clearly bonded for the use of education, not for anything else.

And we have, for instance, the Arts Council uses one of our buildings. We sublease it to them. Still school district— well, it's not a school district facility, it's a borough facility. And we have a partnership with them for use and management of the facility. I could go back through the years and give different examples, but, you know, it's borough-owned, borough-insured.

Nobody brought up insurance. That's an important factor with use of the facility. And the reason I don't think you have answers to this is because you've never had the opportunity to even think of using a facility like this. So there's a lot that discussions with the manager will address everything that we have talked about tonight. And that's what I'm hoping will happen very quickly.

I would also say there's a lot of power behind this application. Some of the people that are up there, Kanna, some of the Native, Konyag. I mean, this is— our community needs it. The Native corporations need it. Kids need it.

Kids need it. Kids need it. And it seems to me that we can find a way to take advantage of this opportunity. And now that that's a possibility of using the facility, now you can perhaps go into all of these other areas to resolve. Any legal issues that might take place.

We do have the ability though to lease for specific purposes, and since education is our, is our probably number one responsibility by law and by Constitution, it's a good thing to do. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I think that's a good place to end. To really quick though, to Ryan's point, right, the school district is an extension of the government and this is a nonprofit, so the relationship will be different, but that is for our manager and JJ and others to work out.

If the group is comfortable with me communicating or coming to Seema that direction to take the next steps, keep this going, keep the conversations going, and we look forward to something more concrete.

After those discussions.

I don't know. So yes, thank you once again, April and JJ and everybody for coming to speak to this great program. Thank you so much, Koyaanis. And I've got all my notes, so I'll get busy on it. Thank you.

Okay. Do we need a break? Okay. All right. We're going to take a 5-minute break and Coming up will be the Kena Konyag and KAB Landfill Collaboration presentation.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] And then the little parts where the eggs are wrapped with string. And then the Queen Mary and the Prince George.

The Queen Mary and the Prince George would come into Bangor. Hi!

Me too. Yeah, I mean, at least you can come help her. You can't like have a familiar face and somebody that you work for. Oh my gosh, and kids! Oh my gosh, as soon as they left, people start cussing.

Maybe we need a grandson here and there. I can bring one or two every now and then. I can force my 10-year-old to come and sit back here. He promised he's not going anywhere. Yeah, I'm in the same boat.

Nancy and I are like Okay, we're excited with the Cabinet. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I finally got all my BAs done, taken care of, so now I'm like wrapping it up.

This is an opportunity for us. Yeah. Well, it's a green light. Oh, nice. Let's go.

Okay, well, we know you guys have lots to cover, so—. Yeah, that's all right. Well, thank you for joining us.

There's still sun. Yeah! And now there's a breeze. And now there's a breeze. That means you have a— that means I can keep recording.

Am I feeling good? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's perfect.

You'll see me. I ain't going nowhere. How are you? I'm doing good. How are you?

Good. Thanks for your help with my phone. What's your name? Sabrina. Hi, Sabrina.

Hi, Trey. Nice to meet you.

All right, cool. Yeah, well, good luck, man. Yeah, get somebody that is good. Cool.

Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you. Good. Right on, right on. Well, yeah, keep bringing her to these meetings then, and that way you've got some robust support when the transition occurs.

Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks for asking what our challenges are. Yeah. We don't get asked that too often.

I mean, I'm the only self-employed guy that sits on this board, so I look at things a little differently. And so I just want to know what the obstacles are because it's not like you can wield a big stick and something as easy as, hey, we're going to give— we're just doling out $400 grand in nonprofit. It's pretty easy for us to put something on the nonprofit application. Hey, if we're giving you money towards tourism or whatever supports tourism, you should work with Discover Kodiak, who's also a stakeholder in our investment, our fair basis. So, yeah.

Yeah, so he's at the house now.

So anyways, I mean, that's a simple solution. Yeah, simple, simple administrative change that can— and we've already been talking about changing the grant applications anyway, so from What perfect timing for it. And of course, it would be nice to be in those conversations with Captain Davis and Martin, and the other folks at State and why. Yeah, it just seems even just for feedback, you know, what's a feedback? Just if the Lakers just like listen.

Thank you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Hi, how are you? Good, how are you doing?

Good, how are you? Are you like dying up there with a sweatshirt on? Oh my gosh, I went from transitioning from my basement right to here and like thought I was gonna like—. Yeah.

All right, let's bring it on back. Bring it on back.

Okay, and we're back.

Sorry. Let's see, up next, all right, presentation of KANA, Kodiak and the Kodiak Island Borough Landfill Collaboration for Elder Services Project 2025. Seema. Thank you. So each year, KANA and Kodiak collaborate to complete a community service project focused on supporting and giving back to the Kodiak community.

For this year's project, the emphasis was placed on elder services in direct response to feedback from elders who expressed a need for assistance in decluttering their homes and removing unwanted items. A critical component in the project involved hauling these items to the Kodiak Island Borough landfill. We are especially grateful to landfill— sorry, grateful to landfill staff whose support and coordination played a significant role in the success of this effort. Patricia Valero, KIB's interim project manager, is here to introduce the presentation.

Good evening. I just wanted to say a big thank you in front of all of you guys to the landfill staff. Not every event is perfect, but they are so adaptable and they really helped make the day as successful as it could have been. And then talking with the groups that did things, we decided that it would be a really nice idea to have them come and present the success of not only their success with the effort, but the community success. So I'd like to introduce Cassie Keplinger from CANNA.

As I drop— there you go. So I think this should be on a loop. I don't know if the presentation is or if I have to Yeah, it's just pictures. I don't have any slides. And I will— I'm going to correct you, Seema.

So this is the first year CANNA and Konyag have come together to do this project. So I have a little background on how Konyag has done this project in the past. Unfortunately, Katie Hughes is not able to join us tonight, but I will speak on her behalf. So on July 24th, Koniag and Kana came together for a very special community service project. So for the past 9 years, Koniag has proudly hosted an annual community service project each year.

The—. Both the projects and the number of volunteers has continued to grow. The initiative began as a way of Koniag's board of directors to give back to the community here in Kodiak. Their very first project took place in Larson Bay with just a handful of staff members and their board— and some of their board members. Since then, it has evolved into a tradition where top performers from Koniag subsidiary companies earn a trip to Kodiak to participate.

So Koniag has different companies across the nation, and they take their top performing employees from those companies, fly them up for a whole week of activities, and one of them being let's give back to the community. Over the last 5 years, they've had more than 60 volunteers join in each year to make these projects possible. In past years, their efforts have included graveyard cleanups in the villages and in town, picking up trash on Woody Island. Last year, they went to Digafognak for the day to help with painting, chopping wood, and other chores. Projects that have always been deeply appreciated.

But this year they wanted to take a new approach, something more personal, more direct, and more meaningful for the people who hold such an important place in our lives, which is our Alaska Native elders. So after many conversations, we— between a few of us at CANNA and Koniag—. Did it end? Oh, um, we decided that that working with our elders in the community would be a really good way for these volunteers to give back in a meaningful way. So we, at KANA, directly reached out to elders living in the city of Kodiak asking, you know, what kind of household projects.

What projects would you like done? We gave them a list of what they could choose from, um, and the response was very heartwarming. 20, Um, 21 elder households signed up for help with a variety of projects, everything from yard work, as you could see, gutter cleanouts, organizing garages, hauling items to the dump, cleaning cars, washing windows, painting, um, even hosting a bingo game up at Heritage Heights through Kodiak Island Housing Authority to make sure some of those elders felt included. The smiles and gratitude we saw that day reminded us all that sometimes the smallest tasks can make the biggest difference, especially when they allow our elders to feel more comfortable, cared for, and connected to their community. We also, you know, we had some volunteers that maybe didn't want to go into home and help, so we knew our village elders deserve to be a part of this effort too.

So we had volunteers prepare and send out, uh, banya gift bags to each elder household in every village, which was just a gesture to remind them that they are seen, valued, and loved. Um, many hours and coordination went into this project, and we want to express our sincerest gratitude to the Kodiak Island Borough for waiving the dump fees for this project. I'm not sure how many pounds went out. I don't think we got that number, but I know there was a significant amount of, you know, old appliances that needed to be hauled out, oil drums. I think we even had to deal with some other things that— talking to the guys at the dump, I was very grateful for them.

So this project was about more than just completing chores. It was about honoring tradition, strengthening bonds, and showing that our elders remain at the heart of who we are. As people. By the end of the day, the sense of connection between the volunteers, Koniag Kanna, and the community was stronger than ever. So we just want to, you know, look at this and carry it forward, and just service that is rooted in respect, care, and the belief that when we take care of our elders, we take care of the whole community.

That's all I have. Very short and sweet. Great, thank you. Any questions or comments from The board. Dave.

Thank you. I'll be very brief. I just wanted to thank you for the presentation and for the project. That's a really great thing you've done for our community elders. I think it speaks somewhat to, I guess, what I see as my philosophy of government, which is that, you know, anything that can make money, somebody's figured out how to turn into a business, and government's stuck with the rest.

So yeah, our landfill is not going to make money, but waiving landfill fees so that elders can get their yards cleaned and old appliances removed is a, I think, a righteous use of a few taxpayer dollars. So thank you. Yeah.

Ryan. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I agree with you about elder support and really admire what you guys are doing. The first thing that came to mind was the Kodiak Island Borough often struggles with trying to get senior exemptions pushed out to seniors, and I'm wondering if there's any kind of synergy that when you guys do this in the future, if you guys could work with the assessing department and say, hey, we're going to go do these senior places, can we help you grab any information?

I'm just wondering if if there's any synergy there that could—. We collaborate. Ooh, love it. Yes, Ima. We did trips to all of the villages with CANA this year.

And was it a successful venture with getting senior citizen exemptions? Yep, that's all we did. We took blank ones so that new seniors could come. We took ones that were not filled out so that they could just come to the community building, have lunch with us, and then fill out their application. And, and that is wonderful.

I'm so happy to hear that. And that is worth every ounce of waiving a landfill fee for these projects. The last thing that I'll leave you with is, uh, should you ever run into a need, we're doing these locally, and you find that ew stuff Give me a call, we'll take care of it for you. Okay, thank you. Thanks.

Larry.

Thank you for your presentation. It's interesting because it made me think way, way, way back, you know, where this kind of thing happened all the time in old Kodiak, if you will. And I think elders were pretty taken care of, but it was just sort of a given. I mean, I don't— it was just part of the culture, I guess, you know, at that time. But over time, as things— society seemed to speed up, and a lot of that was forgotten.

And it seems like the only way that gets done anymore a lot of times is for the government to step in. And it was really nice to see people pitching in and doing that kind of wonderful thing. Just a thought, something for you to think about. And it says Maybe it has nothing to do.

Pictures, photos of elders. Yeah. When my grandparents passed away, we had no idea what was on those pictures. And so much of Kodiak is lost. At one time when I was on the museum board, we talked about having a photo day where people could bring in all their old photos and there would be elders there to actually say, oh, this is so-and-so.

Because I recognize most of the people in those photos, but my kids wouldn't. And I know Kodiak, they have a bunch of old photos that have been brought to them and they've, you know, lent us some when we've had our elder gatherings to like put them up in a slideshow. So a lot of those elders can reminisce and see like, oh, I know who that is. And they've actually gotten to sit down and you know, we could identify who they are. So I know Koniag has that, definitely.

Yeah, I always visualized like the high school gymnasium open with tables and people could just bring in their photos that they have and people would walk through and identify and preserve elder history. Just a thought. Anyway, thank you. No, I think that's great, definitely. And that is one thing I know our elder services coordinator is really trying to work on too.

I think our prevention department as well is working with the high school and talking about oral history with the elders. One of the elders in those photos, I mean, you go over and talk with her and she talks about growing up here during World War II and it's just fascinating. So it's a lot of history that, you know, will get lost. One of the greatest repositories of elder history was done by the Kodiak High School and the Elwhaani archives. And those archives of cassette recordings of elders going back all the way into World War II were given to the Brother Herman Repository.

And if— I don't think anybody knows they even exist, but there's lots and lots of elder recordings there. [Speaker:KIMBERLY] Yeah, yeah. And then I also will put a plug in too about our adult non-medical chore services we offer through CANA. It is income-based, but it's through our workforce economic development program. And essentially, if an elder qualifies for the program.

Maybe they have a niece or nephew who would be willing to come into their home and do chores for them. Our Workforce Development Program will authorize that niece or nephew as a provider and reimburse— pay them an hourly rate of $20 an hour to be able to go into an elder's home and do chores up to 5 hours per week. Again, it is income-based and a few other requirements, but, you know, That's something too. It is for beneficiaries only, but if you ever know of anyone who needs something like that, just send them our way and we'll see if they're eligible.

Well, thank you. This was fantastic. Before you go, Patricia, was there anything to add? Do we have any kind of estimate on the pounds, the poundage that— I can provide that. Oh, okay.

It's just a lot. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Okay. No problem. I think this is— I think what we've seen today so far is that, you know, the borough is open for partnerships because we can— I think we're best when we can, like, target needs and And so thanks to the staff for being willing participants and collaborators with all these groups that we've listened to today. It's really quite inspiring, so.

[Speaker] And Sima and I actually hope— well, might be her opinion, or my supervisor Arwen, since I'll be on maternity leave soon, but we need to start planning our village travel for this fall for the property tax exemption since it was such a huge success last year. We definitely want to do it again.

All right, thank you again. Thank you for staying. Yes.

All right, well, that moves us into packet review.

Okay. First in PAC review is a public hearing for Ordinance Number FY2026-04, Amending Various Sections of Kodiak Island Borough Code Title 17, Zoning Related to Assisted Living Residences. Seema. Thank you. The Planning and Zoning Commission held a public hearing on July 16th, 2025 regarding a code amendment to various sections of Title 17 related to assisted living facilities.

The commission voted to recommend approval of the changes with Resolution FY 2026-01, which is in your packet. Most of our current licensed properties are located within the two-family residential district and multi-family residential district. The proposed code amendment would allow assisted living homes in rural residential 2 Rural Residential District, Rural Residential 1 District, Single-Family Residential District, Two-Family Residential District, and Multi-Family Residential District. Assisted living facilities would be allowed in the Multi-Family Residential District, Business Districts, Urban Neighborhood Commercial Districts, and Retail Business Districts. Conditional use permits would allow assisted living facilities in the Residential rural residential, one district, single-family residential district, and two-family residential districts.

The code amendment also includes updates to parking requirements for both assisted living homes and assisted living facilities. This recommend— recommended code change was reviewed on July 31st in packet review, on August 7th as an ordinance for introduction, and after tonight will be presented in a public hearing on August 21st. If you have any questions, Chris French, Community Development Director, is here to answer them.

Any questions from the Assembly?

I have one, Chris. Chris and I were at the Housing Action Plan Steering Committee meeting this morning and Chris, you had brought up that— I think one element of the housing issue here is a lack of housing for seniors. Is loosening up or clarifying these definitions— is this a step towards, towards that? It's certainly helpful. I mean, we do have 10 licensed facilities through the state.

Most of them would fall under the assisted living home facility, but the problem is our code, we don't have this use listed. So when people come to us, and we've had some— that's the reason We went to the Commission and asked them, do you want us to go start a code amendment on this? Because we had a few people ask us, you know, where is this use allowed? Because they were trying to go get their state license and we were like, it's not listed. Um, you can do a similar use determination if you can find a similar use.

And then as part of our discussions with that, we talked to the Commission and the Commission agreed that, yeah, we really do need to define this use better and provide locations of where it's a permitted use and also where a conditional use permit could be applied for. Okay. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Scott has something.

Medicare is now—. Has a survey that you can type in. If you type in Kodiak at 99615, there aren't any. So we need this.

All right, thank you. Okay, moving on.

Oops, the wrong one. All right, for public hearing, ordinance number FY 2026-06, eminent domain code, Title 3, Revenue and Finance, Chapter 3.35, Real Property Tax, and Section Oh, in Section 3.35030, real and personal property exempted from taxation regarding definitions. Sima. Thank you very much. KIBC 3.35030 states that a primary residence and permanent place of abode shall mean a dwelling which is owned by and in which the person resides in at least 185 days in the year prior to the exemption.

And when absent, the dwelling is not leased or rented to another. The Alaska Department of Revenue Permanent Fund Division office states that in order to be eligible for the PFD, you must reside in Alaska for 180 days. Since the PFD is a relied-upon source for eligibility for the senior and disabled veteran exemption, assessing staff believes that the Kodiak Island boat— boat Borough Code should use the same number of days to determine the qualification. This would benefit staff by eliminate— eliminating the need to develop additional resources and letters to determine eligibility for the difference of 5 days. This recommended code change was reviewed on July 31st in packet review, on August 7th as an ordinance for introduction, and after tonight will be presented in public hearing on August 21st.

If you have any question, I'd be happy to answer.

All right. I don't see any questions or discussions. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to Contracts.

Contract number FY2026-03, Surface Water Monitoring Plan Sampling and Reporting with Shannon and Wilson Incorporated. Sema. Thank you. The Kodiak Island Borough maintains a solid waste disposal permit for the landfill and leachate treatment plant. Requires biannual surface water sampling and reporting to the State of Alaska in accordance with approved surface water monitoring plan.

In the past, the work is— was coordinated and executed by the borough's environmental specialist and leachate treatment— and leachate treatment staff. To align with best practices used by other municipalities across the state, The borough has chosen to advertise this work through a formal request for proposals, or RFP. Hiring a third-party contractor to perform the sampling and prepare the required reports for submission to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation ensures consistency, objectivity, and the compliance with permit requirements, while also allowing the borough staff to focus on operational responsibilities. A request for proposals was issued on January— or excuse me, July 1st, 2025, with a due date of August 4th, 2025. 4 Proposals were received.

The evaluation committee consisted of the Kodiak Island Borough Landfill Supervisor, leachate treatment plant lead and trainee, 1 assembly member, and the chairman of the Architectural Review Board. All proposals along with a blank rubric sheet were provided to all evaluators electronically by email, and a OneDrive link was provided with a copy of all proposals to be evaluated. All evalu— evaluators submitted their scores to the Engineering and Facilities Department, which were compiled and averaged on an Excel spreadsheet. Based on the scores, Shannon and Wilson, Inc. had the highest cumulative average score. Cody Allen, ENF Director, is here to answer any questions that you may have.

Any questions? Ryan. Thank you. I'm just going to make a statement for Assembly's general knowledge. So I was an evaluator on this.

The ENF staff handled this flawlessly. I want to emphasize the purpose of this RFP was to descope it from an internal job tasking and take it to an external unbiased or unaffiliated third party to conduct that. Kodiak was one of the last few holdouts in the state doing it in-house, and so what that also does is that relaxes some of the requirements to backfill that position as well. So I do concur with the staff's assessment. I, I was an evaluator.

My evaluation runs congruent with everyone else's evaluation, and I think that this was a great job by ENF staff, and I really look forward to these transparent procurement processes proceeding the way that this one did in the future. So thank you very much.

Dave. Thank you. Very briefly, because I've got no concerns voting for this, it's more of a process statement. Having been on a lot of evaluation committees, I've seen a number of them get really turned sideways when you have one person who evaluates very differently than the group. And if you're going on a scale of say 1 to 10 and everybody's marking a 7 or 8 on average, and then one person gives a 1 for one company and a 10 for the others, You know what I mean?

Like, do we have a borough process for normalizing the data if there's massive outliers like that? [SPEAKING SPANISH] So it's a departmental process more than a borough process. And so essentially, I remove myself as the director from the RFP process and try to be the unbiased individual. And I don't even look at the proposals in depth until after the scores come back. And I'm more or less looking at.

The scoring matrix provided individually, which are not released for public. And so if I see any erroneous results or something that may— might show like a bias, I believe was what you were mentioning there, I then kind of go back and try to have the person articulate, as I did on this particular one as well, to figure out what their mode of thinking was, what was their rationalization. They might have not even understood really what they were reviewing. Great. Cody, you never cease to amaze me.

Thank you.

Anybody else? Okay. All right. Thank you. All right.

Next contract, FY 2026-10, provision of destination marketing and tourism development services with Kodiak Island Convention and Visitors Bureau, Discover Kodiak, in the amount of $75,000. Seema. Thank you. This is an annual contract with Kodiak Island Convention and Visitors Kodiak Tourism Bureau, also known as Discover Kodiak, to promote Kodiak Island as a destination for tourists and to promote local businesses in support of tourism activities. The assembly approved $75,000 in fiscal year 2026 budget for these services.

All right. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. So as we discussed earlier during one of the presentations, I'd like to see if we could get some assemblymember nod that while we are revising our nonprofit applications, that we can put some language in the application that if their nonprofit funding is approved and it is in line with public tourism, that they work with an already funded stakeholder, which would be Discover Kodiak, and some language to encourage participation. Doesn't have to be legally binding, but just something that says, hey, we also have a $75,000 stakeholder investment that we do in tourism.

Since we're funding your nonprofit and you are tourism-based, we would encourage you to work with Discover Kodiak as an additional stakeholder. Something of that, if we get either discuss it or some nods, why we are revising that application. Thanks.

Dave. Thank you. I'll start with the qualifier that I think I've been pretty open in my opinion on tourism as an economic driver and what I've seen it do to my beloved hometown of Seward. So with that bias fully acknowledged, I, I support the contract, but the, the, the big, the big but there is that I'm also a big believer in economies of scale and span of control, and I'm not convinced the model of having 3 separate economic agencies in our community is the best use of taxpayer dollars. I think if you look at the staff sizes, um, there's a real opportunity for consolidation and allowing staff to then surge to where the demand signal is at different times of the year.

I think a larger staff under one umbrella would be more efficient. It would save a considerable amount in director salaries. Um, so again, I'm not trying to upset the apple cart at the 11th hour, but it's something I, I would like my fellow assembly members to consider in out years is how we continue funding 3 separate organizations that have fairly overlapping mission sets: KEDC, Chamber of Commerce, and Discover Kodiak.

Larry.

I agree with Assemblymember, just the recent comments. So I think we need to do a lot more working together and really talk to our community in such a way that we maximize the potential, at the same time protect what draws people here. I think that needs some good discussion.

So there are— would you— is this something that you want to fill out a yellow sheet on and put on an agenda for discussion, both this idea of encouraging consolidation and this idea of encouraging collaboration in nonprofit contracts. Well, I'm kind of— I'm hearing two different kind of, you know, ideas that you want to discuss. And so my first thought is—. I just want to make sure they don't— they just don't get lost. My first thought is to direct the manager to start, you know, some dialogue here before it comes to us.

I thought— I agree that we need to have that dialogue, but I think, you know, the manager can draw the people together together and sort of lay out the landscape for us if she knows what we are sort of trying to gain.

It is hard for the Assembly to interact with all three organizations in such a way without setting up a committee, which I don't want to do. I am sorry, I mean, I agree with that, but I also am— my concern is what is our What is our business getting in the job of asking nonprofit organizations to consolidate? But let me work through that. Let me— I got Ryan next. [Speaker:RYAN] That was exactly what I was going to say is I was earlier shunned for getting involved in business, and yet here we find ourselves in this discussion again.

So my— to my statement is we as a— as a body have already discussed amending the nonprofit application. And while that process is underway, my question or my suggestion would just be, hey, we have a stakeholder we can, through application, encourage synergy that says, hey, you know, we're going to— I'm just going to say the Luthic Museum as a byproduct. Hey, Lutick Museum, we're giving you X number of dollars. Please ensure collaboration with Discover Kodiak, who is also a funded stakeholder through taxpayer dollars. Just— and you're the English guy.

You'd need to wordsmith that. I would just need— I'm just looking for encouraged synergy between those two. [Speaker:ANDREW_HOFFMAN] Sure. Yeah. Okay.

I can work with that.

And then, and just, uh, and then, um, okay, so Ryan, I got you. I can, I can work with that. Larry and Dave, you're requesting that, um, that the mayor— I'm not sorry, not the mayor. I'm looking at my— I wrote mayor, I meant to write manager. Um, that the, the manager begin a dialogue with the chamber, KEDC, and Discover Kodiak.

Well, it's the City of Kodiak, you know. Right. Agencies are all designed to, you know, facilitate economic development. And as money gets tight, you know, perhaps we need to be more efficient on what we do. I think they've mentioned that, and that's all I'm saying is that it doesn't have to happen now.

It could happen, you know, this coming year. I support the allocation of the money. That's not that's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying that we have a responsibility to— a fiduciary responsibility to spend our money wisely. And so that's not getting into business.

It's just saying, are we using it the best way, the most efficient way? [Speaker:COMMISSIONER MILLER] Okay. We are talking about things, I think, tangential to the agenda item. But so I will follow up on this. And are there any other comments about the— the contract itself.

Tangential. Tangential. There's the word for the week, staff. Okay. Moving on then.

Resolution number FY 2023. Oh, okay. Yes. 2023-03, A resolution of the Assembly of the Kodiak Island Borough amending various sections of the Kodiak Island Borough Records Retention Schedule and Central Filing System reflecting amendments to the Borough Clerk, the Manager's Office, and the Personnel Management series? Nova, thank you.

We have worked with the manager's office and we are updating the manager's office series and also the personnel management series. In addition to that, we are also updating the clerk series. We currently store all of our resolutions and ordinances and minutes in the records room in fire-safe cabinets. We print them on acid-free paper and then we use some special binders that are very expensive expensive, and we are running out of space. And we are updating that process so that we are not going to print them on acid-free paper anymore, because when we do that, we just store them in the records room and we never touch them again.

But we're beginning to run out of space. The mayor initially didn't like it, and then I proposed that we store those in his house, but he didn't like.

Either. So he kind of agreed to going electronic. And, um, I have checked with IT and we're okay. We have backup, Laserfiche backup, where we store all this important documents electronically. We technically have like 3 backups and 4 sites where we upload the records.

So just in case something happens, then we have a way of restoring them. And also, other things that we're doing in this update is that we're adding some retention for borough attorney subject files, so that if department directors work with the attorney and the information they gather from that conversation is something that is worth preserving, then they have a way of doing that. And another thing that we're adding to the series is to to the departments is litigation case files. Right now we have litigation case files and they're only stored in the manager's office. We would like the ability to restore them in each department.

And that's what we're doing. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Any questions? Larry. I'm sorry, I was a little confused.

I thought we were digitizing all of our records already. Yes, we are digitizing them and also printing them. Is there a legal requirement that we keep copies of them? No, we have checked with our attorney. We have also reached out to our fellow clerks in the state, and they're beginning to transition as well.

So what we would do is we're not going to save paper copies anymore, we're going to completely digitize them. We're slowly, you know, transitioning. I'm not saying that everything will be Electronic, we're going through our retention and seeing what we can digitize. Will we be digitizing what we do right now?

Yes, are we going to start digitizing what we're doing now so we're not accumulating any more paper? Correct. I asked Lena to start this fiscal year for at least the clerks, those ones that we've been printing on paper. And if I could ask one more. The legal documents, now they're going to be moved to a separate secure location?

Those, they're currently electronic. Okay. We're not printing them. And who has access to those legal documents? They are in Laserfiche.

However, the department directors have access to them, not all borough employees. And if they're personnel related, we don't have anything personnel related in Laserfiche. Right, and we can establish securities in Laserfiche and limit access to certain things. All right, thank you very much. You're welcome.

Ryan, thank you. So you had said that currently the litigation files exist in the manager's office and you want to take those back to the departments? Well, other departments, they, they are storing some of the litigation case files in their departments. They're not really transferring them to the manager's office. I think we need to reflect what is currently practiced this.

If they're not being transferred to the manager's office, then I think we— they should be retained in the department where they exist. Well, I think— may I continue? I think I need to give this some, some thought, but I'm not entirely comfortable with litigation files being outside of the control, immediate control of the manager. I'm not entirely sure I understand the conceptual idea of this, but if we have litigation files that are confidential in nature, we as the assembly only can hold two people accountable, you and the manager. And so I would— I guess I just don't understand how the litigation file would go to the department or stay within the department.

I would say, I would cite this as an example. If there's a litigation that's, you know, from the assessing department, CIMA would have those records.

And they're— yeah, so the thing that we're doing right now is that, you know, if they're in CIMA's department, then the way that we're supposed to be handling it is that SEMA would have to transfer them to the manager, and then after so many years, then they're going to be transferred to me, and then I'm going to transfer them into the archives. It just gets— there's just a lot of people, you know, like being— like time management and staff involved in transferring all these records, and they're moving around so much. I think we should have the ability to store them in the departments. Okay, thank you. Is that what you were going to address?

That is exactly, because it was just like, no, we have to take it to the manager, and then the manager has to fill out a whole bunch of paperwork that they don't even know about. So it's just easier if I do it myself. Oh, no. No. Dave.

Yeah, being intimately familiar with the records retention process and what it entails, absolutely support this, and I'm only sad that it's had to take this long to digitize because paper records retention infuriates me. So thank you for moving this forward.

Did you convince the mayor that paper wasn't the right way to do it? Yes, sir, I think I did. Oh, good. Thank you. Okay, moving on, ordinances for introduction.

Ordinance Number FY 2026-05, amending Kodiak Island Borough Code, Title 3, Revenue and Finance, Chapter 3.35, Real Property Tax, Section 3.35.050, Board of Equalization. Seema. Thank you very much. Senate Bill SB 179 describes specific information for the Board of Equalization members when they receive a full value appraisal and when the board can ask for a higher value than what the assessor has valued value the property at. This only applies to the BOE for valuation, so only 3.35050 is being updated.

Since SB 179 states that the BOE can only increase value if it's requested by the appellant, then if the Board of Equalization for the exemptions, that would be the stated cause. Like anybody's going to ever ask you guys to do that. But so we didn't feel like we needed to update both sections when that would be the true nature that they would ask you to do if it was for the Board of Equalization for exemptions. So it's only being updated in 3.35050 when they have to follow the rules. Okay, thank you.

Any questions?

All right, seems straightforward. Thank you, Sima.

Um, all right, other items. State of Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office General Wholesale License Renewal Application for Southern Glazers Wine and Spirits of Alaska LLC, doing business as Southern Glazers of Alaska, license number 4860, combined renewal notice for 2025 through 2026 renewal cycle. Nova. Thank you, Assembly members. We have received this renewal notice from the ABC board regarding license number 4860 held by Southern Glazers.

And when we started investigating, we have found several concerns. Luckily, Sima's here. She can explain the protest or the, the objection that she has with this license or her concerns. And also my concern is that when I found out about Sima's concern is that— concerns. I went online and looked up the business license for this liquor license, and it shows that the address for the business is located in Anchorage, Alaska.

So, um, I corresponded with the state and asked about more details about the business. The applicants or the licensees were copied in the email. Unfortunately, when the state sends us information, we have to go by what they send us. I can't communicate directly with the licensee and have them change whatever information they had with the state. They need to communicate that to the state, and the state communicates with us.

So we're kind of limited in what we can do. The code dictates that that if there's a concern, I need to present it to you, and that's what I'm doing with this item. We have given you two options, whether, you know, if you feel that it's no big deal, then you can voice non-protest to it. If you think that it's something that we should be concerned about, then we can voice protest. And now it's before you.

Thank you. All right. Questions from the dais? Scott? I think I would vote for— to voice protest to this transfer.

Okay. Anyone else? Dave? I agree. It looks like they don't meet.

The standard and sounds like a business in name only here. And that's costing revenue. And if they're not meeting it, if they're not meeting the obligations of the license, then we should be protesting it. We should be consistent in that. So, Nova, I have a couple of questions.

So EMCO, when they grant a license, they have to file like a premises, don't they? There has to be an actual physical location that EMCO must have on file. And they don't? Well, they filled out their application, but the address, the physical address that they gave is wrong. On the application, and we can't verify it.

And I tried to verify it with the business license that's filed with the state, and, and it's still wrong. It reflects an address, a physical address in Anchorage.

Do, do we think that this is— I mean, I know this one's, this one's weird. I mean, are they, are they parking the license?

I guess we just don't know. We just—. Yeah, I agree. There's not a lot of information that was given, and we have to base it on what's provided to us by AMCO. Yeah, thank you.

Well, I think a protest makes sense. I mean, we'd have false and inaccurate premises information, and it seems like a lack of actual operational compliance, so it seems like a clear protest letter.

Okay. All right.

That is the end of the packet review. There are Architectural Engineering Review Board minutes and HFAB minutes also To review there.

Going back to work session. Next up is manager's comments. Amy is not here, so Sima, do you just want to hit the highlights for us? Let's do it. All right.

In the manager's department, there will be a local in-person class for ICS 300. September 17th through 19th. If you're interested in receiving this training, please contact Amy. Um, our community is transitioning away from Nixle alerts to a new alert system through Civic Plus. If you would like to receive these alerts, please text Kodiak to 38276.

The software conversion timeline for Tyler didn't change much from last week. Uh, assessing still has dedicated time. Finance has dedicated training. The go-live is still September 23rd, and at this time Tyler is reporting 40% complete on their conversion. The manager's office is also currently recruiting for a maintenance coordinator, a solid waste manager and slash environmental specialist, a temporary laborer, a full-time laborer, and a temporary receptionist.

In Community Development, the Commission held a work session yesterday. The work session included discussion items related to code amendments to Title 17 regarding child care facilities and potential changes to definition chap— for regarding short-term rentals. The packet review included land disposal items for Island Lake Road properties. 2 Tax foreclosed properties, the similar use determination for, um, Schunack, and the capital improvement program. Uh, Chris and Bronwyn were supposed to go and visit Uzinkee yesterday.

Unfortunately, because of the weather, it was canceled, and it's now scheduled for August 19th. And they are also planning a visit to Old Harbor on September 13th. In finance, the first deadline for those wishing to make half payments is Friday, October 15th. That's tomorrow. Their staff is working hard on the property assessment and tax implementation project with Tyler, and they are advertising for a temporary employee to fill the gap so that finance so that all of the staff can be present for training on the new Tyler system.

In assessing, we still have 23 undetermined applications that we're trying to solve. There are no senior or disabled exemption appeals that are outstanding. The dismissals for the 2 BOE for valuation cases have been filed, and the Allutiq Museum is still in its filing period. For field work, we're in the villages this year. Akiak, Karlik, Old Harbor, Larson Bay, UGAK, as well as 2 of 5 remote fly-to-only properties have been completed.

Port Lyons is where they spent the day today. We will be going back, and we have a boat trip scheduled for September 22nd. This week, assessing staff attended the summer AAAO meeting. Virtually. In information technology, the IT department is working on keeping systems patched and also on troubleshooting issues with the landfill's networking.

The IT is working on firewall configurations and with ACS on connectivity issues at the landfill. IT has advertised the cybersecurity RFP and is working on patching and upgrading KIB system. They are also— GIS is working with Community Development on Plan 2045 and continues to update missing or incorrect properties and lease information for our GIS records. In Engineering and Facilities, over the last week there have been multiple multiple reports of transients using KIB facilities, external power receptacles, and camping out around the facilities. ENF staff has secured power receptacles and locked the ones that powers, um, require to be needed in those receptacles, and they are working with our community partners to raise awareness around the issues that are being observed.

The regional solid waste management plan update is underway, and the surveys are now live on the KIB website as a news flash and have been shared with the public through Facebook, email, and posted flyers around town. Um, we did attach one of those flyers in your packet. It's on the last page. Um, the preconstruction meeting for the Cheneyak School painting project was held on August 11th, and staff is eager to move forward and are coordinating closely with the contractor to ensure a smooth start. Um, the multi-facility elevator modernization— on August 13th, TKE was servicing the middle school elevator when a electrical fire occurred in the mechanical room.

Fortunately, the fire was quickly contained thanks to the prompt response of the KIBSD maintenance team, and the area was declared safe by the City of Kodiak Fire Department. Unfortunately, this incident has resulted in a complete shutdown of the middle school elevator, which will remain out of service until the planned modernization takes place. ENF staff staff are working closely with the contractor to expedite the shipment of materials and are collaborating with all relevant stakeholders to reprioritize this modernization timeline. So, meaning that PKIMC has been notified that there might be possible changes. Um, at KFRC, the industrial pump Alaska order is moving forward.

We're approximately 11 weeks out. Both KIB and Canna staff has— have actively— or have been actively coordinating with the contractor to gather additional data for the report and calibration— gosh, sorry— and collaborating on distribution of the surveys to the public for the landfill. Small projects, Mill Bay Beach stair replacement is moving forward, and other contracts that will be coming up for renewal and rebid are the analytical laboratory services, janitorial services, and solid waste management contract. How's that for a recap? All right, sounds good.

Keeping in mind that Amy is not here, any questions for Seema? Make them softballs, please. Yes, Ryan. Uh, just as a softball, uh, so the Solid Waste.

Management contract is coming up. It is a rather intensive contract. If we can be involved with that in the infancy stages in phases would be an ideal tempo, at least for me.

Thank you. Noted. Larry. Yeah, I want to go back to the emergency alerts. Our community is transitioning away from the Nixle alerts to a new alert system through Civics Plus.

If you would like to receive these alerts, please text Kodiak to 3— I have no idea what that means. So if you just go on your text messages and the 2 number would be 38276, and then in the message part you just put the word Kodiak. It will add you to the Security Alert New program. Okay, thank you.

I have a question about the middle school elevator. Have you talked to the— I imagine the maintenance team— what's the plan with the kids? Who need the elevator? Yeah, great question. I've been working with Dr. Mika, I believe is how you pronounce her last name, Mika, and Adam, the director of facilities for KIBSD.

Unfortunately, the contractor could risk bringing it back up. It was a contactor that welded, and essentially the motor caught on fire. For whatever reason, in 1981, they thought it was a great idea to put it inside the hydraulic fluid. However, their plan is to essentially traffic food a different route because that's the, the most important or impactful part of the day. They're no longer doing the 7th or 8th period at the high school this year for middle school, so they're not anticipating having a lot of kids trafficking through that corridor at all.

And anyone that requires like ADA access or anything of that nature to the auditorium. They have established a plan in which they will take them through the sidewalk to the front entry, which does appear to be ADA compliant.

Anything else? All right. Thank you, SEMA. NOVA Clerk's Report. Thank you.

The nominating filing period will close tomorrow, Friday, August 15th at 4:00 PM, so please do not show up at 4:01 because we won't be able to process it. As of today, we do not have any candidates running for borough assembly. We also have quite a few service area seats that need candidates. The filing period for write-in candidacy will start on Monday, August 18th, and it will end on September 30th at 3:00 PM. We are expecting the by-mail ballots to be mailed out to the Chignak and village voters the second week in September.

The voters' pamphlets will be mailed out during that time also. The election training for the city precinct workers is scheduled on Monday, September 15th, and the borough precinct workers is scheduled on Tuesday, September 16th. For those who wish to receive their ballots by mail, the absentee by mail ballot applications are available on the Kodiak Island Borough website and also in the clerk's office. Early voting for this election will be available starting on Monday, September 22nd, and it will end on Monday, October 6th. Liquor licenses.

The appeal hearing for the Second Floor Restaurant REPL license is scheduled to take place at the Office of the Administrative Hearing on Monday, August 25th, here in Kodiak. We have 3 renewal applications that we're currently processing. Which include Kodiak, Brown Bear Center, Olds River Inn, and Southern Glacier is the one that we just discussed. And then, um, I just want to remind you about leave. If you are going on vacation or taking some time off, please make sure that you let me know.

And then I want to remind you about the notification of to the borough clerk When you wish to participate electronically, you need to let me know 24 hours in advance. If you're notifying me within that 24 hours, you need to— actually, I'm gonna refer you to them, to the mayor, who needs to approve that participation. Staff training. The staff at the clerk's office organized a peer training session called Coffee with the Clerks, and we started this on August 6th. And we did an Open Meetings Act training with our fellow secret— with secretaries here at the borough, and, and then also staff members that may be staffing other boards and committees.

We found it to be very productive. It was more laid back, and there was a lot of questions asked, and it was just an opportunity to get together with the secretaries and other staff members. The next meeting that we're going to have is— it's going to be held on September 3rd, and we're going to be talking about parliamentary procedures. So we're going to start— our goal is to start meeting on a monthly basis and just have that peer-to-peer kind of training. In July, the Deputy Clerk participated in a NAGARA training.

It's a records and information management training. Today, the Assistant Clerk took part in an online training called Meeting Minutes and the role of the clerk. The, the duties associated with the positions in the clerk's office have changed considerably the past 11 years, so my goal is to make employees' job duties clearly outlined in their job descriptions. So we're working on the PDQs as of the moment. Your assembly calendar will be discussed hopefully on this September 25 work session.

The online code has been updated and paper supplements will be distributed by the end of August. That's all I have. All right, thank you. Ryan, thank you. Could you give me an example of the clerk's office having considerably changed within the duties?

And what— could you give me some examples of this job description? A good example would be the liquor licenses, the amount of work that go into the investigation of these liquor licenses, the amount of work that Lena is doing as the deputy in updating all the records retention series. So there's a lot of that. And, and then other things that I've noticed in the job description is that the deputy clerk's position doesn't have a lot of— like, the description for it doesn't have a lot of included in the task about staffing meetings, which is very important in that role. So I think that needs to be updated.

And then Irene's job also so, or the assistant clerk's job is taking a lot more role in records management as well. Can I continue? So one of the considerations that you may want to consider is because you hold credentials to a high esteem, aligning those job descriptions with those that are published in those credentials, I think, would help bridge that gap for years to come if your CMC is one of those critical credentials, those organizations typically have job duties and illustrations of what you would do with those credentials. So I guess if I could just make a suggestion is to align those, those job duties while you're in review with those credentials. Yes, I am doing that.

Thank you. Anyone else?

Um, all right, Assemblymember comments. We'll start to my right with Dave. I think I've talked enough tonight. No comment. Thanks, Larry.

I appreciate the presentations tonight with regard to, you know, setting up the, um, the Juneck Corporation, setting up some programming for kids. I think it's really important when times get tough that we really work together to protect the most vulnerable of our citizens from sort of being left behind, and frankly, that mostly entails includes very young children. Thank you. Scott.

When they closed— decided to close Northstar, it was a real pain for a lot of people that live close to it and whose children have gone to Northstar. I'm really hopeful that, uh, if SUNAC can put it together to have this daycare function at Northstar that it gives it a new lease on life, so to speak, and will be embraced by the locals around it. I think that having kids in that building is just a really good idea. Ryan. No comment.

Okay. And I just want to say thanks again to our presenters. This is— that was really great seeing everything that's being done and how the borough can supplement some of these.

Efforts. I would just like a, just a blanket reminder of civility up here on the dais. It is really difficult to, as you can see, there aren't any applicants or anybody, no one has filed yet for an assembly member's seat, and it's really difficult to recruit. And, and I, I think that, uh, if, if we can as a body present ourselves best, that it would be easier to recruit people for to fill some of these empty seats going forward. So, Anova, I have a feeling you're going to be very busy tomorrow with some filings.

So good luck.

And with that, we'll adjourn.