Wasilla: City Council Regular - 14 Sep 2026

I respectfully ask the council to observe the following rules. Please seek recognition before speaking. No member may speak more than twice on the same motion without a vote to suspend the rules. No member may speak a second time until all who wish to speak have had an opportunity to do so. These guidelines help ensure fairness, efficiency, and mutual respect during our discussions.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Council Member Caudle. Here. Council Member Graham.

Here. Council Member Schmidt. Here. Council Member Crafton. Here.

Council Member Johnson. Here, by phone. Thank you. Council Member Rubio. Here.

Uh, Madam Mayor, you do have a quorum. All council members are present, with Council Member Johnson participating telephonically. Okay, thank you. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Council Member Crafton, would you please lead us?

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

The next item of business is approval of the agenda. Before changes are discussed, Council Member Rubio has a conflict of interest to declare. Ms. Rubio, you have the floor. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I declare financial interest in Resolution Serial Number 26-52, which proposes to award a contract to Big Dipper Construction Incorporated.

Big Dipper Construction is owned by my father and therefore constitutes as an immediate family interest under WMC 2.01.010. Accordingly, pursuant to WMC 2.01.040, I request to be excused from any discussion or action on this resolution. Thank you. Are there any other conflicts of interest to declare?

Hearing none, are there any changes to the agenda, Madam Mayor? Mr. Crafton. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, could I move items 8.3.1, 8.2, and 8.3 to new business, please?

So that'd be all resolutions recommended for approval.

Mr. Graham. Madam Mayor, I'd like to move item 8.2.2 to new business. Thank you.

Are there any other changes to the agenda?

Hearing none, the agenda is approved as amended.

There are special orders of the day, so we will move to commission and agency report. We will begin with a report from the Wasilla High School student representative.

Austin. Austin Nucity representing Lewisville High School. It is the beginning of the year, so we don't have very much to report, but Homecoming Week was just, uh, just concluded about 10 days ago with our home, home game, Spirit Week, dance, bonfire, Power Buff game, along with a lot of other activities. Most participation was, or the most participation our student government has seen in a long while, so we're glad to see our this new generation of students getting into school spirit this early. Friday, September 4th was the ribbon cutting for our new stadium lights and scoreboard.

The MTA Grant Foundation donated $12,671 and the Carson Law Group donated $250,000 for our new stadium lights. And our facility is now called the Veterans Memorial Stadium and the Croson Law Group field in honor of their generosity. This is a major improvement for Whistle High School since our stadium lights haven't been the best for the past few years. Thank you to MTA and Croson Law Group for their huge generosity. Thank you.

Mr. New City? Yes. Is it true that this Friday is Veterans Appreciation Day at the football field? And I believe veterans should show up. Should show up to support their team.

Thank you, sir. Okay, thank you. Next is a report on the Planning Commission from Acting City Planner Nygard. Thank you, Mayor. The Planning Commission met on the 8th of September.

There were no, uh, quasi-judicial hearings, no legislative actions taken. We did have some technology issues, so we did postpone some items that would have been discussed until the next meeting, which will be on the 22nd. Thank you. Thank you. Next is a report on the Parks and Recreation Commission from Recreational Services Director Bell.

Scott Bell, Recreational Services Director. Uh, Park and Recreation Commission had a meeting September 9th, and at that time recapped a lot of our summer, um, events and activities since we did not have a commission meeting in June due— we did not have a quorum. So recapped our Fourth of July activities, Music in the Park. And we did report to the commission that Public Works Department has got all their bids in for the park and parks master plan. So that should be coming forward soon.

And we, the commission is working on an IM to present to the council in support of the Bumpus Softball Association and some of their goals with expansion of the softball fields. And next meeting will be on November 18th. Okay, thank you, Madam Mayor. May I ask Scott, what's the— you know, we're looking at expanding the potential for expanding the Menard Center where there's a need and so on and so forth. What's the status of that?

Look-see. So the Menard Sports Center, Menard 2.0 feasibility study has already kicked off. We've had stakeholder meetings recently. A survey went out to user groups and different user event holders and different things like that. And so they are in the process of getting those back right now.

And I believe we have a target of potentially November having the feasibility study completed. That's great, thank you, sir.

Yes. Okay, we'll conclude our commission agencies report with a presentation on vehicle use from the City Attorney's Office. Madam Mayor, for the purposes of this presentation, I move that we enter committee of the whole for more of a free-flowing conversation, uh, just due to the nature of this presentation.

Is that a motion? Yes. Graham second. The motion has been made and seconded to enter committee of the whole. Is there objection to the motion?

Hearing none, we are now in committee of the whole.

Would you like me to just speak very briefly sort of about what, uh, we prepared? Um, okay, so, uh, Teresh, uh, Chong is a paralegal for Birch Horton. She prepared this PowerPoint, um, at Hannah's oversight. And, um, so Hannah will walk you through sort of the compilation of what we were able to find. Um, it'll be— it's interesting, and I'll talk about this more afterwards, but We weren't actually able to find much because the type of vehicle use policy we're looking at just isn't generally codified.

Um, and so we were able to pull policies from the communities that we represent who were kind enough to just give us their policies. Otherwise, we would need to use the public records process for many of the policies that are posted. Um, so Hannah will walk you through, um, what's there, and then we can talk about afterwards what the what the differences are with these communities, which these are pretty small communities you'll be looking at.

We are giving this presentation to review the current city vehicle policy, and because council is considering updating its current vehicle use policy, we also discuss a couple of other cities' policies to compare. Please state your name for the record. I'm Hannah Clancy with Birch Horton Bitner and Chareau. I work with Holly. Thank you.

We will review the City of Wasilla's current vehicle use policy. I'm actually going to skip the Department of Transportation's policies and procedures unless anyone has discussion that we would like to cover, and then we're going to go over policies of other Alaska communities.

The current city vehicle use policy was effective on May 19th, 2017, and was prepared by the Human Resources Department and approved by the mayor.

The mayor and designated department heads are responsible for determining, authorizing, and controlling official use of city vehicles. City vehicle use is restricted to official business, such as transporting employees, to and from meetings, appointments, and work sites. Employees may not use a city vehicle at any time to run errands or perform other personal business. Employees are also responsible for paying all traffic and parking citations, and this is because the city will not pay for any traffic or parking citations incurred on their behalf.

Only critical emergency response personnel are authorized to have a vehicle at all times. And the mayor retains specific executive exception authority to grant, override, or utilize take-home privileges for senior officials.

In order to operate a city vehicle, the driver must have an Alaska driver's license with required special endorsements such as a CDL, successful completion of any driver training and safety courses required by the state or federal law or city or departmental policy, They must sign a release permitting the city to obtain a copy of the employee's driving records on an annual basis, and then the employee must be authorized by their department head to operate the city vehicle.

The matrix on the screen is for jobs that require driving as an essential function of the position. There are 4 categories, and 1 through 3 are pretty self-explanatory. Under Category 4, Some examples of moving violations are speeding, running a stop sign or red light, or drunk driving. A non-moving violation, by contrast, is usually related to parking or faulty equipment. The city checks all driving records on an annual basis for all employees for whom driving is a required job duty.

Changes in an employee's driving record may affect the employee's ability to drive on city business. And employment status with the city.

It's the city's policy that an employee may not use the employee's own vehicle for city business unless authorized by a supervisor. If using their own vehicle, the employee must provide proof of insurance, obtain the authorization from filling out a form, submit a mileage log for reimbursement for the miles driven, and they must wear and require passengers to wear a seatbelt at all times.

So if there is an incident or citation and the reporting that follows from that, regardless of whether the incident involves a city vehicle, employees must report the following incidents within 5 days: any and all traffic tickets while working or during non-working hours, traffic infractions which the employee pleads guilty or no contest, change in the employee's driver's license status, including suspension, revocation, or restriction, any accident during working or non-working hours or when the employee was driving, and any incident causing damage, no matter how slight. A city employee may be responsible for damage to city vehicles if the damage results from their misuse or careless operation of the vehicle.

So I'm going to skip through the Department of Transportation slides for the most part. We included these slides mainly because they were publicly available and we were able to find them. Their most useful policy is 11-04-010. It has a similar policy to the City of Wasilla that the use of state or contractor-supplied vehicles for purposes such as attending to personal affairs, social engagements, or unauthorized commuting is prohibited. Stops for personal purposes are not permitted unless the employee is in the process of conducting official state business, the stops are to meet the physiological needs of the employee, and the stops are a reasonable distance from where the employee is conducting official state business.

We did a small amount of research in other cities to see if their vehicle use policies are publicly available or codified. Our limited research revealed that vehicle use policies are ordinarily not codified in city code. So we reached out to some of our other clients that our law firm represents for copies of their vehicle use policies for comparison. In this presentation, we mainly reviewed the policies from Cordova and Whittier. We also briefly reviewed Anchorage, Soldotna, and Juneau's code to see if any part of their vehicle use policies are codified.

Anchorage, Soldotna, and Juneau's vehicle use policies are still policies, and the code barely mentions vehicle use. The only mention of vehicle use policy— policies in Anchorage's code is when executive employees are reimbursed for conducting municipal business. Soldotna's code broadens the reimbursement allowance to employees more generally, and it lists out certain reimbursable expenses. Juneau does not specifically mention vehicle use reimbursement, but just provides that the assembly shall, by resolution, establish procedures for compensation and reimbursement of employees.

For official use versus personal use, Cordova's policies regarding take-home or on-call vehicles are more specific to each department, and so their general policy is pretty light regarding official versus personal use of city vehicles. Whittier is a bit different from Wasilla in that it allows some minimal personal uses. Whittier's policy also surprisingly states that it assumes responsibility for all employees and non-employees who use city vehicles, whereas Wasilla's policy expressly states city employees may be responsible for damage to city vehicles for their misuse or carelessness.

The driver vetting and licensing are similar for all 3 cities. Wasilla does have the driving record evaluation matrix, whereas Cordova and Whittier do not.

In Cordova, employees shall take reasonable and direct routes when operating city vehicles in the course of city business. Non-employees may be transported only when directly involved in an official activity or during a health or safety emergency. In Whittier, the appropriate department director must approve taking the vehicle outside the city limits. City limits, electrical service area, or immediate area surrounding Whittier. Travel to another city requires pre-approval on the travel and expense reimbursement form, and family members are barred unless serving as authorized chaperones.

The accident reporting requirements seem to be much more strict in Cordova and Whittier as compared to Wasilla. In Córdoba, employees must first, when there is an accident, contact emergency services if there are injuries, notify their supervisor immediately. Their supervisor then notifies human resources. They file a written incident report. Employees must not admit fault or make statements regarding liability at the scene, and sometimes there are post-accident drug and alcohol testing on the employee.

And in Whittier, all employees must report all incidents they see or become a part of to their supervisor. If they are a party to an accident, they must initiate an on-site police investigation if necessary, file a police report, make a verbal report to their supervisor, file a city accident report, file a State of Alaska Motor Vehicles crash form, The employee's department director must make a report, and the city must make a property and personal injury insurance claim with the city's insurer.

So do you want to— we can go through some questions now in response to the PowerPoint, and then I can talk about some of our Okay, Madam Mayor, Mr. Crafton. Thank you, Mayor. Um, the first thing, I mean, just looking page 21 there, if you went back a slide, uh, just looking at what you guys compared this to, uh, DOT's 2024 Cordova May of '26, uh, Whittier 2022. I mean, we can RDSC, just at a minimum, ours looks like it's our policy, assuming if nothing were done and we chose not to pursue codification of anything, at a minimum, it looks like our policy's in need of review because one of the big things you also hit on was how different our accident reporting was compared to the rest of the community. So I was, I mean, I know Holly, you've got some things you wanted to mention into this.

I guess I'm kind of curious where after the research that you guys did, what your thoughts are on our policy versus codification and where it lies. So I think this is one of those areas where we really have to look at where the scope of authority is, like, where we're generally speaking of vehicle use policy falls to the administration. So when something falls to the administration, Council, usually looks at, do we want to have a— does council have an approval component to policies? And there are some policies that you might decide that you do want that oversight, or that once policies are drafted by the administration, you want to confirm them or approve any amendment to them. So that would be a change though from what we do now.

So I agree, Council Member Crafton, 10 years for a vehicle use policy, given the changes in insurance and liability laws and things like that, it's probably a good, you know, an update is just on its face a good thing to do, you know, a good process to go through. The question is, we were talking about whether or not you're looking at an ordinance. I think that's— I think Council sent us to look at these things with the understanding that you're kind of deciding whether or not you want to delve into an ordinance on governing the vehicle use policy. And I, so I think there's— that to me would be an overstep by council to necessarily create or codify a vehicle use policy. And the reason why, the reason why I believe they're always in policies as opposed to an ordinance Except for, and we'll talk about an exception that I do think is squarely within council's purview, but it's because when we make something a law, it's a law that could be broken, right?

So when we say that an employee has to do X, Y, or Z, when they don't do it and it's been codified, the employee who maybe just made a mistake under personnel, maybe they should be terminated, but now they've broken the law. You know, they have broken a code. And so that's one of the reasons— that's sort of the underlying reason why you see the codes govern certain things and not others. Do we want to create a world in which a violation of the policy, whether it's, you know, is not an employment issue, but becomes a legal issue for our employees? And so that's one of the reasons why I believe you do not generally see vehicle use policies.

In the code. You do see them. You see components or provisions, and Hannah talked about anchorage. That's a good example when they're talking about money, when they're talking about compensation, because that's a provision that really reflects back on the city. So if you say, you know, we will reimburse you if you use your personal vehicle, or how we'll reimburse you, or even something where the— a certain position gets a vehicle as part of their position, these things are often codified because those live in the domain of the council.

Those have dollar— those are budgetary things ultimately, you know, they influence. And if someone does something wrong, it's the city doing something wrong. We're holding ourselves to our own provisions. It's not— it's not an employee conduct issue. I don't know if that's helpful, but so I feel like there's a couple things.

So if council's considering an ordinance, One ordinance is, do we want to allow a vehicle to be part of a compensation package or require it to be? Or, you know, if we want to— and that's sort of a big shift, and that's not that usual, but it does happen in communities in Alaska. And then the other question is, if we have a policy and we want our policies to be renewed, Is council saying that it wants to have a work session or a committee of the whole where they're just sort of talking about what they want to see in the policies?

In that case, really, it's in, it's in the administrative realm. You know, what the city does for its policies is generally a policy. That said, if council wants oversight over policies, the way that it generally gets it is in the ethics complaint, make compliance with the policies. A, you know, something that says, like, an intentional failure to comply with the policies is a violation of the ethics complaint, you know. So then you're creating that oversight so that the administration is bound by the policies they create.

That's one way to do it. And the other way is to require council approval of policies. I don't generally recommend that, though, because what you do is— what happens if council says no? You have a mayor, you're in a strong mayor system, you know, and the, the mayor's job is to develop these administrative policies. So what happens if council says, nope, we don't agree with that policy?

A lot of times what you'll see is just a sort of a degradation of the relationship because the rules are conflicting. The only other place we often see mayors have that confirmation role is in employment with termination and hiring, and council has to confirm. So it's like a clear— council comes in, says yay, nay to a hiring or firing, and it's sort of a clean confirmation process. So, if that's helpful, that's a lot of information, but that's sort of the realm as far as the actual, like, regulatory component and the interplay between council and the administration. And all played out in the big room.

Mr. Craft, thank you, Mayor. Um, and I understand the, the balance. Like, I mean, we— there's a fine dance between when you would just— when you move to a city manager form. Um, we, we have a strong mayoral form of government for a reason, and, and, and I believe the city's kept it that way for a very long time.

I think there was even a vote to change it at one point that failed, if I remember correctly.

Um, though what I, I look at here is when it starts affecting the budget, is which is primarily— I mean, it's the main job of us as a council is to control the budget. But there's only so far that we can carry that without again completely removing the authority of the administration, because again, there's, there's still a fine balance of what the administration can and can't do within that budget. So that's part of where this came from, this, this concept of codifying a vehicle use policy. I guess one of my questions would be, is there a certain level of policy?

And maybe outside, maybe it is something that's not just doesn't happen in Alaska. Alaska sometimes is very much behind the curve, as we know.

Where we see certain aspects codified, like there's just certain things. To give you an example, if we had said, hey, we need all vehicles clearly marked with the city seal and official use only, I mean, kind of like DOT has. I'll be honest, when I see borough vehicles and city and Wasilla vehicles, I actually can't even tell what they are from a good distance because the seals are very similar. At a distance. And so you clearly marking what is a city vehicle, because not all of them are marked.

Is there a certain level of, okay, we want X, Y, and Z done codified, but we understand the rest is policy-based and we're just going to leave it up for that? Is that something that is possible? I mean, it's— I know it's possible, but has been done, whereas or could be done? I think that's an excellent question because what you're doing now is you're looking at the reason behind a change, right? Or a department.

So when we talk about a vehicle use policy, we're primarily living in the world of personnel. And that's where I'm like, this is not the world that council delves into. It's because when we make laws in that world, we're governing personnel or governing employee conduct. And that's where we get to that. Are we really making employee actions illegal?

Because that's what it is when we have a code and it gets violated. That's illegal. That's breaking a law, right? If you're looking at land use or you're looking at health and safety, all of which have vehicle components. So let's say you want to say all city vehicles shall be marked.

I mean, arguably, that can be a That's an accountability thing, right? You're saying we don't want city vehicles on the road without a seal on them because when there's a seal on them, whoever is engaging with that vehicle says, hey, that's a city of Wasilla vehicle and it's going 80 miles per hour, right? And so they know to call. Arguably, that would be one of the reasons why you'd want them marked. I think, I don't know, maybe that's the question.

Why would we, why designate, why mark the vehicles? What would be our reason and our intent for that? Because if it's health and safety, I feel like that's very much in your domain, and then it would sort of live in that realm. You know, is that— and so we can kind of go through the example. I just wanted to use that as an example, just to throw something out there to say this is— it sounds like yes.

What you're suggesting is a whole codification of the process is probably It's not a good idea, but what I still look at is aspects of saying, all right, there are some base standards because it now starts affecting the budget that the council might want to codify. So I think you look at— so we do, we break it down. Exactly, we break it down to what is actually budgeted, you know, when we're looking at The budget gets approved if you want to require that. I mean, that's where you get those provisions. You know, you require that vehicle use is included in a compensation packet.

Because really vehicle use is one of two things. It is either compensated separately. Here's your car, which a lot of municipalities do that for mayors. You know, that's where you see that, where they're like, we will pay you X amount plus exclusive use of a vehicle, right? That's one way that they do it, just to avoid any, uh, just any policies based on it.

And then you have a dollar, you have a line item in the code, so you would— I'm sorry, in the budget. So council would control whether or not that happens and how that happens. Um, I'm trying to think of the other ways. Reimbursement, you know, what happens? Do you put in for reimbursement when you use your personal car, and how does that happen, and how much are they able to reimburse?

That would be part of the budget. I'm not sure as far as a vehicle use policy, you know, the other thing is the fleet of city vehicles, how many vehicles there are and how much, you know, how much the— how much is budgeted for the maintenance and purchase and all of that for those vehicles. But I believe Council does that. Already. So we have, you know, so that piece is a budget piece.

But then I think once we get outside of that piece, we're looking at health and safety. So that's where you get your designation of the vehicles. Um, the— and this is the key, not the reporting of an employee when they get in an accident, but what are the obligations of the city? That's sort of— we use codify— codification to, to provide protections and reassurances of the city's own conduct, right? That's all of our Public Records Acts and all of those things.

So that's— I, I would put it that way if you're going through. So I think the question is, another option would be to require that all policies be updated within a certain period of time. You know, if council's fundamental concern is we have a 10-year-old policy and it involves vehicles, and we'd really like to see the, the mayor update these policies more regularly, that direction I think is appropriate, which is just all city policies shall be reviewed and updated, you know, every 1 year.

So something like that. But that's probably right on the line, but I think it's an appropriate line because you're just You're just triggering review, you're not interfering with it. Be curious where the rest of the council falls on this one, because again, this is where we got with it. I think that's all we have unless there's more questions, or—. Mr. Graham.

Thank you. Yeah, uh, couple of questions I've had. Jobs in the past where I drove, uh, you know, particularly back and forth to Anchorage using my personal vehicle. And then I was reimbursed for that. Uh, but nothing against your profession here, but if I were to get in an accident when I was on official business, chances are they're not gonna sue me.

They're gonna go for the big fish. They're gonna go for my employer. They're gonna go for the city. They're gonna go for whoever's got the most money. I mean, that, that gives you the highest probability of a payout, uh, you know, so that's just a business thing.

So one of the things that two of my employers did was they required that I have, uh, the employer's name as an additional insured on my insurance contract, which was, you know, another $10 or $15 a month. It was fairly negligible, and it was reimbursed by the company. Uh, we don't have that here. We say, uh, you know, personal liability, we have minimum insurance levels, uh, and then the city's coverage only has excess over the personal auto liability. But that doesn't keep us from getting sued— us being the city— from getting sued because Stu Graham was out doing whatever and, you know, ran over mailbox.

Which of course was historical and had irreplaceable flowers and all that sort of stuff. What— I didn't see any reference at all to additional insured coverage in any of these. Could you comment on that? I don't think we found any additional insurance things that required you to have additional coverage. Hannah, did you—.

One of the two, either Whittier or Cordova, requires. Oh, one of them does. Do you remember? The employee didn't name the city as an additional insured. Oh, there we go.

I stand corrected. But I can't remember which one it is. Yeah, if we get into this further, I'd be interested to know, you know, I mean, kind of what the, uh, payout history is on that, because like I said, it's always easier to sue the big fish than to try and catch a minnow. As far as the markings go, you were talking about city markings, uh, people that are using city vehicles are on official business. So once someone gets in their city vehicle to commute to work, well, they're, you know, once they start the car, they're on official business.

So one of the benefits of having the car marked is that people can ask questions because because they see something and they know that they can, you know, I mean, it's our Deputy Administrator. They say, oh, she knows the answer to this question, or she can help with this, or whatever that case is. I'm a big believer that marking city vehicles would be highly appropriate, particularly since they're not used for personal business. A few employees do use them to commute, but, you know, that's not the purpose of the vehicle. The purpose of the vehicle is for official business.

So if they're in the car, it clearly says it needs to be on, uh, official business. So I, I would be a big proponent of having all vehicles marked, uh, and go from there. And then one of the things about your conversation with Mr. Crafton about policy, you know, legal this and legal that, you know, the mayor is responsible for policy. Absolutely unequivocally responsible for policy. That doesn't mean she doesn't listen to us if we have an idea, you know.

I mean, just— well, she doesn't listen to me, but, but, uh, but, you know, I mean, if we have something we're concerned about, we bring it up with the dais here, uh, and if it's a, a concern for 4 more of us, uh, you know, then the, the mayor is going to take some sort of action on that. It may not be the action that we particularly wanted, but there's going to be some sort of action on that, even if it's just one person going to her and saying, hey, you know, this is— I think this policy could use a little fine-tuning. You know, the administration and the council, you know, work as a team. They have different functions on the team, but it's still a team trying to get the ball across the goal line. So, but I think you are right, policy is the absolute, uh, responsibility, uh, and ability of the mayor.

So I don't know if that helps, you know, or not, but, uh, but yeah, things to consider. Thank you. Is there further discussion?

Hearing none.

Mr. Johnson. Sorry for the delay. So as far as I understand, we probably don't want to go down an ordinance route. However, would it be appropriate to use a resolution by the council that would say council suggests that all city vehicles be marked as such?

Mayor, do you want me to— so I would not recommend legisla— using any instrument really to direct the administration on the administration's, um, and something that falls squarely within the admin, uh, administration scope. That said, uh, Council Member Graham is correct. I think that it is very appropriate to provide the mayor with your thoughts. And, you know, I think, for example, what the mayor will pull from today's meeting, it may be that, you know, maybe we need to update this policy. It's been a while, and I'm going to look into an insurance provision because, you know, whatever is taken, that voice of counsel is appropriate.

But when spoken through an official instrument or through direction, whether by motion, resolution, or especially by ordinance, I don't think that's appropriate in that. Policy realm unless you change the code to make that— to change the scope of authority. And I just don't think that with— with this particular area, I think Council Member Crafton brought up some areas, for example, signage, where that would be appropriate, but it's not going to be appropriate in personnel where we have statute and code specifically telling us that this is the administration's domain. If that makes sense. So to the extent you govern it in one of the other, um, areas that is— that council shares with the administration, or council, uh, has exclusive authority on, such as, you know, the final word on the budget.

Thank you very much for that. I appreciate it. Okay, Miss Rubio. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, just looking at the policy, guys, I highlighted it.

It says every car needs to be identified with the property of the city. So there should be just an enforcement right now on the vehicle policy and follow it. I think we can have the new mayor that's coming in, and I think it would be great moving forward that way with policy. I know as a mayor I'd want to come in read every policy, check it, analyze it, change it, bring it back to the council, work together as a team. But as of right now, this vehicle policy says what you guys are asking for.

And I think if we just maybe ask administration to follow it, if that's what we're looking to do, kind of hold their feet to the fire and work as a team. I think this is good for right now, and, uh, the new mayor, like I said, can come in and, and change some policies. And maybe there's a pile of them that they need to look at that could be over 10 years old and update them together as a team.

Other discussion? Madam Mayor, move that we exit committee of the whole. Yeah, before we do that, there's one more question. Okay, so in the past, we have— where the council and the administration have disagreed, we have used a will of the council, which is not a resolution, it's just a statement that the council kind of votes on that says, hey, you know, let's do something different than what's currently happening. Does, you know, Regarding Mr. Johnson's question about resolutions or things like that, do you have any position on a will of the council statement?

Well, there's a lot— there's a couple different takes on this, and one of the things I remember, it was a couple years ago in the city of Wasilla. This was—. It's just funny that you bring this up because one of the things that council was talking to us about was, should we be passing resolutions sharing our beliefs on things outside our boundaries, right? And we took the position— I think Council ultimately took the position that the City of Wasilla was not going to do that. They weren't going to pass resolutions on things that they weren't authorized to act on.

Now, I don't know if we've moved away from that. I haven't paid too much attention to the, you know, the resolutions in that realm, but I think that was something that Council was pretty consistent on. And I, I think the question is— I think it's for Council. I'm not going to tell you it is illegal for Council to use a resolution to express its will on something that's outside the scope of its, of its authority, you know, because you're council, so you're just expressing. But that is, uh, definitely use a resolution, not a non-code ordinance.

And but if you do that, you are in essence saying we want to express our views on an administrative function even though we weren't elected for that function. And that is a choice by council to make. I always find that the most effective bodies, uh, and the most sort of harmonious, uh, community governance— so under sort of a best governance principle— stay in their lanes. And that's just truthfully— I mean, I find that that makes for a more efficient, less legally, uh, vulnerable— and WASL is great at doing that. But that said, I do not see that there is anything unlawful about you doing that.

So if that is the— if council really decides that that's something they want to do, I think you just make sure you know that being deliberate when you step outside of that, when you step into, you know, make sure it's something you really want to step into that lane for and that you acknowledge it. That, that deliberateness is helpful ultimately for council. Thank you. That concludes my comments, Mr. Krip. Madam Mayor, sorry, I want to go back to what our attorney had just said about the resolutions there.

We've specifically used resolutions to explain the council's view when we don't have the authority. That's actually what we've used them for, because it— what, what ends up happening is we don't have the ability to affect that thing, but the resolution is the essentially the statement of this is the will of the council, what Mr. Graham's stating, and this is what we expect. What it then does is it puts something on the record for us to refer back to when XYZ doesn't happen.

And so, I mean, I don't— we'll end up getting into the weeds too far, but I mean, I think Mr. Graham has a point that if essentially, I would think that after this, we've come this far with it, I think the mayor has understood that, hey, it's probably time to take a look at it. She's got hopefully 30 days left, but probably closer to 60 at this point, considering there's 3 people in the mayor's race.

So we understand that whoever the new mayor is, is probably taking up this task of updating the current vehicle policy. So, I mean, I don't think a resolution is necessary, but if it— if 6 months from now and we're still looking at the same resolution or same policy and we're having the same issues that we're seeing or that we've been experiencing, then I would think it's 100% appropriate for the council to say, hey, what, what's happening here? We either, A, have to go the extra step and codify this because obviously something's not being done, or B, we pass a resolution to put something, kind of hold, hold the feet to the fire, per se. So I, I mean, that, that's where I would— I feel like this could fall, but at this time it's I mean, like I said, I think we're— we've made the point that the policy needs to be updated at the least.

So, Madam Mayor, I move that we exit committee.

Before I accept that, uh, Mr. Crafton, the, uh, vehicle policy is being updated. We have, uh, HR and myself have been going through it and Uh, it should be completed within the next couple weeks, so we are doing our job. Is there a second to exit in Committee of the Whole? Graham seconds.

The motion has been made by Council Member Crafton and seconded by Council Member Graham to exit Committee of the Whole. Is there objection to the motion? Hearing none, we are out of Committee of the Whole. Madam Clerk, thank you. We have one item for public hearing this evening, Ordinance Serial Number 2616, amending the fiscal year 2027 budget by accepting and appropriating a United States Marshals Service short-term joint operation agreement for sex offender compliance verification in an amount not to exceed $16,275.

The public hearing on Ordinance Serial Number 26-16 is now open. Anyone wishing to testify, please come forward and begin by stating your first and last name. Comments are limited to 3 minutes per person.

Seeing no one, I will close public hearing, bring it back to— is there a motion to adopt ordinance serial number 2616?

So moved by Councilman Johnson. Is there a second? I'll second that. It's been moved by Council Member Johnson and seconded by Council Member Schmidt to adopt Ordinance Serial Number 26-16. Is there discussion?

Seeing none, is there objection to the motion? Hearing none, the motion passes. Madam Clerk, person's to be heard. Oh, okay, I couldn't remember. We are now at persons to be heard, a time for members of the public to share their views with the council.

Please note that this is not a question and answer period. Speakers may be referred to administration, and items raised may be taken under advisement. Please begin your testimony by stating your first and last name, and if you are a city resident. Comments are limited to 3 minutes.

The first one is Richard Murphy.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Uh, it's my first council meeting. Uh, I'm here to—. Please state your name. Oh, sorry, Richard Murphy, city resident.

Yes, I am a city resident of Wasilla. I'm here to initially propose— I'm trying to get a spot for a Silent Battle Memorial statue. As many of you are probably aware, Wasilla and the state of Alaska is very veteran-dense population.

So currently I serve in the Alaska State Defense Force. Before that, I was in the Alaska Army Guard. Before that, I was in Alaska Marines. My first deployment, OIF-3, not the company I was with, but the battalion I fell under, we lost 46 Marines and 2 sailors in 7 months.

So 2 years ago, the million-dollar insured mobile memorial for that deployment actually came up to Alaska to the air show, 2 years ago at the air show. With that, they brought a Silent Battle memorial statue, and I asked to try and get one. I reconvened with Anita Miller. She is the artist that painted all the murals of all the soldiers and sailors that were lost on that deployment. Right now I'm trying to find a location.

I was going to do the Veterans Park, but they're working to extend the Vietnam Memorial. And that takes precedence, of course. So I'm trying to get a site location before I start fundraising. Um, I was hoping for Wonderland Park, so I guess I would defer that to Mr. Bell after the meeting. And I have, uh, the printout.

Next time I'll come with a PowerPoint. Um, that's all I have, Mayor. Okay, thank you. Amy.

Hello, I'm Amy Bouchatz, and I am not a city of Wasilla resident. Don't hold it against me. Um, I am here to talk to you about the Wasilla candidate forum, which is scheduled for September 24th at 6:30 at the Menard. Um, we are welcoming candidates for city council and for Wasilla city mayor. Um, it is a nonpartisan forum.

Based with questions for candidates based off of those given as inputs for our candidate guides, which are through a survey online over a couple of months. Um, so it is a chance for folks to meet candidates in a nonpartisan setting. Also, we will have cookies. Okay. Thank you.

Okay, with no further Questions to be heard? We will close and come back to the consent agenda. Madam Clerk. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Left on our consent agenda this evening, we have two sets of meeting minutes: August 10th, 2026, and August 24th, 2026.

One introduction with a recommended public hearing on September 28th, 2026, and that is Ordinance Serial Number 2617, amending the fiscal year 2027 budget by accepting and appropriating $569,600 from an amendment to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough dispatch contract. Contract name E911 and Dispatch Services, contract number 16100P, change order number 3 to add 2 full-time positions at MATCOM, 1 fire EMS call taker and 1 fire EMS Dispatcher. And that's it. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as read? Madam Mayor, I move to approve the consent agenda as read and amended.

Is there a second? Rubio seconds. Madam Mayor, um, I think one was read in that I had moved because I had moved all of 8.3. Through the chair to Council Member Crafton, I read in 8.2.1. And then the minutes.

So 8.3, 1, 2, and 3 will appear under new business. Was that your intent? Correct. Okay, it has been moved by Council Member Caudle and seconded by Council Member Rubio to approve the consent agenda as read. Is there objection to the motion?

Hearing none, the consent agenda is approved. We have No unfinished business, so we'll move to new business.

Are we going through, or are we going to—. Excuse me, Rubio, if there's an objection from council, we'll take the two, um, new business items as they stand, and then we'll, we'll weave in the others. Okay.

Councilmember Rubio, because you have a conflict of interest regarding the next item of business which proposes awarding a contract to Big Dipper Construction, a company owned by your father, you may now leave the chambers. You may return after the council has acted on the contract award. Madam Clerk, please read the item by title. Thank you. Resolution serial number 26 -52, approving a contract between the City of Wasilla and Big Dipper Construction Incorporated in the amount of $498,732.50 for the East Glenwood Avenue railroad crossing project.

Is there a motion to adopt Resolution Serial Number 26-52? Madam Mayor, I move Resolution Serial Number 26-52. Is there a second? Cottle seconds. It has been moved by Council Member Crafton and seconded by Council Member Cottle to adopt Resolution Serial Number 26-52.

Is there discussion, Madam Mayor? Mr. Crafton. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, probably to Eric here. Uh, Eric, could you just clarify the total project costs on this one?

Because I thought that approved— is it almost $600,000 to the AARRC?

Uh, yes, thank you, through the mayor. Uh, Council Member Crafton, so this project is kind of unique because some of the work has to be performed by the railroad, some of the work we have to have our contractor. If this award goes out to Dipper, they'll be our contractor. And then we also took a third step to save funding by procuring the parts ourselves. And so we have, um, uh, we have already secured the equipment that the railroad will install for us through a sole source that came through the council that I believe was a little over $180,000, if I recall correctly.

And then we have the agreement that we have to sign with the railroad to complete their portion of the work. And then there's this, um, uh, contract. So if we add this contract to the materials we, um, procured, that's close to the $600,000. And then we have that relationship with the railroad for the rest of it. So it is still close to the $1.2 million that's been, uh, uh, appropriated so far for this project.

But I can give you an ultimate cost breakdown, um, after the, uh, final agreement is signed with the railroad. That'd be great. Yeah, thank you. That's my only question, Mayor. Thank you.

Okay, is there further discussion?

Hearing none, does the council have an objection to the motion?

The motion is adopted.

Okay, uh, Madam Clerk, please read the next item by title. Can we get—. I need to get to—. Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Trying to make a run for it.

Ready, Madam? Let the record show that, uh, Miss Rubio is back at the dais. Madam Clerk, please read the next resolution. Thank you. Resolution serial number 2655, expressing the city council's intent to participate in planning for a new regional dispatch facility and authorizing the mayor to execute the related memorandum of understanding.

Is there a motion to adopt resolution serial number 2655. Madam Mayor, I move resolution 2655. Is there a second? Madam Mayor, I'll second that. It has been moved by Council Member Crafton, seconded by Council Member Schmidt, to adopt resolution serial number 2655.

Is there discussion? Madam Mayor, we have, uh, Borough Manager Mike Brown here. Could he bring us up to speed just so make sure everybody's on the same page on what the borough's done with this, just so we have a good understanding of everything here?

Sure.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, Mike Brownborough, manager for MATSU, and I am not a city resident, so please do not hold that against me. Um, but thank you. Uh, I just want to say thank you for for giving us a few minutes to talk a little bit about, uh, this project, the idea, the concept, and, and really what we're up to, right? I think that's what a lot of people want to know.

So I recently gave the assembly an update. We started this conversation more formally about a year ago in August, uh, where we had a joint meeting at Station 62 down on, uh, KGB and had a discussion about regional opportunities specifically related to public safety. Obviously, the borough does not participate in law enforcement. We have emergency services. And so as we started to advance this conversation, looking at budgets, looking at where we want to go, how do we want to match the growth and development that we're experiencing in the Valley, looking at different opportunities for how we might do that as partners really is what it comes down to.

And so we are looking at and have talked about this idea of a regional dispatch center. Recognizing that in the past there's been a couple of dispatch centers, fully acknowledge that those are run by the cities. We contract services with MATCOM, with you all, to provide that service for emergency services folks, as does the Alaska State Troopers. And so really the reason for the timing of this being now is that we are advancing the construction of a fire station, a new Station 52 at the corner of Boat Garden Tate. So a little more centrally located would give us a facility that would allow us to put living quarters in there and staff, because obviously, as we are looking at fire staffing throughout the borough, especially within the core area, having those living quarters and being able to staff is the way we can reduce response times.

So as we looked at this, the borough has the land, we're moving forward with this construction, or, or will be moving it forward with design and construction of this project, there's an opportunity here to potentially construct some additional infrastructure at a better rate. I mean, a little bit more efficiency. And so the timing and the reason for bringing this forward now is that, that, that window will close. And so as we evaluate the project and the timeline, um, the conversation around a regional dispatch center, if we were to construct a facility to support that operation. Really, the idea is to set us up for the next 30 years, have a facility with current code, fire, building, seismic, and make sure that we're in a position to support dispatch services in the Matsu, even if the city continues to provide those services via contract.

So really, we put together this memorandum of agreement, talked to the cities and the state troopers, DPS, about signing on because the real commitment, long-term commitment here is really going to fall on the shoulders of the borough because we're going to talk about spending money to construct a facility. And so what the MOA signals essentially is, yes, there's a willingness to potentially occupy the building. We think that a regional dispatch center makes sense, and we want to partner and work on that together. We currently have DPS. The commissioner signed on to that, and I mean, obviously they contract the services too.

So I don't think they're as concerned about what facility the dispatch center is in. They just want the services provided. Uh, we're looking at a little bit more long-term with the construction of the fire station, going, let's set that critical function for the community up for success by having an anchor for the facility, um, that is going to have a long life. And I'm not sure the building that they're in currently, um, would have that long life. And just You know, for the record, we also house our Emergency Operations Centers in, in that same building, right?

So we recognize that that would potentially cause a relocation for the Borough EOC, uh, should a new facility for the dispatch center be constructed and they relocate. Um, so we are at a juncture now where the Assembly has appropriated funding to start the design of the facility. Um, my, uh, What I'm looking for is some sign-on from the partners to make sure that if we commit funding to move forward with the design, that we're doing that smartly, basically, that we have buy-in from the city to move forward with that. And then the idea is, as we design that out, we'll have more refined cost estimate, and then we'll have a discussion with the Borough Assembly in spring about a follow-on appropriation to actually bring forward the construction funding and start construction. Probably around a year or a little bit less than a year from now.

And so that's the timing. I will add on quickly, although it's not relevant to the action before you tonight, you know, we are looking at a potential Alaska State Trooper facility on that same parcel, but to be clear, it is a separate facility not connected to the fire station. However, the regional dispatch center would be part of the fire station. It would be, you know, it's a second floor, it's an annex of some sort. That's kind of how we, we've been looking at it.

But as I mentioned, we have not started design yet, so there are a lot of unanswered questions about how that would be physically arrayed. The DPS or State Trooper facility would be separate. Um, one project could happen without the other. They're not connected. Um, they're, they're related in that we're just looking at the construction of this facility, opening up a new So bringing in utilities, creating access, um, it's probably more cost efficient for us to do that, uh, if we want to have some other assets to converge upon that.

The Alaska State Troopers, uh, their main lease in Palmer will expire in June of 2028, uh, so they are hunting for a new home, um, and they currently lease 6 facilities across the borough to provide the services that they provide to our community. So The idea is find them a more purpose-built home and a more permanent home. Obviously, for the borough, that's of interest to us because we have seen signals from Juneau that the state legislature, you know, would be interested in seeing less trooper coverage out here in the Mat-Su. I clearly think that's not— we don't see that as in our best interest, obviously. So this could be a way to help create an anchor also for the Alaska State Troopers to have a home that's more permanent.

And it actually financially makes a lot more sense for the State of Alaska to find a permanent home that they can own and not pay, you know, half a million dollars a year in annual lease payments with no end in sight. And so it financially makes more sense in general. So I think that's a quick overview. If you have specific questions, I'm happy to take those.

Mr. Mayor, this is Tim Johnson.

Go ahead, Mr. Johnson.

So in essence, we'd be creating a city office outside the city boundary. What would be the legality of that?

City Attorney Holly. It's lawful.

Sounds to me like the question was, is the city going to be running Mountcom or will it become an independent agency? That's to be determined.

So if I may, Mayor. Yes. Yeah, so through the mayor, uh, to Council Member Graham, that's not a decision that needs to be made tonight. What I've been very clear about, because I just want to like, what is the borough's intent in doing this? It is not to take dispatch services away from MATCOM.

It is not to tell Palmer that they shouldn't have their own dispatch center necessarily. What we're looking at is, if we want to do this regionally, to make sure that dispatching services that are happening in the Matsu stay in the Matsu, we're going to need a long-term plan. And I look at that and I sit back and I go, it's probably not wise for the borough to sit back and expect the city to do that for the region. Um, I think, and I've said this multiple times and publicly, you know, the MATSU Bureau does a lot of contracted services. All of our road maintenance is done through contracts, so we're very comfortable providing critical functions via contracted services.

So this proposal is in no way signaling that the Bureau is trying to take over dispatch services. We're perfectly comfortable with the contracted services. What we're looking at is what's the long-term plan in terms of facility and making sure that they have an anchor. And looking at the construction of 52, that's a window that will close. So if we don't choose to construct the dispatch center with the fire station, we will lose that opportunity, uh, which is okay if that's the decision that we want to make.

Um, but that's, that's why we're moving forward now. That's why this proposal includes a facility that's outside of the city limits. I don't foresee an issue there if it's a lease agreement with contracts. I don't see why, uh, that couldn't function much like it functions today. I mean, our borough EOC is actually within the city limits, and it's in a city building, um, and we have an agreement that specifies the terms and conditions for that.

And Mike, you mentioned the troopers' lease, uh, on some other buildings there. What is the term of the borough's lease on that current MATCOM facility? I mean, how long has the borough agreed to stay in that facility?

Through the mayor, and I think— I apologize, I think I said Councilmember Graham earlier when I should have said Johnson, but now this time with Councilmember Graham, I'm Ken Barkley, our Director of Emergency Services, in the back. I don't know if he knows that off, off his head, but I do not know the specifics of the current lease agreement that we have, uh, with the city. Thank you, sir. Madam Mayor, Lori's in the back there raising her hand.

2030. For the record, uh, Lori Crickey stated 2030. Madam Mayor, Mr. Crafton. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, thank you, uh, Mr. Brown, for coming.

I appreciate you coming all the way from where you're at to come to Wasilla here. I mean, I got a million and five questions for this type of thing, but I mean, it's one of those— if you read the resolution at the end, it does state that essentially anything binding further, it would have to come back before the council, which I mean is expected. I mean, Again, we can't find a further counsel, especially when it comes to the budget. Um, I mean, I— at the end of the day, it's conversation is really, really the big thing here is, uh, what would be next? Uh, I mean, it's hard to say exactly how it benefits the city, uh, to do this, which is why I understand what you're saying.

You're just wanting to know, is this something we're willing to do? Um, but I mean, that would be my big— I mean, I'm, I'm for passing it and at least moving the conversation along. It doesn't hurt to at least see what, what comes next. I mean, that, that's what I'm for. My biggest question, and this one might be to Lori, uh, sorry, Mike, she's directly behind you for me, so I know it looks like I'm looking at you.

I'm partly looking at— trying to look at Lori here too, uh, is what would the long-term benefit be to the city if we were to do this? I know we've already we had a brief conversation about a new MACOM as well. Uh, so I, I'd be curious, Madam Mayor, if Lori would like to come forward. That's, that's my big question, is what is the long-term benefit to the city by doing this?

Oh, long-term. Please state your name. Sorry. Lori Creekey, MACOM director manager. Um, long term, I— there's just, um, the building we're in, it is— we've outgrown it.

Um, seismic really worries me. We've already got cracks and all sorts of issues in there from that. We don't have an air handling system that could handle, um, if we had a, uh, the volcano. We worried about Mount Spurr. Um, so long term, I mean, we're going to be in a building that's hopefully state of the art.

We can do our own training there in our center and not have to go outside to find a training center. We regularly have to go over to WPD and compete for, you know, room over there or use the Menard or somewhere else for training. We just don't have the room or privacy even. I can't have a conversation in my office because of the way my office is without everybody hearing it. So there's lots of long-term goals for a new building, um, just, um, state-of-the-art stuff.

There's so many things that we don't have access to now in our room. We have limited wall space, so I would love to have some monitors up so supervisors could be able to, um, be supervisors and see, um, calls that are on hold and just different, um, technology that we don't have, um, the ability to have right now. Follow-up, Madam Mayor. Um, thank you, Lori. Uh, it—.

I know the borough's basically committed— excuse me— most of the money at this point. They're committing, saying, hey, we're, we're wanting to move forward with this. Obviously, the next step of the conversation would be if our, our MACOM manager is saying, hey, if we were wanting tailored things, that might be the next step of the conversation is we don't know yet. We don't have the answer to that one yet. I guess the question is, how much leeway are we going to have to make this at least a section of the building as much as we want it to be so that we can make this the 30-year, 50-year home of MACOM?

'Cause that would be the big thing is if we're gonna commit to this, we wanna know that this is as forever as forever can be in the future. So that would be my thought. One thing that just from a standpoint too, with having Palmer also as a dispatch center, now we are the 911 center, all 911 calls in the borough come to us as well as outside the borough. But we constantly compete keep for 911 money. Um, they may ask for something, we're asking for something, and trying to have it all in one place.

So hopefully Palmer's going to come in there too. I mean, that's their decision, but that way that money is being used in the most economical way possible instead of dividing it up between those two places. So that's another advantage to this. So, and if I may, Madam Mayor, if I could, through the mayor, to Council Member Crafton. Really what the borough is trying to do— I'm going to try to answer it this way— is really about positioning or posturing.

Um, if we have a facility specifically built to support this function, whether it's staffed by the city of Wasilla, the city of Palmer, the Matsu borough, or some other entity, it serves the function, right? Um, yeah, it's, it's tough to have these regional conversations, but when we look around and see, you know, I, I I would love it, frankly, if the state of Alaska had a statewide dispatch plan that helped municipalities in the state figure out where we should be having these dispatch centers and how we can do it cost-effectively and smartly across the state. That hasn't happened. I don't foresee it happening. And I'm looking around going, well, you know, as the regional government, if you will, as the borough, somebody's got to sit down and start figuring it out and making sure that we have a plan for the future.

Future. And what I don't want to be someday, if the city of Wasilla or anyone else chooses a different path, that the borough is then in crisis mode. And so by having a facility that serves that function, we probably will avoid the crisis. Who—. I think the cities and the borough are still going to have the autonomy to make those decisions for themselves.

Um, we're comfortable under the current construct. If a future city council decides they're not comfortable and want one wondering why we, why MACOM does that or provides that function. I think that's maybe a conversation for the future, but that's, this proposal does not suggest to change that. It simply looks at how do we position, you know, for the future with a facility to support this function. And as far as what that means to the city for the current building, that'll be up to the city of Wasilla, right?

That'll be up to you all. And so, I mean, we're having similar conversations. We're building a new fire station really a joint fire EMS and telecom in Palmer. Our intent is to take that building that we vacate and sell it, put it back on the tax rolls. Um, you know, so there's an element of consolidating and posturing for the future to make sure that we have the setup we're looking for to support the growth and development over time.

Um, and because of the construction of the 5-2, that's why now and why not later. Uh, and so, you know, this is going to be interesting because we are having this conversation with Palmer as as well. And everybody's got some different ideas, but I think that's the importance of having it, like you said, as a conversation publicly so we can figure out what we want that to look like for this community moving forward. Because I don't think the state of Alaska is going to do us a lot of favors in this arena. And I think, you know, currently DPS has been supportive.

Hopefully that continues to be the case. But I think what we're really signaling here, if I just like down to brass taxes, This is about making sure public safety continues to be a priority in the community. Thank you. That's all my questions, Madam Mayor. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Is there further discussion?

Mr. Graham. Thank you. So this is Resolution, uh, Serial 2655, expressing the City Council's intent to participate in planning for a new regional dispatch facility. Well, didn't the mayor— didn't the attorney just tell us this isn't on our lane? What exactly does it mean, participate in planning?

Mayor, I will just say that they're planning a facility that the city would be ultimately a tenant in, right? So, or through Metcom. So they are asking the city for that participation. It's not binding, and the terms of the memorandum of understanding— without knowing terms, as Council Member Crafton said, and he was correct. Well, I understand they're asking for the city's participation.

This specifically talks about the city's and council's intent to participate in planning, right? So you are an active participant in planning, which you have authority to be. So one of the things that the city does, you know, even if it's outside the boundaries of the city, you, you can participate as that you're going to be a tenant or not be a tenant, you know, but you're going to participate in the design and planning of the building if you so choose, so that you have that buy-in and you're part of that conversation early on, which will often be the case with regional facilities, whether dispatch or otherwise. And these are very similar to the memorandum of understanding you'll do for joint services in other ways too, which is just very common.

Well, Madam Mayor, since this particularly talks about City Council participating, I, I would like to see you say, yeah, you'll give us an update once a month or something on what's going on with that, since that gives us the opportunity to participate at these meetings. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, Mr. Craft. Thank you, Mayor.

Um, this might be a question for either the attorney or the clerk. I mean, is this a— is there any opportunity that we have joint sessions with the borough on this level? Is that something that's a possibility so that we can have a more of an open running conversation?

Or is it specifically us authorizing the mayor to be the one to act upon— act upon the will of the council? All this is is a memorandum of understanding that, um, is— it's not binding us to really to anything, but—. Correct, I understand that. Holly, so one of the things I see what I think I missed it a little bit, what, what your struggle is when you were like, wait, but you're saying the participation of the mayor and you're saying that we should stay in our lane. And I guess what I am saying is this is both of your lanes, right?

And so, and so I think in part the mayor is coming to you and the borough is coming to you looking for that support because ultimately, this type of agreement won't go forward without council approval at the end. So the terms and conditions and components of that interest in property that you will hold as a lessee, that will live in both the council's domain and in the mayor's domain. So it is appropriate for you to pass the resolution if, you know, or the memorandum of understanding to provide your approval or your um, their sort of buy-in, as I've been using, um, the mayor also will have that role. And so, I mean, the mayor will— I mean, her participation, as well as the determin— the negotiations regarding terms and conditions, you know, that has an administrative component. You're not doing anything to undermine that component.

Um, if that's— I think that's a That might be something both of you were sort of getting at. Is that correct? Hopefully that's helpful. So I think it's appropriate here simply because this is one of those issues that is on both sides of the, you know, in all lanes.

Is there further discussion? Madam Mayor, this is Tim Johnson. Mr. Johnson.

So the more I listen, the more I get confused, because what we're really doing is the borough right now is paying us or leasing our facility in part, plus the borough is taking and paying us for services rendered that extend into the borough. And now we move into the borough And is the borough going to take over the borough's staffing and we just staff our own little piece of it? Or how is it going to work? And how much is the borough charge us lease for the space? We don't know all those things in advance.

This borough is not trying to take over Matcom.

They don't want Matcom.

So what right now, all we're trying— all they're trying to do is this memorandum of understanding is we are interested in the building.

That's it.

And on down the road, it'll be up to whoever the mayor is and whoever the council is to decide how they want to do that. But right now, all we're interested in is telling— signing on with the borough, yes, we are interested in this.

So, Madam Mayor, follow-on question. So the borough builds a building, then we have to lease our part of it back from the borough. That's going to be a huge increase in our cost, mainly because the borough will no longer our bill, so it'll be a double whammy to our budget.

Mike, this is the— the borough manager is going to speak to that. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, through the mayor to, uh, Council Member Johnson, um, I, I can understand what you're saying there, and, and that's probably true if we pass along, uh, a high lease payment, I said, I suspect you'll just pass that cost along to us when we contract the services from MACOM. I mean, that's, that, that's the challenge. That's why this needs to be a partnership.

Like, the borough, for example, we don't do law enforcement, right? So we contract with the city to provide SROs in, in schools. Well, actually, in all fairness, the Mantua School District does that. But again, it's a partnership where we leverage something that you do because that's what you do for something that we don't do because we're a second-class borough and that's not what we're about. But we can build buildings, we can lease land, we can lease facilities.

And that really what my concern is long term. We don't get down the road, City of Wasilla decides you don't have an adequate facility to support MACOM or you don't want to be in the MACOM business, and then what's the borough to do? And at that point, I think then The state has the advantage because at that point we're not going to have a lot of options. And so by having a facility, I think it does signal clearly the borough intends to use it for that purpose, but that does not mean that we're going to hire borough staff and take over the function. I think we're perfectly comfortable if you are continuing to contract those services, and we have a lease agreement, and obviously we're going to want to keep those costs down because we own the land, we own building.

We're not taking on debt to build this. That's not the idea at all. Um, and obviously if those costs go up, you're just going to pass those costs back to us through a contract. So it's in our best interest to keep those costs down so that we're not paying more for the contracted services. So I don't, I don't see it as any one group has leverage over the other necessarily.

It's, it's intended to be a partnership.

Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, further discussion? Hearing none. Is there objection to the motion? Hearing none, the motion is adopted.

Madam Clerk, thank you. We'll take the 3 resos and then the ordinance, if that's okay. So next is Resolution Serial Number 26, 50, approving a contract between the City of Wasilla and Motorola Solutions Incorporated in the amount of $1,231,156 in consideration for the purchase, installation, and implementation of P-25AXS dispatch communication consoles.

Madam Mayor, I move Resolution 26, 50.

Would you please restate that, Madam Mayor? I move Resolution 2650. Is there a second? Caudle seconds. It's been moved by Council Member Crafton and seconded by Council Member Caudle to, uh, Approve Resolution Serial Number 2650.

Is there discussion, Madam Mayor? Mr. Crafton. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I have some questions, if I could, to, uh, Lori.

Give you a second to get here.

Lori Creek, you, Mattcom manager. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, the first one was the funding of this one. So I remember when we did budget, we were trying to get a federal grant, then that got crossed out.

I remember seeing that in my budget, and then we were going to fund it, I think, specifically from general funds. Now it's getting funded by a MAT2 borough grant? Is that what I'm understanding? No, not this one. This is all through the city's, um, city capital improvement project.

We are, um, charging it back through our contracts, so DPS will be seeing that in an increase in the cost. So we're going to be recouping some of our money that way over a 10-year period. Okay.

And then the second question I had was the software maintenance, almost $700,000 over the next— was it 5 years? I believe, uh, we have a budget of about $550,000, if I remember correctly, for software maintenance this year. We dropped it to— by about $220,000 from previous fiscal year. I don't know if Wendy knows that off the top of my head. I can't remember what my software budget is, but I think it's $550,000.

Is it $550,000? Okay, thank you. I know I dropped from last year, but I can't remember. Are we looking at— I believe there's about $184,000 for maintenance this year. Are we needing to adjust our software maintenance budget, or is that going to be capitalized?

Because now we're not taking on the software maintenance of a different program. The software maintenance won't happen until next year, so I'll be asking for it in next year's budget because it'll take a good 12 months for this to, to get implemented. To get implemented. So we, we will be seeing an increase. What about the offset of, of taking us the old ones?

The old ones, $42,000, I believe. So it's a, it's a big difference, but yeah, it's about $32,000 that'll come off the, the budget, and then this one will replace it. Some other questions, but I'll let somebody else speak for a moment. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, I do have a question.

So let's just hyperthink about this for a moment. If we move into that building that the borough is going to build, do these transfer over? They can definitely be moved over, and, um Procom would just have to come on and move this console. What's—. Is there a cost to that?

Oh yes, we don't know what that cost is though. No, no idea what it would cost to move it. Can we get that cost? Um, I can attempt to. I mean, you're probably looking about $10,000 per console just on what I know of moving stuff like that.

Yeah, I would love to if we could, if we could get that cost just so that we have it in the back. Okay, that would be awesome.

Mr. Graham. Thank you. So, Laura, you mentioned that these costs are being charged back to, uh, uh, the borough and the troopers, and yet we we are using these consoles to dispatch, you know, Wasilla Police Department, what percentage of the cost gets borne by the, the persons to whom we provide service as opposed to the city? Um, we had, um, looked at that on how to do that prior when Ted was here, and then now with Wendy and I sat down and went through the budget, looked at what to start charging these agencies to bring it up to date. And with the software budget and the non-personnel expenditures, it's about 58% for DPS.

And then I believe— I can't remember, but I think it was like 24% for WPD, and then the remainder was for the borough. Thank you, Mr. Schmidt. Um, question for you on the—. Through the mayor. Uh, I see the service life is about 5 years.

Does that sound right? That's what it is right now. Um, this current consoles we have, Motorola consoles, were put out brand new in 2008, and they've lasted us till 2026. So they do go end of life in 2027. So that's why we've brought this forward now.

We can't wait. And we're getting a $35,000 discount per console as long as this is signed by the end of September. And a follow-up question on that.

So are these consoles like literally like state of the art? This is like the first several years they're out, or are these like 5 to 8 years old already? No, these are pretty, uh, well, brand new. The state of Alaska purchased theirs last year. Um, we've got ours now, hopefully this year.

Um, but no, they're brand new. Um, out— they've been out a couple years now, but, um, they're our state-of-the-art. We get, um, AI with them. It actually, um, has transcription on the screen, so it helps, um, read what the officers are saying, so they actually have a little transcript that comes with it. Um, we can actually, with this new program, track the portable radios on the officers now, um, law enforcement or, or fire and EMS as well, whereas we've only had, um, the capability to see where they're at in the car and not for their mobile devices as well.

So there's a lot of new technology that's also, um, very, um, critical and very important to officer safety and, um, fire and EMS as well. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, Lori, in, in the contract, it's got a whole list of general facility improvements that are going to need to be done. Have you done an estimate on what that's going to cost, and have Have you budgeted for it anywhere? We're fine with everything.

Um, we don't have any updates to do. We've got everything we need. So, so everything on that list is already in place? Yes. All right, thank you, Miss Rubio.

I didn't know if Crafton had more questions. I didn't want to talk over. Um, so let's think about this for a second. If MACOM becomes regional Whose radios are these? That's to be worked out in a governance pack— governance package whenever we just start that discussion and go down that road.

Is Palmer coming with these radios too? They currently, um, they asked for them at the 911 board, um, and the attorney said that 911 radios are not part of 911 and to be able to be funded through 911. So I don't know if they're going to go out and fund them themselves. I have not seen that on their city agenda. So, thank you.

Mr. Grafton. Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I noticed we also were doing a sole source on this. I heard you just mentioned that the State of Alaska utilizes them. Is there a reason why we— or did we look at other radios? That are still compliant with the system that we need them for, the P-25, the ALMR? No, I sole sourced.

Was there a reason why we chose that instead of trying to see what other options were out there? Because it offers us— it's basically going to be a plug and play because that's what we're already using. If we go out with a whole new design, that could cost a lot more.

And it's not always compatible. The current— the state of Alaska, we're using the ALMR system, and that's what they use. But there are other ones out there that are compliant that you use, utilize that system, right? Harris would be the other one that I know of, Harris radios, but I'm not sure of anyone using them here in the state of Alaska. Gotcha.

But bounce off what Mr. Rubio had mentioned, uh, the moving of our facilities, would that be something we'd want to consider with the borough whenever it came time as well, saying, hey, we're going to move all of this over here. You know, it's going to cost us probably potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the move from one location to the other. I see Mr. Brown shaking his head over there. So, that would be something I would just say we want to take into consideration at that time is it's definitely going to be quite the effort to make that move happen. It.

So, so, thank you.

Is there further discussion?

Hearing none, is there objection to the motion?

Hearing none, the motion is approved. Madam Clerk, thank you. Resolution serial number 2653, approving a contract between the City of Osceola and Con- Influence Strategies Incorporated in the amount of $80,000 for municipal lobbyist services. Is there a motion to approve Resolution Serial Number 26-53? Madam Mayor, I move Resolution 2653.

Is there a second? Cottle seconds. It's been moved by Council Member Crafton, seconded by Council Member Cottle, to approve Resolution Serial Number 26-53. Is there discussion? Madam Mayor, Mr. Crafton, uh, thank you.

First one is maybe just a cleanup question here. I can't remember what page it's on, but Section 26— if I could go to our attorney there— um, was that just a boilerplate language in there? It's on the last page of the contract. I cannot remember what page it's on because I didn't write it down, but Section 26 6. It kind of read weird.

Thank you.

Uh, 390 of 431.

You'll have to give me a second. We didn't review this contract, so I just want to make sure I'm not just—. Well, while you're looking at that, since my other question doesn't pertain to that, um, could somebody speak to the change of cost here over time? Because I mean, in 2023 we're at $59,000 I get that we're really at $75,000, but this also only covers a 10-month period, not a full year.

Council Member Craftman, through the mayor, um, our current contract expired, so we put the RFP out to bid, and this is the solicitation. This was the only response we got. He did not specify, or they did not specify in their contract or their proposal, the itemization of the increased costs. But we all know costs are going up and the cost of overhead and staff. So that— but we could have him do a breakdown.

I mean, and I think here's just really— we should just strike that last paragraph too. I mean, because this is a lobbying agreement, I think that's correct. That's where I was saying. So we have a prohibition against lobbying. So I think this is one of those situations where the boilerplate gets—.

Which I would, I would say happens to attorneys as well. I would just want, like, to say it just happens. We're human. But I would just take that out, if that's okay. So maybe a— this is a boilerplate we use when you are passing procurement.

Is there an amendment?

Madam Mayor, I move that we strike Section 26 off of page 390 of 431 of the contract. Page 9 of the contract. Page 9, sorry. Is there a second? Yeah, Rubio seconds.

It's been moved by Council Member Crafton and seconded by Council Member Rubio to strike— give me the numbers again—. Section 26 on page 9. Section 26 on page 9 of the, uh, contract between the City of Wasilla and Confluent Strategies. Is there discussion, Madam Mayor? Just like bring everybody else up to speed here.

There's some boilerplate language in here, and essentially that section is the exact opposite of what we're asking them. Essentially says we can't have lobbying services, but this is a lobbying contract. So, just trying to clarify what's happening here. Okay. Is there further discussion?

Hearing none. Is there objection to the motion? Hearing none, motion's passed. Back to the original motion. Madam Mayor.

Mr. Crafton. Thank you, Mayor. So the cost question, I mean, what I was going to say about it was, I mean, Confluence is phenomenal services. I've looked at their APOC reports. If you've never looked at it and seen some of their other clients, we are very blessed to have Confluence.

I'm not trying to doubt it. I just, uh, every dollar that we spend was once a taxpayer's dollar. And so I like to watch the dollars going out the door.

Um, to clarify, this is $75,000 over 10 months with the ability for Confluence to spend $5,000 in various expenses. Um, while I, I'm not going to oppose this, I do just want to make sure the council's aware to pay attention to the, to the cost increases that we see on this. As I mentioned, in 2023 we approved $59,000, uh, the next year it was also $59,000, uh, then it jumped to $75,000, and now we're here up to $80,000. But I believe if you actually look at our monthly amount that we're spending, and we're already paying them $75,000. So, um, no further questions, Madam Mayor.

Is there further discussion?

Hearing? Oh, Mr. Graham. Thank you, Madam Mayor. You know, when we first decided to hire a lobbyist instead of doing this ourselves, I was in opposition. You know, we had, uh, Bert Cottle was, uh, mayor, and he was, I thought, a pretty effective lobbyist.

But then moving on, uh, and approving a lobbyist and bringing Confluence Strategies onboard at that time. Just a complete shift in the ability to get things done, you know. I mean, uh, the mayor has a lot of responsibilities and has a lot of need to lobby, but it's not with the legislature every day and doesn't have those tentacles out at the federal level, things going on. So I, you know, don't tell Chris this, but I think $80,000 is a pretty good deal for what, what we're getting from it.

So good review, Madam Mayor. Um, he doesn't do federal for our city.

He does not, but he refers us to appropriate commission members. He does a great job with that. He has federal influences.

Will say, but he's not a federal lobbyist by any means. So is there objection to the motion?

Hearing none, motion is approved. Madam Clerk. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, Resolution Serial Number 2654, authorizing the conversion of one full-time emergency call taker position into two part-time emergency call or positions within MATCOM. Is there a motion to approve Resolution Serial Number 2654?

Madam Mayor, I move Resolution 2654. Is there a second? Cottle seconds. It's been moved by Council Member Crafton, seconded by Council Member Cottle, to approve Resolution Serial Number 2654. Is there discussion?

Madam Mayor, Mr. Crafter, thank you, Mayor. Uh, if we don't mind, could we have Lori come up here and just kind of give us a little bit more of a breakdown on what we're looking at trying to get done here and what the end goal is?

Lori Creaky, MATCOM manager.

So, um, the conversion of this will help us operationally. We currently have the dispatch, one of our dispatch positions to where we have the capability to do two part-time, and it's been really helpful. I would only do this for people that are currently at MATCOM or have worked there before, because as a part-time person, it's hard to keep up with all your certifications and just being able to do the job effectively. Productively, in my opinion. Um, so it would just be people that maybe need to go part-time.

We've had some new moms recently. Um, they thought maybe it'd be best interest to come back part-time. Well, my call taker positions, I don't have that capability currently. So I was like, hey, that's a great idea to do. So that's why we're here asking.

Um, I think it would be very beneficial to have that just in case they need maybe 6 months or something to be able to do that, you know, get their feet back in part-time and then eventually come back full-time if that's what they want to do. So that's kind of what we're looking at with, with doing that. Um, and then there could be some people that maybe have left MATCOM, retired or whatever, and maybe we can use some part-time help occasionally. So I was looking at that as as well. There's no additional expenses to, to doing this.

That's already in my budget. Um, in fact, it might save a little bit of money because they have to pay their own insurance when they're part-time. So, Madam Mayor, uh, follow up here. So it sounds like this is kind of a flex— they're flex positions that you're trying to have here. So if you— because part of this was you said there was going to be no impact to the budget, and if we bring on 2 new people, where, where, I guess, where did you have it built into the budget for this if we're adding these positions now?

It's not adding, it's taking one of my current FTEs, my cultic FTEs, and transitioning it over to 2 part-time.

Further discussion?

Hearing none. Is there objection to the motion? Hearing none, the motion is passed. Madam Clerk, we are now at communications. Actually, we, we got one more to do.

Oh, do we? We do. Introduction was pulled, so ordinance Ordinance serial number 2618, adopting the 2026 Wasilla Municipal Airport Master Plan. That is an introduction. Recommended public hearing date: September 28th, 2026.

Okay, Madam Mayor, I recommend, uh, ordinance serial number 2618 for public hearing on September 28th, 2026. Is there a second? Madam Mayor, I'll second the motion. Motion's been made by Council Member Graham and seconded by Council Member Crafton for Resolution 26— Ordinance 2618, the Wasilla Municipal Airport Master Plan. Is there discussion?

So, Madam Mayor, the only reason I pulled this was to, uh, kind of put Eric on notice that I didn't see a whole lot of the process of coming up with this plan in here. You know, I mean, who we reached out to, what, uh, you know, what discussions there were at what level, what, uh, ideas were turned back, you know, that were brought forward that were turned back. So when we go into this next week, I'd kind of like you to be prepared to speak to those things.

If I can ask a question Are you asking for, like, a synopsis of the public outreach that this plan was created with? Yes, that's correct. Okay. Yeah, we can have that ready. Thank you.

Appreciate it. There's a further discussion. Madam Mayor, I've been through the airport master plan frontwards and backwards, and it is a huge document. I would really I would like to suggest, and I don't know how the rest of the council feels, if we could have a work session with everybody involved with this, because there is so much to it that I would really like the council to have that time to go through it and to make sure that all the council members really understand everything, because it's a huge document. It's a lot of years, and I, I like it.

But I think there's just so many pieces and parts to it. It would be really good for the council to be able to have a work session to sit down and just really hash through it. And I don't know how the rest of the council feels, but it's something I'd like to see.

Okay, Madam Clerk, may I— through the chair to the body. So, uh, Councilmember Caudle, I guess we could direct the clerk to schedule a work work session, special meeting, um, with the city council and the administration to go through the plan. And, and, uh, I don't have any dates in mind, but if it's okay, I can bring back some dates. And then I think we take the intro then at this point, and we postpone that 2618 indefinitely, or— because I'm not sure what to do with it at this point, because I'm assume— presumably you want to get through it before you—. Yeah, I would agree if we need a second for that.

These were my talking points. There's a lot, few pages. So, Madam Mayor, Tim, Tim Johnson agrees for the working session. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Holly, is there a way to postpone it until— and this is a parliamentary question— but if you postpone it so that it is postponed until after a work session has been completed or something, that way it doesn't kill it completely?

Is there a way to do that, or is that just— or do we need a date certain? Yeah, we really— I mean, you're introing it, so I don't even know when that date would be. Could you do— could you add— so from a legal perspective, if we added a date, I've never known— I've never been sure if really we needed a date or not. But if we added a date that said not after date, then that would keep it alive just to keep the resolution alive. And it sounds like you may not be— the council might not want to do that, but that would be I'm just not sure how much it matters or doesn't matter to the administration, but if it does matter, maybe I think you could postpone it indefinitely.

I mean, it's still alive. We would just give it a new number and then start it back through the process. But whatever you think works, I'm fine with. I mean, that's the only thing is I feel like then it's a new number, right? As opposed to the resolution here.

Wouldn't we just postpone to the next meeting and we make sure our session happens before then, and if it doesn't, at the next meeting, we postpone it again to the next meeting. If we don't end up getting our work session until after that, then we all kind of know, like, we're just going to postpone it again at the next meeting. That, that's what I would think would happen. Kind of like how— yeah, so we would postpone to the next meeting if we get the work session scheduled. Then we'll have the work session, and at the next meeting we'll take public comment.

We'll pass— we'll do what we need to do, pass it or fail, whatever it happens to be. If the work session doesn't get scheduled until after the next meeting, then at the next meeting we would just be postponing it one more until this— at this point it'd be late October. That makes sense. So what's your motion, Madam Mayor? Well, there's a motion, Mr. Johnson.

And it's been seconded.

I would very much like to be part of the working session, but I won't be in town until the next meeting. So, I would rather postpone it. Seeing as I have a significant interest in this, and I have several issues that I'd like to discuss, I'd at least like to have a forum to do so in the working session.

Madam Mayor, I move to postpone, uh, the introduction indefinitely.

Is there a second? Councilman Johnson seconds. Never mind, that works.

There's a motion to to postpone indefinitely for resolution serial number— what was it— 2618. And a second postponing the introduction, postponing the introduction of resolution serial number 2618. And it was seconded by Mr. Johnson. Is there, uh, discussion, Madam Mayor?

I would think to give ourselves time at that point, we should just postpone to October 26th. We've done that before. It's kind of like what Mr. Johnson did with— was the rezoning effort was to give more time for public comment. In that case, we postponed out 3 meetings, I think it was. So I would object to postponing indefinitely and renumbering.

It. I would just, uh, through the chair to Council Member Crafton, what he did was set 3 public hearings. Correct, correct. Yeah, but he also had to postpone the item until— and he set a date certain. He, he scheduled 3 public hearings already.

Are you talking about the resale on this property? So I would object to postponing indefinitely.

Okay, there's a motion on the floor. No, you objected to the postponement. Further discussion? Can I ask a question? Just to the clerk, is this the cleanest route to go?

Because then we can bring it back when you reach out to us and set up a special session. Right. The question— my question to you is, do you want the public hearing after you have a committee of the whole? Do you want it with kind of like Title 16? We flushed out, we didn't have a number.

Correct me if I'm wrong. We flushed it out. And then when we were all on the same page, we assigned a number and we went through the process. I would like—. Is that your intent?

I can only speak for myself, but I would like that.

Madam Mayor, Miss Caudle. Through the mayor to the clerk, if we schedule a special meeting for this, don't you have to basically put public notice out for that, and you have to have time for that? So I'm not in favor of postponing the introduction to a certain date, because until we decide on what day that special meeting is going to be, and then you have to do public noticing, we don't know where that, that date for introduction would fall on the calendar. So, so what we could do with that special meeting, if I may take the liberty, Councilmember Kraft, and maybe we'll get here with this, how about at the special meeting we do a committee of the whole, and then following that we'll do an introduction with a recommended public hearing date. So at that meeting, after you've flushed it all out, you can then introduce it, set it for public hearing.

Would that work? Yes, I like that.

Yes, and I will— I'll get that on the books just as soon as I can.

And Mayor, remove my objection.

Okay, could I make one real quick? Um, so happy to have a discussion in depth working group, if you will, so that you can ask questions. I just want to remember— remind the body that, you know, this has been a 2.5-3-year process supported by federal funding. So, um, any changes, if they become substantive, will have time and financial impacts. Uh, the contract with our consultant is done.

Um, the FAA has signed off on it. Have agreed to the final costs. So any major changes will have timing and financial burden. So just be aware of that.

Madam Mayor, um, through the mayor to Eric— Eric, my intent is not to make major changes, it's to basically have an educational conversation so that everybody on this council totally understands it. And can decide then if they're on board or not with this. But it's not my intent to make a lot of changes, it's just to be able to, um, have those discussions to understand. Thank you very much.

Okay, I've totally lost what motion's on the floor. Motion to postpone. Okay, how about we do this?

I wanted the best route. Just try it all. How about if you direct— withdraw these motions and you direct the clerk to reschedule the introduction at a special meeting? Yeah, that's the cleanest way so the number stays intact. I am just going to reschedule the agenda items.

So, okay, Madam Mayor, Council Member Graham withdraws his motion to postpone differently. Okay, as well as your—. I withdraw my succession. As well as Council Member Graham, I think you withdraw your motion to introduce. That is correct.

And then you're going to make a new motion to the clerk. Yep. Madam Mayor, I move that we request the clerk to reschedule ordinance serial number 2618 to happen for an introduction at a special meeting, along with an in-depth committee, the whole discussion on the ordinance. Rubio seconds that. That figures out later.

But okay, Tim Johnson, I'm left. Anyway, the motion has been made and seconded. So is there objection to the motion? Hearing none, motion passes. Now we're on to communications.

Madam Clerk. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Item number 2612, quarterly financial reports for the period ending June 30th, 2026, to include the month-to-date expenditure report, disbursements greater than $10,000, investment report, quarterly report of business businesses receiving a penalty waiver for sales tax.

Okay, we are now at audience comments, which is a time for members of the public to share their views with the council. This is not a question and answer period or a time for dialogue. Speakers may be referred to administration, or issues raised may be taken under advisement by the council or administration. Please begin your testimony by saying your first and last name, and if you're a city resident. Comments are limited to 3 minutes.

Good evening, Council, Mayor. Turn your— there you go. Look at that technology. Good evening, Council, Mayor. This is Joan Troshinsky.

I am not a resident of the city of Wasilla. A personal note, I am running for Alaska State Legislature House District 26. Hope to win in 2026, go to Juneau, work for all of us in the Matsu.

Anyway, I'm here tonight to talk about the Friends of Wasilla Public Library. Next Tuesday, so a week from tomorrow, will be the 10th anniversary of us in this new building. This is our 88th year as an organization. In fact, it's a little— I don't know if it's nostalgic or like we really need a new building here, but the Osceola Library started 88 years ago in this building and 2 bookshelves. So anyway, and we're on like the 5th building, and we're really hoping this is the building that lasts for like 100 years, although we do need to some more room for the staff so we can increase hours because we constantly have people there ahead of time when we open wanting to get in.

So we need more hours. We have a couple of special events this week. Tomorrow, Lisa Rodrick from Talkeetna— she's an author who wrote A Place Among Giants. She was the base camp manager at Denali for 22 years. She's going to be talking about her book book and her experiences at Denali.

It's at 5:30 in the multipurpose room. And then on Thursday, the Lazy Mountain Pickers are going to do a concert. 3 Years ago, Josh Freifogel approached our library director, Zane Treece, and asked us to do some concerts in the library because the library has a wood ceiling. It's really acoustically pleasing to have a concert in there. So I have some flyers for you.

The concert on Thursday night at 7 o'clock, and we're recommending a $10 donation in recognition of our 10th year in, in this amazingly beautiful building. We just finished today our third day of our super sale. We do a 3-day sale in September at $5 for a bag of books. We sold $2,000 worth of books. Don't let anybody ever tell you people aren't reading because they can cram more books into a bag than you could imagine.

Thanks for all you do. Appreciate you. Thank you.

Is there anyone else? Seeing no one, we will close audience comments and bring it back to the dais. Madam Clerk. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, gosh, early in-person voting.

We've been talking sort of loosely about elections tonight. Starts on Monday the 21st. So through October 5th, we'll vote here at City Hall, weekdays 9 AM to 5 PM, and then Saturdays 10 to 3. And for those that want to vote by mail, the deadline to submit your application to the clerk's office is 5 o'clock on September 29th. We'll see you all here next regular meeting on the 28th, and then—.

Sorry about that—. Schedule a special meeting in between. So thank you. Madam Attorney.

No comment, Madam Mayor. Council Member Graham.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Great meeting tonight, uh, lots of stuff going on, lots of things to be talked about, lots of stuff to be hashed out. So it's always a good meeting when everybody participates. First, I want to, uh, express my concern. For those of you that don't know, Whittier is in a state of emergency right now.

The city of Whittier is in a state of emergency because of a huge fire at the cruise dock. So if you have plans to go to Whittier, please change those plans. You know, you can still access Whittier through the tunnel, but everybody in town is tied up fighting that fire. So I certainly want to give my best to the emergency responders and to the volunteers of that are working there in Whittier and hope that gets resolved quickly. But this is as large a fire, as large a municipal fire as the state has probably ever seen.

So, so please keep your, keep your— I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but I'm going to kind of take issue with the attorney. Uh, you know, when city council people run for election, nobody asks them, you know, well, exactly how are you going to do the budget? They ask about issues, they ask about the airport, they ask about roads, they ask about things like that. So to say that the city council's only responsibility is for the budget, you know, I mean, that's kind of reading you know, uh, without seeing what's going on between the lines. So I, I certainly, uh, wouldn't say that the responsibility of the City Council ends at the budget.

There's a, there's a lot going on there. There's a lot of expectations, and everybody here is elected, uh, you know, so the, the, uh, the constituents have, uh, expectations of folks here at the council that go beyond the budget. So yes, the primary concern is the budget, but that's one of the marbles in the jar there. So also, is Laurie still here? Oh, okay.

Wanted to talk about EMS. Of course, here at the MATCOM, we've got SMART 911. You know, we've got text to 911 coming. Is that next month? Lori?

Yes, October 20th. October 20th, text to 911 is coming. And then at the fair, the fire department is handing out these stickers about some sort of special deal that the fire department is doing that ties into MATCOM, which sounds to me a whole lot like a duplication of effort with Smart911. I'd like to find out more about that. Obviously, tonight's the first time you're hearing about my concerns But I would like to hear about that and how that's going to affect our dispatchers if we're adding another layer of information, uh, onto their screens as, as they're trying to deal with this emergency, uh, information there.

But I would like to hear more about that. But I appreciate, uh, everybody being here tonight. I would like to talk with you after the meeting about the statue, uh, if you have a few minutes, that would be great. Thank you all for being here, and thank you, Madam Mayor.

Council Member Rubio. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, good meeting tonight and loved how we ironed it out right here at the dais, working as a team and problem solving. But other than that, uh, one question: where's the vending machines? Hm?

The vending machines down the hallway are gone. They quit working. I don't— oh no, they should Okay, they took them out. Yeah, but they quit working before they took them out. The food was rotting in them?

No, the—. They—. You put your money in and they give you your money back. That was it. Got it.

Okay, there was a hole up there, so I was wondering. I had no one up there with me. If you need a soda, I got one in my fridge. Okay, okay. Councilmember Johnson, you still on?

Yes, I am, Mayor. Okay, it's your turn. So thank you, it was a good meeting tonight, and I look forward to seeing you in person in a couple of weeks. All righty. Councilmember Schmidt.

Yeah, thank you everyone, and appreciate it. And I thought we had very good discussions tonight, so— and Lori looks like a win-win for your team, so congratulations on all that. Council Member Caudle. Thank you, Madam Mayor. It was a good meeting tonight.

Nobody threw anything. We're doing good. I did want to mention I did attend the AML Summer Legislative Concert— or concert, I wish it was a concert— conference in Fairbanks, and it was a really, really good conference. One of the concurrent sessions that I attended was— it was called Hit Me with Your Best Bot, and it was a discussion on data centers. Very, very interesting on how data centers can affect you and how they can affect and how they fit into your land use codes.

Those are, I think, future discussions for us. Land centers or data centers don't always need the type of massive land. That they did when they started out. There's different types. There's probably going to be discussion down the road with the city if somebody wants to do it.

Um, the city does own 151 acres within the city, within our city limits, with 15 to 30 acres being the largest, which is the size that somebody could come in and request, you know, land for a data center. Um, you know how that would impact the city financially, we'd only be able to pretty much collect a tax on the utilities. So those are, you know, conversations to have down the road, things to think about. Along with AML, I did attend the Public Defense Forum, which was really, really interesting.

The mayor was there and the deputy administrator, and then we were all at the AML conference along with Council Member Graham. The defense forum, I had never attended one of those. Very informative, really interesting to sit there and listen to generals, people from the Pentagon talking about defense in Alaska and how it affects all of our cities and our communities. I think there's, If you look it up online, there's a lot of notes about that conference and some of the discussions, and a lot of them are recorded that you can find online, as well as there's a lot of notes for the summer conference on AML's website. So I encourage everybody to check them out.

And that's all I have. Thank you. Council Member Crafton. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, everybody, for staying.

I want to thank especially the borough manager, Mike Brown, for coming. I know he's taken off here, but really appreciated him providing the insight for the regional data center— our regional data center, sorry, the regional MACOM or regional dispatch center that we're working on.

2 Things I wanted to ask, and one was more of a comment regarding that master plan. I understand that it's been a 2-3 year process, but to hand a 2-3 year process to the council and expect us to more or less make a decision in a couple weeks is, is, is a big lift. I mean, it takes us time to get through the budget. It's going to take us time to get through something like that. So, uh, I mean, just, I know we're working on a lot of master plans.

That would probably be best how we to going forward to do something like that instead of it just showing up on our agenda. Hey, we're going to have a work session. We're going to work through this process so that everybody's on the same page before before we're moving towards public input. So no comment is needed on it. I just mostly wanted to make the statement.

Second thing is this computer right here. I know Miss Ruby and I have had many conversations about it. So to the mayor, to our clerk, could we get with our IT department and find one of those lay-flat monitors or something? Because it is— I know the mayor, when I was sitting where Mr. Schmidt is, You actually can't really see him over there. You gotta move a little bit.

His microphone. Yeah, there's a— and I can't see Stu right now. And yeah, like, I mean, I get it. It's Stu over there, but I mean, Ms. Rubio's over there too. And it's— we play this game all meeting long of us back and forth.

And so I, I know I would love it if we could have— figure out something with the IT department on. This monitor, because I'll be honest, a little frustrating sometimes. It'd be right here. So other than that, appreciate everybody. Great meeting tonight.

I love all the conversation, and that is all. Okay, Eric. Thank you, ma'am. I just wanted to, I guess, ask the broader question. We had multiple public meetings that many council members attended for the public, for the master plan.

If, if that model doesn't work because we need to have more work sessions, I would really appreciate knowing that, especially since we're entering into the water, sewer, and parks plan. If, if the regular public meetings are not enough and we need to have specific council-centric meetings, that, that would be very helpful. I want to make sure that everyone feels involved. So, uh, any feedback to the mayor, of course, because she's the manager, but I'd like to just make sure we're doing it right from the beginning. So thank you.

Okay. All right. Thank you, guys.

Some good information.

Whether we like it or not, the Valley is growing, the city is growing, and we— change is coming. It's not always easy, but change is definitely coming. So get prepared because it will be up to somebody besides me.

But I appreciate all of my directors. Holly, thank you for being here, and.