May 6, 2025 Joint Assembly/Juneau School District Facilities Committee

Go ahead and get us started.

I will call the May 6th Joint Assembly JSD Facilities Committee meeting to order. Um, Mr. Steininger, would you be able to do the land acknowledgment?

We would like to acknowledge that the City and Borough of Juneau is on Tlingit land and wish to honor the indigenous people of this land. For more than 10,000 years, Alaska Native people have been and continue to be integral to the well-being of our community. We are grateful to be in this place, a part of this community, and to honor the culture, traditions, and resilience of the Tlingit people. Kumisheesh.

Um, Miss Hendrix, will you call the roll?

Mayor Weldon.

Miss Wall. Present. Sorry, Chair Wall. Miss Adkinson. Here.

Mr. Steininger. Here. Miss Sorenson. Here. Miss Choney Haywood.

Here. Miss Frommertz? Here.

The roll is noted. Thank you for that. Um, that gives us to approval of agenda. Any, um, changes from the committee on the agenda? Seeing none, that is so moved.

That brings us to approval of minutes. You have the March 21st, 2025 minutes in front of you. I'm sure it was a pleasure to, to read. Anyone have any changes to the minutes? Miss Atkinson?

It's very small. My last name is spelled incorrectly. That is all. Thank you.

So noted. Any other changes? All right, seeing none, that is so moved. That brings us to our sole agenda topic tonight, or today, Donsa Kahini Playground. I will just start us off by saying it's been a long journey to get here.

My goal today is to get to a, um, a, uh, suggested option that we can forward onto the assembly for inclusion in our budget process. So today really is kind of our last day to get something to the assembly for inclusion in this year's budget process. Obviously, assembly can take up anything at another time, but that's my goal is to, to get somewhere today. Um, I will just note that we've gone through lots of options. Um, uh, staff did a great job here kind of laying out many of the steps that have happened coming to today.

But those of you who were in our last meeting may wonder kind of how we got to this memo. And so I will say, since the last meeting, um, we did get some feedback from the school board explaining their position a little bit better than We left this last meeting and the mayor and the school board president and myself sat down to kind of talk about a potential way forward. And the staff's memo is really kind of a result of that conversation that we wanted to make a little forward progress on bringing you some options. So committee can do what it wants today, but I'm hoping we can pass something on to the assembly. The Assembly will make— they can change the amount of money, they can not fund anything.

We'll be considering all of our funding requests over the next 2 weeks. And so we will definitely give the Assembly context and more information. So if they make a different decision than this body makes, that is within their prerogative, but it would be nice to give them something to start with, even if we don't all agree on what that is. So, um, I will, um, see if Ms. Scotch or anyone else on staff have some other context before I see what questions the committee has.

Thank you, Chair. Well, I think, uh, since there have been so many discussions about this, I'm just going to very briefly kind of go over some of the thought process that went into, into getting us here. As we know, we started with, when Corvus was involved, we had that $1.8 million estimate. Then we had a December PWFC meeting where that board, that committee, I should say, gave us the $575 million number. Then later on, we had presented a number of options that were in between that $575 million and that $1.8 million.

And then in terms of getting us to the proposed options that you have in your memo here today, just wanted to talk a little bit about those. So for Option 1, where we have that total project cost of $660,000, we were trying— just because there have been so many steps in this process, we were trying to anchor it in both what it seemed like dollar values that the assembly was signaling that there was some comfort level with, but also connecting it to previous conversations. So that $660,000 is very similar to, um, at our last meeting where we presented an $880,000 footprint that actually had one piece of like playground equipment in it. So that was that similar footprint there. And then you can see in those So that's what is in attachment, um, and the two, and the two attachments.

So, um, that you've got the, um, one, the first option one has that pre-K swings area, uh, is not included in the footprint. And in option two, which is the more expensive option, uh, that's where we just, for sake of you know, just seemed logical to present you with an option that had that full rectangle filled out. And we just wanted to bring back more than one option to, to seed the discussion. So that's some of the thought process that went into those two options. The other thing I would just like to highlight for you, because I know there's been a lot of discussion about perimeter fencing.

So a couple of points. There is, in these two options, there is fencing it, uh, or initially when the initial playground, there was fencing envisioned around the Pre-K area. But I'm talking of that playground, but what I'm talking about now is not the Pre-K area of the playground. I'm talking about the greater perimeter fence, and our estimate for what that would cost would be $70,000, uh, approximately. We haven't done a lot of work on that that was beyond that the, the original, um, thought process for that playground.

But that $70,000, uh, is not included in these two options. Option— that Option 1 and Option 2 are really just about the playground, uh, but I wanted to mention that perimeter fencing because that's been a point of discussion, uh, and if, uh, the body wants to move forward on that, I, I think that perimeter fencing could be paid for either if there was a CIP for a playground, that $70,000 could be added to that, or there's an option of it could be paid for out of the JSD deferred maintenance budget. So just some initial options for the group to think about.

Thank you, Ms. Koch. So I'd like to start with questions from the committee. So Before we get into a discussion, any remaining questions you have for staff or for each other would be helpful. So happy to entertain questions. Mayor Weldon.

Thank you. And I just talked to Ms. Koch, so I know the answer to this question. I should say Director Koch, but someone from the public asked me because it was, um, as rumors go, it was thought that, uh, part of the playground was under the covered play area, and it is not under the covered play area. Is that correct, Ms. Koch, or Director Koch? Through the chair, uh, Mayor, you are correct.

That playground will not be under the, the covered area.

Other questions?

All right, well, uh, I'm— Miss Sorenson, you'll have to turn your mic on. Thank you. The playground is just adjacent. It's in a sense has the same adjacency is all of our covered play areas. They can play in the covered play area, but there's no playground equipment in any of the covered play areas.

Thanks for that context. And I, I know this is a different system than the school board uses, so if you do speak, just press the button. It should turn green and then, um, turn red when you're done. Um, okay, other questions on anything else here?

Miss Sorenson. Well, um, it is my hope that the perimeter fencing is part of this package, um, and that the district takes on the probably continuously escalating cost of playground equipment. As— but it, you know, we have like a year to work on that. I, um, we have, as you know, the bond proposal, when we lay that all out, we have an extensive amount of deferred maintenance that we can be using our deferred maintenance money on. We because we have no idea, you know, whether or not there'll be any relief for any of us on that come October.

Um, and you know, we're going to be working hard to raise money from other sources to help defer the cost of the playground equipment. So my hope is that this perimeter fencing is part of this.

I'm going to see if there are any more questions before we move into a bit of a discussion.

Um, Mr. Steininger, I guess, and maybe Director Cook, you might have touched on this already and I missed it, but these 2 new options that we've been presented with, How much involvement did the school district have in laying out these options? And I ask, I could see amounts come really close to previous options that we've been seeing when we asked if you got X dollars, what would you do with it? And these look a lot different than those.

Through the chair to Mr. Steininger, these options were options that were really— I directed our staff to look at based on the meetings that we— the public meetings that, that we had. And it seemed like that $575,000 to the $880,000 is where most of the discussion line. So we tried to have a footprint with this, this new potential option where CBJ was just doing the, essentially, the surfacing, excluding the playground equipment. We tried to keep it in that range, that cost range that it seemed like people kept circling around. So that was the rationale for that, for that range.

Any follow-up?

Okay, seeing not a lot of questions, I'm going to go to the mayor for a motion, um, just to get our discussion started. Um, Mayor Weldon. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I move Option 1 to the full assembly, um, with the dollar amount $660,000 for the total project plus $70,000 for the fence, so a total of $730,000.

And can you specify to the AFC so that that was clear to staff where this is headed? To the AFC to put on the pending list.

All right, we have a motion on the table. Um, any objections to that motion?

Mr. Steininger, let's object for the purpose of making a comment. I'm not going to object to the motion in the long run. I, I think the dollar value discussed is good. Um, I just question As the assembly, we asked the school district to give us options at certain funding amounts. I feel like this is then sort of backseat driving that decision of how they would prioritize that amount of money if it was given to them.

I think I'd be more comfortable with a— here we're going to land on an amount of money to grant to the school district to build you know, the playground that they think is best for the school rather than, you know, kind of being more prescriptive about, you know, the features of the playground, I guess. But, but at the end of the day, you know, I just wanted to get that concern on the record, and I, I remove my objection.

Thank you, Mr. Steingar. Any other objections?

Okay, seeing none, that is so moved. Um, which brings us to our next meeting date. We have none on the calendar. I am not planning on reconvening this committee unless something else arises. So if there's something that you think the two bodies should be talking about related to our facilities between now and October, definitely reach out and we can find time.

Other than that, thank you all for, for the work and, um, just see You all know what our process is. So this will end up on our pending list. We'll probably— the assembly will probably make a decision on it next week in terms of the amount of funding with our final budget being passed a few weeks later, but we'll be handling kind of the line items on the pending list next week. Anything else from staff that I'm missing? All right.

With that, we are adjourned.