Assembly Work Session of February 13, 2025

We'll go ahead and call to order the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly work session of Thursday, February 13th, 2025 at 6:30 PM, and we are in the assembly chambers. The first item on the agenda for the work session is citizens' comments. The local number is 907 486-3231. The toll-free number: 855-492-9202. It's limited to 3 minutes per speaker.

Please sign in and turn on the microphone and state your name. And if you're calling in, please turn off listening devices so we don't get the feedback.

Wish to speak under citizens' comments, please come forward.

Hello, my name is Raymond Lee.

Is the mic on there, Ray? The green light. Thank you. Hi, my name is Raymond May. I know this isn't the proper meeting probably to attend to address my concerns, but your guys' meetings keep falling on days I'm not available or out of town.

So I apologize for some of this, but I wanted to get all you guys in the same room to express my concerns about Service District 1.

I live at the end of Woodland Drive. I believe my wife was able to testify to you guys last week. Um, you guys probably got a letter that we wrote in '22, a letter that we wrote this month.

I am very frustrated with what's going on with Service District 1. We've had 2 meetings for Service District 1 that I can find in the last almost 3 years. It's my understanding, looking at your guys' bylaws, they're supposed to be do a meeting every quarter. It's the only meeting I don't see scheduled out in the next year, and I'm asking you guys to either address Service District 1 and make them accountable or take over Service District 1 so we can address the issues we have.

It's very frustrating when I'm doing my due diligence on my property, but I'm not seeing it done on the borough side.

Thank you. Thank you, Ray. Anyone else wishing to come forward? Okay, we're now answering a call from McHugh. Good evening, assembly work session.

Please state your name for the record.

Hello? Yeah, hello, this is, um, hello, this is Said through it, I wanted to talk about the short-term rentals. Uh, I don't think there's much of an issue with them. I don't have any of them, but to limit people on what they can do, I think it's a real bad idea. The report we read today from the— in the paper had about 3% of them, and to limit people on making money with their property is just really the wrong thing to do because that money spins around to the cab people, all the tourist people, and people ought to be able to do what they want.

So they got up around 25% short-term rentals. You might be concerned, but you guys are wasting your time trying to limit it. I think you should stop the moratorium and quit messing with it. It's, uh, it's already hard enough for young people to try to do anything in this town. When I started out, I had a shovel and a green pickup, and, uh, Now you got to have a million dollars to do anything.

So let these people do something with their property and make some money with it if they can. So that's about all I got to say. Thank you, Sid, for calling in. All right, bye-bye. Anyone else wishing to come forward, please do so at this time.

Good evening, gentlemen and ladies.

I'm watching the issue in the newspaper about the short-term rental. Go ahead and state your name for the record. Oh yes, Carleen McChesney. And the last article that I saw in the newspaper, it was like an open invitation to come in and shed a little light on it. So I hope that that's what I'm doing is shedding a little light.

But I got an invitation to breakfast, RSVP, "Répondez-vous s'il vous plaît." So I couldn't reach them by phone, went into the office. And there's a storm outside, windy and raining, and so I got invited in to sit down and talk. And the executive secretary shared with me that housing is so hard to find that she and her toddler and her child had to couch surf for a while. Four of her siblings, four couples with their children, left Kodiak because they couldn't find a place to live, so they moved to Anchorage. So that's 4 families, so you lost all of those children in the school district also.

So the enrollment is down. So what I— and then my best friend sometimes stays in a hotel and she watches on the internet You can rent a room in a bed and breakfast, $350 a night for one person, and that's the minimum price. And when I drive by my Auntie Britta's house out in Spruce Cape, it's a really tiny 3-bedroom house, but there's 8 cars parked on the grass if you drive by on a Saturday morning. So in some places there's only 2 people living in a big house, but there's other places where people are packed in like sardines. So we do have a problem, and I do think that we are being taken advantage of by some people.

They'll buy— as soon as the house goes on the market, they buy it and turn it into a B&B. But there are other people that are just scraping by. There was testimony of a fisherman, and fishing was bad last summer, and then he didn't even go out. So he rented out his house while he was out fishing. Then there's other people that rent one bedroom, two bedrooms.

It really works out for them because they're quite elderly, and they found some nice people to rent from them. So I think it's a big issue, and I hope you're open to listening to all of the facts, but thank you. Thank you, Carly. Anyone else wishing to come forward?

Hi, my name is Leanna Harrington. Um, I'm going to speak on a couple things this evening. Um, I have been on the fence about coming and talking about the transfer at all because it has caused some friction in between me and some other business owners in this town, which is super unfortunate. Um, I'm really disappointed to see the transfers on the agenda on both sides this evening. I had to pick where to go.

Um, it's disappointing to see the transfer in general as It has to renew first. I understand that you guys are trying to follow protocol on your end, but there's a problem with AMCO, and that it's a huge problem. This whole fiasco, the timing, everything, the, their timelines, everything is messed up. It's really hard to follow at this point, and I've been following this for 8 months, and I'm having a hard time this week trying to follow what's happening, and I'm not getting any clear answers from the state. Um, I'm asking you guys to look at the black and white in this and not sit there and make decisions off of feelings.

I want to see it used as much as the next guy. I have sat here and I've been vocalizing this for a long time, whether I get it or not.

There are facts, there's laws, there's codes, there's black and white. It has to renew first. Please keep that in mind. The second thing I want to talk about is the short-term rentals. I do not have one.

There's obviously a housing problem here. It doesn't feel like this is the solution, um, to start capping specifically. Um, there are better things that I feel like we can do, and you guys did touch base on, and that was opening up land. A lot of people can't afford to live here anymore. Why is that not something that's being talked about?

How can we make it easier for people to live in this town? We are seeing an influx. I've heard several numbers, but the main number I've been told is 250 Coast Guard families are relocating here. Those duplexes are housing less than 50. Where are we going to put the rest of the 200?

They're coming here with VA-backed loans with no money down. We have lost homes that we wanted to buy our first home to VA-backed loans. I understand there is no solution to that, but it's a lot harder for people like me who need 20% down. And then they're going to come in. Where are we going to house these 200 families?

Land's a big problem on both ends. There's lots of land. It's unfortunate to see. I understand we need the Coast Guard. It's just a different thing there with the loans.

Like I said, we've missed out on homes because of it. I also don't like with the cost of living here. I just lost opportunity for my business and I just look at this long, big-term scheme of things like what if I can't afford my home anymore and you guys are putting a cap on short-term rentals and I can't rent them. I can't rent my home out to have extra income. Um, people are just looking for ways to live on this island, and I want to see more locals living here and not transients who are counting down their days till they leave.

I want local people to be able to live here because the locals know everyone. We support each other's businesses, and it's hard to watch all of this. Um, it's disappointing. So I hope a good outcome comes of it. I hope the facts are taken into account on both the license and the land.

So thank you for your time. Thank you for coming forward. Anyone else wishing to come forward?

Good evening, my name is Susan Smith and I'm the director of the Brother Francis Homeless Shelter. First, I want to acknowledge the hard work that you guys do for the Kodiak community. I listen to most of your work sessions and meetings, and I'm well aware and appreciate the scope of what you do. I come here to inquire about the opioid funding that was discussed last summer during the nonprofit conversations. I'm guessing these funds may be part of the national opioid settlement for which the assembly adopted an ordinance establishing a fund in April of '22.

I can make a formal inquiry to the clerk's office to find out how the funds are being used, but if nothing has been done, it needs your attention. Sorry.

We need a way to get this back on the agenda. It's crucial to understand that the opioid deaths are not just statistics.

They are lives lost in our community. Many of these are handled quietly and the general public never hear about them. There are also folks in this community who think perhaps these deaths are deserved or a result of poor choices. While these deaths are poor choices, they stem from recreational use, peer pressure, work pressure, and the need to stay awake for long hours and, of course, to escape the reality of everyday stressors and trying to— and challenge— sorry, everyday stressors to—.

Sorry. The point is that no one starts using drugs with the intent of addiction or dying. Unfortunately, after repeated drug use, the brain rewires its reward circuit to reward drug taking and nothing else. Long-term use changes your brain's chemical systems that control learning, judgment, decision-making, stress, memory, and behavior. I spoke at a funeral yesterday.

It was for one of my clients who is now forever 31.

His death was the result of an opioid overdose. He was trapped, aware of the struggle, attempted to change his life but fell off the wagon. If the addiction struggle was easy to overcome by saying no, my client would be alive today. The irony of this is he actually despised drugs and what it's doing in our community. Drugs are making their way to Kodiak through every means of transportation and shipping route available.

This is the third client I have lost in as many months. As per the Alaska Department of Health, Drug overdose has tripled in our state in the past 10 years. The crisis is negatively affecting our community. If those funds are not being utilized, we must collaborate and figure out the most effective use for these dollars. Your involvement and support are crucial in our community's well-being.

Thank you. Thank you for coming forward, Susan. Anyone else wishing to speak?

Hi. Good evening. And again, thank you. Thank you for your patience. Rob Lindsey here.

But I really would like to touch on the housing issue. And there is no simple answer, but I do think that Brianna touched upon something that the Coast Guard does in a large way negatively impact the situation. And I do think that The Coast Guard is not going anywhere. And many times I've looked and it feels like— and it's good. We need to welcome them.

But it needs to be on a fair basis. And as with the community swimming pool, I often thought, why didn't we just bend their arm and make them pay for a pool? They were throwing in a pool. I know that they can't compete with services. As far as I know, the only guy that pulled that clause was John Whidden.

But he was highly successful when he made them shut down that laundromat out there. So it can be applied. And we've got a whole new administration and Lucas for big things to do in big places. And you give that guy something that's going to make him go— I mean, I think it's— we're to the moon as far as talking about getting the message to Trump. Have contact with the Commandant of the Coast Guard and just say, look, we need some assistance.

We need— I mean, let's go for something big. Let's push. Let's get a federal grant to get services out of Minocqua. I mean, that would— That would solve the housing problem right there. Those people could subdivide.

You wouldn't have to release land that maybe should be held back. I'm not sure. Some— heard some— they were considering putting the Ram Site on the table. Oh, man, that's a pretty pricey price of property. Be reluctant to let that go.

And if you did, you should take the highest bidder and let them build something grand, something huge there, you know what I mean? Anyway. That's just— I know there's a lot of angles. We need revitalization down in Aleutian Homes. We, you know, we're stretched on the infrastructure we have.

You can't just build and you can't build multiples without having more water and wastewater. And that's a big problem and a lot more than I knew until I went to work for the city, which is— I'm really happy there. Anyway, again, thank you for your patience with me the last time. I brought 6 copies of HB 7797. Which was drafted in large part by Russ George and sponsored by Buddy Carter.

It didn't pass, and it was framed in the light of the carbon capture days, which we're not in at this time. And now we're looking, folks, we are going to roll out the ocean restoration agenda, and you have the chance to have this center right here in Kodiak. So I appreciate your support. Russ has just been up to his eyeballs busy We'll have a nice resolution that's not going to put anybody on the line, just say you're in favor of this. I'm thinking we're going to get similar from UFA and the Bering Sea Crab Coalition.

And then I'm on the agenda for city council, and we've got to hopefully roll this through Juneau. And we believe that's all it's going to take. And if you get the call from D.C., you know what to say. Thank you. Thank you, Rob.

Thank you for coming forward.

Okay. Hello. Is it on? Okay. It should be a green light there.

Yep. Okay. Hello, my name is Jasmine Gilpin. I am a single professional who earns above the median wage, and I have had a very difficult time finding housing and living in Kodiak. And I just kind of want to explain my story and bring, you know, maybe my ideas.

So I searched and searched for a house when I moved back from Kodiak a couple years ago. Took me forever, and I looked into, you know, getting property out in Minashka, but then it's like $100,000 to put a well and septic out there. And it took forever. I finally found a little duplex. It's been a great little duplex.

And I initially tried to, you know, I live on one side, but the other side I tried to do a long-term rental at an affordable rate. I quickly was falling behind fast because it is just very expensive to live here. And I also started having conflicts with my renter because all of our utilities are mixed. And so in the winters, you know what, I'm trying to do an affordable rate, but then he's complaining because I'm trying to evenly split the utility bill. But, you know, it's impossible to do.

And so had issues with that. There's also a ton of wear and tear when it comes to long-term rentals. You know, someone is just not gonna care as much about your property as, you know, a homeowner. So then after they move out, there's, you know, construction costs to replace the carpet, clean it, which in Kodiak is also extremely expensive. So I have turned it into an Airbnb, and now I am finally like able to break even and I'm catching up on the debt that I ran into because Kodiak is so expensive.

And this is coming from someone who— I make well above the median wage and I'm struggling. So we have a problem. I used to live in the Anchorage-Wasilla area, and when I was looking at purchasing a home there, if I wanted to live in Anchorage or Eagle River, I was looking at townhouses. Really nice townhouses. And I think that could be a solution, is building more really nice townhouses that, you know, first-time homebuyers, single professional individuals can afford and buy and want to live in, and that they actually have ownership in.

Because, yeah, you can rent, but it's, you know, you're not earning equity, and it's just not your own. So it's a lot harder. So I think— oh, and then I also, I texted my neighbor because I wanted him to comment because he has some Airbnbs. He said no, but I said, have you been paying attention to city and borough discussions regarding short-term rentals? They are blaming the housing shortage on short-term rentals and have been asking property owners to comment.

I think tonight they are voting on requiring new licenses for short-term rentals. I'm interested to know what your opinion is. He said, I don't think that's going to help the housing situation. They should be developing and opening new areas to build housing. I think they're going after the easy target for more regulation and taxes or license fees.

And I said, would you like to comment tonight? No, they've already decided. My comments won't change anything. So, um, thank you. And yeah, thank you for coming forward.

Is there any phone calls? No other phone calls. Okay, Sima.

Good evening. I, um, I don't know how many of you guys know this, but Saturday is our manager Amy's birthday. Happy birthday! Happy birthday!

I do have, um, drumsticks for everybody after so that you can just grab it and go, and I'll bring those down later, but happy birthday. Well, I think you succeeded in officially embarrassing her, so—. And ourselves. And ourselves. Thank you, Sima.

Anyone else wishing to come forward? And no calls, so we will go ahead and move on to agenda items with, I will say, basically no decision has been made on anything on short-term rentals at this time. This is a work session, continued work session, and I see things continuing a bit before there's any decision made. But that would— decisions are made at only at regular meetings, not at the work session. Direction can be given, but it goes there.

So I just wanted to help you with that. So please continue to join us in the future as we talk about this stuff. So with that, I will turn it over to our manager, Amy Williams. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. On our January 30th assembly work session, the assembly discussed short-term rentals for the Kodiak Island Borough.

The proposal initiated by Assemblymembers Dave Johnson and Larry Ledoux requested staff to draft a resolution that mandates all short-term rentals operating in the Kodiak Island Borough to register and obtain a license with the borough by July 1st, 2025. Additionally, no short-term rentals will be authorized after that date until a licensing system and limit are established by resolution. Following the adoption of this resolution, Assemblymember Johnson requests staff assistance in drafting an ordinance to establish necessary enforcement mechanisms to ensure the resolution is effectively implemented. The Assembly decided to continue discussion at the February 4th joint work session with the City of Kodiak and their City Council. At that meeting on February 4th, the Assembly and City Council engaged in a discussion regarding short-term rentals, specifically focusing on the licensing and permitting of businesses operating in the sector.

Both governing bodies plan to revisit the topic in the near future for further deliberation. And for us, it's right now. So included in the packet tonight alongside the discussions held during the aforementioned meetings is a request form for an agenda item submitted by Assemblymember Whiteside, Griffin, and Sherrod. The item requests seek to promote dialogue regarding potential draft code modifications aimed at establishing a business license program for short-term rentals within the Kodiak Island Borough. So we have a lot of assembly members with similar ideas, and so we're kind of combining a couple of those.

As we were researching this, um, we included the maps of the locations from previous packets We also have include— or I included a study that the Juneau Economic Development Corporation did. Obviously their findings won't help us, but it kind of leads us in the direction of information that we could be seeking if we wanted to seek an outside source. And I think the most interesting part is on page 22 of that report. So if you click on it, the links in your pack— do I have to be done? If you click on the links in your packet, there's a couple of links for the US Census Bureau, and they give us information over the years of how much houses cost in 1990 till 2023, how much the population has changed as far as how many 5-year-olds do we have, how many 19 to 25-year-olds do we have, how many people over 65.

So it kind of shows us how our population demographics have changed. Our housing costs have changed. And they also have information on owner occupancy, which are some of the questions that assembly members have asked. And I just haven't known how to answer. It's all there.

So I can send out that specific link. But it is number 8 and 9 on that list of sources on page 22. And it's, it's a really good source of information that we would actually be able to make some of those own graphs ourselves just off that website. So that's all the new information we have for tonight. So if there's anything else staff can provide, I will take notes tonight and we'll have it ready for the next conversation.

Thank you, Amy. Discussion?

Anyone before I—. Bo, you got your hand up first. Go ahead. All right. Thank you.

So the information in the packet— let's see. Let's see, we start— where does it begin?

Pardon me, I was scrolling down to that link there. Okay. If we look at— oh, it doesn't have— page 13 of the packet. So myself, Assemblymember Griffin, and Sherrod submitted some draft language for an omnibus code revision. Potential ordinance for a code revision to address establishing a licensing program.

To be abundantly clear, no language in this omnibus— potential omnibus ordinance for code revisions mentions limitations. This is strictly to pursue a license— business license program for short-term rentals. So I want to make sure that— clear that everyone in person and perhaps listening or streaming later, anything I'm going to discuss here is regarding the license. So if you look at the language, it's the formatting got a little wonky on me. When I got this shiny new laptop, it only had Notepad, so things got shifted a little bit when I copied over.

But you'll see where I change things and I guess to rewind slightly, the Planning and Zoning Commission is working with the community development director to update language to modern language. So for example, transient accommodations will hopefully be known as short-term rentals in the not-too-distant future. So anytime you see that in this language, it says short-term accommodate— or transient accommodations, we're hoping to shift to that, but I kept it there because it hasn't happened yet. So the purpose of establishing a short-term rental business license is so we can understand how many there actually are in the community. We've heard multiple members of the community testify that they're aware of short-term rentals operating that are not operating with a registration permit.

We can't quantify that. We— there's no way of us to find that out currently. We don't have any enforcement mechanisms to truly dial that in. So if we are able to establish a robust business license following some of the procedures or approaches that other coastal communities in Alaska have done, done successfully, we can at least have an understanding of how many there are. In addition to that, if you'll scroll down to some of the— this is just draft language for what this business license could entail.

They would have to apply for a business license with the Finance Department. They can't engage in this business of providing transient accommodations without obtaining this business license. Part B, and I'm just paraphrasing for brevity, application shall be made to the Finance Department and each application shall be accompanied by— again, these are just options we should consider— an annual non-refundable fee. This isn't a tax, but if, and I didn't put an amount there, this isn't meant to generate revenue to pad the general fund. This is a placeholder to account for any possible increases in staffing needs to implement and monitor this business license.

I haven't been, I haven't heard any indication that that would be necessary. So that's there as a placeholder just in case. The next one, Part 2, proof satisfactory that the applicant has received Received a valid State of Alaska business license. And again, these are what other communities in Alaska are doing or are looking to do. Proof satisfactory that the applicant has received an operator certificate of registration.

That is what currently exists with the borough. Proof satisfactory that the applicant has received a certificate of zoning to ensure that what they are proposing to do is appropriate for their zoning. Proof satisfactory that the applicant possesses valid commercial insurance to operate a transient accommodation business. This is one that has been universally adopted by communities in Alaska. This is getting— if you're going to operate your residence or the property you own in a commercial fashion similar to a hotel or motel, we should and could and should elevate our standards of safety to meet what hotels and motels are doing.

So most of the— I would say the two most popular online management providers for these, so Airbnb and VRBO, offer this to their customers or clients. So you could meet that need through there, or you can have this as an add-on to one of your insurance policies. Policies, but the purpose of that is to make sure if something were to happen to one of your guests, if we're using this as an attractant for tourism, we want to make sure that if you're having— performing commercial services for people, that you're doing it in a safe manner. I did not include, but it's in an email below, that some communities have taken that a step further and they're requiring a safety inspection for that premises or that residence, and I believe that's through the fire department prior to obtaining their permit. I'm, I, I'm indifferent on that one.

I feel if you have the insurance coverage, that feels to me that you're covering folks there in that way. But that's just something for folks to think about. Do we require at some point having the safety inspection before we allow this property to be used in a commercial fashion.

And then going down below, this is— like I said, it would be a potential omnibus ordinance because it would have to then modify language downstream of this decision if we went in this route. So it would be operating some language in the— in KIBC 3.55.080 Operator Certificate of Registration.

Modifying language, shall file an application, must obtain a certificate of registration prior to the date of commencing business. So all of this would have to happen before an individual or an entity were to take a residence and then convert it for commercial use.

Most of these we've already discussed at depth or in depth. But this is what a potential code revision could look like. So we are closer now. Again, this has all been in the background discussed with the Community Development Department. So we're looking to update language parallel to their efforts with planning and zoning.

But we're now approaching the intersection of action. Do we want to take action on this in the near future, or do we want to keep discussing it? We've heard— compelling testimony for multiple different reasons why we should or shouldn't restrict short-term rentals. That's not what I'm proposing with— along with Assemblymembers Sherrod and Griffin. We're proposing the implementation of a business license program so we can better monitor the number of Airbnbs in our community and making sure they're safe for occupancy for visitors.

So I'll stop there. Thank you. Larry.

I've spent some time this week exploring the literature of the relationship between short-term rentals and long-term rentals, and clearly there is some relationship. There is, you know, those are studies done around the country, and they're quite recent, and they're well documented. However, literature also indicates it's a very complicated issue as you balance between effects on economic development and what you might gain. I don't believe the study in Juneau or other places has necessarily evidenced that it has improved housing availability or long-term housing.

What I am concerned with— because the question I have is, why are— what is the problem? If the problem is we need all these inspections, that we're worried about insurance, that we're worried about all the zoning, that we're— but I haven't heard anybody come in and complain about that. I've heard people come in and be concerned with that we need to regulate short-term rentals because people who have a difficult time finding housing unless you're at a point where you have to have housing, because we've had evidence that many of the subsidized housing units have empty apartments because people that want them, you know, don't qualify. So it's not a matter of low income. So the question I come back to, why are we doing this?

Because What I've heard proposed is an incredible increase in bureaucracy. And one of the things that when you read what's happening around the country is you have to enforce it. And I believe at the last meeting somebody said that Wasilla put a pretty complicated system in place and 2 people showed up. And, um, that in other cities, large cities on the West Coast, um, Tiburon is a good example. They implemented it and really had no change.

They had a registration, but nothing changed. People just went ahead and did it. And then they say that, okay, to prevent that, they have expensive fines for enforcement if people don't register, and they have somebody do that. And they said, never pass an ordinance that you're not going to adjudicate. And so now we have to have more people keeping an eye on this.

And there's still no evidence that in restricting these, ultimately, it's going to make a significant difference. A significant— while I say there is some relationship, it's very small. Okay. It's going to make a significant difference. And I— And I still don't really have a good definition of what I've heard is what is a short-term rental.

If somebody, uh, snowbirds for 2 months and a Coast Guard who doesn't— person who doesn't want to live in the barracks for 2 months takes over their house, is that a short-term rental? At what point does somebody violate the ordinance if somebody stays in their house for the weekend while they're gone or even while they're there and pays them. It seems very unenforceable. The literature does not indicate, while there is, I said, while there is a relationship, that it's going to make a difference. I believe that we should have done ADUs a long time ago, but we still haven't done that.

And which will allow people to immediately start building if they want to. It's part of the solution, and it too is part of the solution but has a low impact, similar to what we're finding here. And the availability of land— when all of the housing land was readily available, people were building houses everywhere. Okay, in reference to Jared's concern not to talk about the past, I will anyway and say that when land was available people were building houses. In the old days, there was no Larch Street.

There was no good Woodland Acres. There was— there weren't any of these things. And when land became available, there was a housing boom in Kodiak. The landowners in Kodiak are the state, the borough, Native corporations, and landowners in Kodiak. We have some landowners that hold a lot of the land for speculation.

We need to find ways to open up land. We need to find ways to make it— to attract developers and tax incentives to develop land, to put in new sewers, to do what we did in the past in the future. None of that has happened. And I don't believe— well, I believe— I don't have any problem with finding out if we figure out what short-term rentals are, having a licensure program, but to add on all of the bureaucratic Why? We have had no complaints about any of the things that now we're going to require people to do.

And that's creeping bureaucracy, and I'm against it. Although I am concerned with it, with the problem, and I just don't feel there's an easy solution. So again, I'm pro finding out how many people are doing it, if we find out again what the heck the definition is, you know, for short-term rentals. Thank you.

Dave. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've been reviewing some of that data that the manager referenced. Because my facts don't care about your opinions is a statement that I've heard in the past, and I tend to like. You know, when I was in California, the salmon population was dwindling.

And it was interesting to watch because the fishermen blamed the natives, the natives blamed the sea lions, et cetera, et cetera. The point being, everybody did this. And Kodiak has had this lovely excuse of blame the Coast Guard now for 40, 50 years since they took over from the Navy. As I stated as a factual statement in our joint work session, the Coast Guard presence in our community last year was the lowest it had been in at least the previous 20 years. Yet at the same 5-year period from, uh, 2018 to 2023, our housing— median housing price is up almost 40%.

Now, if you recall the statistic I cited from the research paper, a 10% increase in Airbnbs equates to a 0.76% increase in home prices. So if you were to sketch out the math and attribute it, which I'm not doing, but I'm to say if you were to try and attribute the dramatic increase in median home price in Kodiak to Airbnbs, that equates to a 525% increase in Airbnbs over that period. Did we have that 520% increase? I don't know. We have no idea how many there are because there's no registration or enforcement requirement.

I don't think for a minute that regulating Airbnbs is the single answer to our housing crisis. But there are very few levers government can pull to try and influence the economy. And addressing rampant speculation on single-family homes via the short-term rental market is one of those levers that this body has the power to pull. And so if I've been inarticulate in my previous points, I'll say again, I don't have a problem with somebody who operates a short-term rental out of the home they live in. I have a problem with, with speculators owning multiple short, uh, single-family homes that are then converted into rentals.

If you want to be a hotelier, go build a damn hotel, more power to you. But sucking up single-family homes and then putting them on the market for short-term rentals is at least a statistically significant contributor to the rent and median home prices in this community. So if the assembly were to entertain it, I would back down from the full moratorium and say no more unoccupied single-family homes may enter the market in until we get a better handle on this. Like, I'm— because that's where our— these families are being the most affected. When a, by any definition, entry-level single-family home, 3/2, 1,600 square feet, is going for $550,000 $15,000.

If you take the, um, 20% down and then add in the borough property tax, you're looking at a $3,200 a month mortgage. How many people in Kodiak make enough money to pay a $3,200 a month mortgage? And how much is that being driven by people willing to assume a mortgage that high if they can make a ton on the short-term rental market? If they want to do it in their private house, more power to them. If they want to buy that house and continue driving up property values for all their neighbors, then I can't support it, and I will not.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dave.

Jared. I'll go next.

A lot, a lot of things. Holy cow. All right, kitchen sink. Here we go.

Okay, I'm going to start with the Juno report because I thought it was really interesting. I think there are some takeaways, but we also have to keep in mind that this report from Juno is at least 5 years old, the data on here. Some of the, the conclusions that were made. And we, and, and we know for a fact that the housing issue has just gotten worse in Juneau, and the number of short-term rentals has increased even more, um, than, um, than, than what's in the report. But, um, so some of the, the impacts that we've seen in Juneau is that, um, More housing units were converted into short-term rentals than were built in many of the years in review.

And the estimated impact of short-term rentals on housing availability— this is, I think, in 2021, so about 4 years ago— ranges on average about a 1%, a 1% reduction in available housing. We don't know what that percentage looks today, but, you know, if you're to extrapolate the impact and the increase of short-term rentals and the new housing available not keeping, not keeping on track, you can probably assume it's, it's more than that. What does 1% look like in, in Juneau with I don't see the total numbers, but if you were to take that, you know, to other places that have been impacted by short-term rentals, that 1%, you know, here, that's, you know, could be 40 homes or so for available housing units. Maybe even more than that. And that's, you know, that's, that, that's something that's, that would be impactful here.

Housing costs have gone up in Juneau. The median home price increased 35 to 39% from 2012 to 2021, which, which tracks here also, which means that rental costs have gone up. And, and we know that there is a direct correlation between the number of short-term rentals and housing affordability. So there's this really interesting narrative of irony that's developing that we, we, we need short-term rentals in our market. I'm not arguing that we don't, but we have short-term rentals in our market that are driving up costs.

Therefore, I need to supplement my housing costs with, with short-term rentals, and it's And this is not anybody's fault. This is just a situation in the market that has appeared, and it's just an interesting irony about it all.

Let's see. Some things that are interesting that we need, I think, to figure out, to Dave's point, 14% of Juneau's housing stock is owned by people or businesses outside of Juneau. 35% Of apartments are owned by, by non-locals.

The—. There is a, there is a short-term rental tax compliance rate in Juneau between 35% and 72%, which equals about $600,000 a year for them. So there is— but that's a, that's a tax that they have there.

So basically, the data suggests that short-term rentals do contribute to a reduced housing available, but— right, it's a big old but— they're obviously not the sole cause of the housing crisis. I don't think anybody up here has said that they are the sole cause, even if that does result in 1%, 2%, or 3% of housing units being available in a long-term affordable way, you know, that's a win. And that's a way to redirect the market in a way that we need it for long-term viability in this community.

The issue I think I have with some of the research here is that— and I'm just looking at the Kodak one. I'm showing Dave here in a minute. I don't know how well we can rely on the numbers from the Census Bureau because the margin of error is insane. It's like 50, 60, 70% in a lot of cases is the margin of error. So we might have someone who is 65 years or older living with their children.

That could be as many as 16 or as few as -16. So I know statistics, they're weird like that. So I think we need to take those numbers with a huge grain of salt. So it'd be interesting to see how helpful those numbers are to us anyway. So what are some of the things that we should consider?

Yes. We, we should consider mandatory short-term rental licensing. It's not this huge exponential growth of local bureaucracy. We have been talking, and maybe this is a question for Amy at this point, if it's okay. In talking about short-term rentals and the licensing program, where does something like that overlap or duplicate with what we already have in place?

Just to answer the, the question of ballooning bureaucracy, what we're doing right now. Sure. So the City of Kodiak already has a business licensing program, uh, in place for all businesses, not specifically short-term rentals, but just that. We have two ways to track short-term rentals that are in the borough. One is the accommodations tax registration And 2 is business personal property accounts, because they would be registered and be paying business personal property tax.

So we have 2 ways to track them right now. Um, if we do a business license program, we can't spot regulate. So if the borough says, okay, all short-term rentals are going to have a business license program, then even the ones in the city have to do it too. So there'd be duplication in the effort inside of city limits, but I'm hoping that there's a way we can take the accommodations tax and the business personal property process and combine those into a way where we have a registration of short-term rentals without a huge lift because we're already collecting data from them in two different ways. Yeah, and so I wonder— so part of this is like a big step for us, and to Larry's point about definition, defining short-term rentals in a way that makes them part of this, this class.

For the accommodation tax, short-term rentals is considered any rental that's under 30 days. So you become a long-term rental as soon as you cross over that part. So all hotels and usually Airbnbs or VBRs, but like if you have a a house and they come for 35 days, then you don't pay the accommodation tax once you go over 30 days. Thank you. Um, let's see, um, I think, um, overall right now, um, I think this is us, um, or for some of us [Speaker:COMMISSIONER ARKOOSH] You know, I think it's about responsible borough management.

We need to know what is going on, especially know what businesses are going on in neighborhoods. There are some safety issues. There are complaints. I do hear complaints. When my son went to North Star, and I'm there picking him up every day, Somebody is coming up complaining about short-term rentals.

So I think for every person advocating for the status quo, as I hear some people, it's arguing for, no, we need to change, we need to tweak the status quo in some way because neighborhoods are worried.

So I think, again, we should temper advice and feedback with, with. There are a lot of concerns on, on all different sides of it. Um, and it does fall to us if the market is broken. I think it does fall to the government to, to fix what's broken. And we know that everyone has acknowledged in some way, um, people arguing on all sides of the short-term rental issue Everybody knows that there's something wrong, there's something broken with housing.

Yes, it has been broken maybe for a really long time, but there's something different about it now. The scope is different because of the, um, because of the affordability of it all. There's always been an issue with availability, but right now availability coupled with affordability has created this just exponential problem in the market. And this is just one way to look at it and try to get a handle on what's going on so that we can understand better and make better policy. So that's why I'm right now supporting the theory, the spirit of licensing, understanding, regulation.

So I think that's where I'll land right now. Okay. Scott and then Bo.

I want to distance the discussion from unavailable— unavailability of housing and just stick to the short-term rental question. I think that people have pointed out that the total answer to the housing issue is not found just in the short-term rental, but we have an issue with short-term rentals here, and there are quite a few of them, and they are burgeoning in our community, and we need to get a handle on what's going on there and make sure that everything's safe and fair. And so I support the licensing program. I think it's a good idea. I think, uh, the, um, the insurance thing is one thing that I was concerned about.

And, uh, having been to some substandard short-term rentals in my life, uh, which were no fun at all, uh, I think we need to follow that kind of thing. I want people to understand we're not solving the housing problem at all, and we're just dealing with this one, and it's a small portion of it. There are other issues we're going to have to deal with— tiny homes and all this other stuff. And there's plenty of interest in having lots of land released, but that's land that we're probably not going to put the water in, we're probably not going to put sewers in. So there's going to be cost to that land to develop it for individuals, and that's going to be a problem.

And the affordability issue is another one that's beyond our kin to try to solve. So that's where I stand. Bo. Thank you. I'm having a hard time understanding the logic about heaping bureaucracy on any potential licensee.

This is— these are folks who are converting, and, and the, the— within the borough and the city, more homes are being converted for commercial use than they're being built. That's just fact. Everyone can see it. There's no new houses going up right now. There are plenty of houses being converted for commercial use.

Including rezoning, but ultimately more of these every year are going to be converted through short-term rentals for Airbnb, VRBO, etc. There are enforcement mechanisms that are in place that are— I don't know the price, but I can't imagine that they're expensive at all. There's software that exists now that we could purchase that will monitor and report residences operating as short-term rentals. I don't know how it does it, probably through advanced computing of some sort, but it exists and municipalities are using it. And so thinking about back to the, the heaping of bureaucracy, this isn't a lemon— we're not talking lemonade stands here.

If a— I agree, I— when I looked recently, it's not uncommon to see $350 a night plus I think that's a fairly accurate going rate during peak season. Even at 20-day occupancy, that's $7,000 a month. At 30-day occupancy, which is highly likely in peak months, that's $10,000. This isn't— this isn't pocket change here. There's no other business in town where we would not require these steps to be taken to operate as a commercial entity.

These are commercial entities that we're talking about here, so I don't understand why we wouldn't hold them to the same commercial standards as we would any other business. I can't start a restaurant in my garage and then say, hey, even though if I'm making a killing, I make the best tamales you've ever seen, I make tons of money, but I'm doing it at home and this is supplementing my income, why should I have restaurant licenses and restaurant certifications. So I, I just have a hard time understanding the log— the logic behind heaping bureaucracy. Half of these items already exist within our system, but adding layers to where we can level the playing field, treat these as a commercial enterprise because they are, and having a better understanding of how many there are I think it's an important thing to do. And, and I agree with the statement made about the insurance requirement.

You know, again, most of these that I have found anyways— I don't know how many there are total— but I would say the vast majority are going through a service like Airbnb and VRBO, where part of that service is commercial insurance. So again, this is very limited as far as adding to any of the administrative burden of operating a short-term rental. So I'm having a hard time with that. But shifting to just my thoughts on any sort of limitation, again, I agree with other statements folks have made. I'll keep saying it.

I don't think anyone's suggesting this is the smoking gun to the housing crisis. I certainly have not said that. It's a contributor without doubt that it is increasing the cost of housing, which is a barrier to entry, and it's removing inventory for families to move into and move to our island, start businesses, get jobs, um, and support long-term economic stability. I do support opening up land in certain areas. I don't think we need to bomb out all available land all at once, but That's just one component that I think will help, but that's not going to happen tomorrow or next year.

We're not going to see houses popping up all over the place. So until then, I agree with the statement that the market is, is, isn't quite broken yet, but it's fractured, and we're entering a bubble scenario where the cost of entry here is prohibitive to folks coming from off-island. We keep hearing that over and over and over again. Something is wrong. This is something we can do to As someone put it, this is one lever we can pull.

I certainly have no intention of pulling the rug out from under people who are operating in this fashion now, um, minus, uh, if there were corporate entities who are gobbling up houses to provide this service to make a profit on the backs of our community, that would be an exception. I do support the idea of owner occupancy. Depending on how it's zoned, you know, duplexes, multi-family homes, that's kind of some gray area there. But I don't know how I feel about people who don't live on the island owning a home here and making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and no one can find a house. I have limited empathy there for that situation.

So this is a complex issue. I do feel we need to take— at least take the next step, which is establishing a business license program with realistic enforcement mechanisms, which there can be several for redundancy. I don't anticipate that coming at a large cost, and so again, I left this placeholder for a fee blank. It's there, but I don't even know if that's necessary. So anyhow, really complex issue.

I'm, I'm ready to introduce this Omnibus ordinance for code revision for short-term rentals. I encourage folks to research these. I've done it at length. I've compared it to other communities in Alaska, coastal communities that are similar in size. We're behind the curve here.

I think folks— and I understand what will be gained from this. Will we correct the market? Of course not. That's not the goal here. The goal is understanding how much of our housing inventory is going towards commercial use versus residential use for families.

That's what— that's my goal here. I think that's, as I understand it, the two who are co-sponsoring this with me, we just need to gain an understanding of what we're looking at, and then we can think about do we want to limit them in, in any way.

I— a little long-winded here, I'll stop talking.

I do feel some form of limitation will be necessary. That doesn't mean folks need to come up here and, and think that I— this is my income I rely upon. I don't think anyone up here is targeting anyone in the community that's relying on this income. I think we're thinking about folks that that aren't relying on this income. And really, if anything, I would support, to Mr. Johnson's point, future entrance into this commercial realm to maintain the housing availability we have, the inventory we have now.

I don't see many— they're doing much harm in limiting new entrance later. So I'll stop there. Thank you, Bo. Um, I've got some questions on this too. One, one is right now the city does a business license, and I, and I hear about business license, and I hear about transient accommodation business license.

If the borough is going to do something, the borough ends up taking over on stuff potentially because it affects stuff inside the city, not just the city of Kodiak, the village cities. So we have to look at what the ramifications is. One of my questions, concerns, is which borough department would be processing these applications? On there. And what are the penalties for enforcement?

And who is going to— or which department is going to be in charge of enforcement? This—. None of this is free. You better believe there's going to be a fee for this on there, because I don't think that the general taxpayer should be paying for these rules that you want to put on a certain group. So it's, it's going to be on there.

Now, we haven't asked staff, and it's going to take a while to come up with something like that. I, I understand the intent. I disagree with much of what is listed here, the certificate of insurance, the operator certificate of registration, certification of zoning, and then the commercial insurance and the verification of this, and especially when the insurance expires mid-year on the license, You know what, it's, it's a quagmire. This is not a simple thing that I see you guys trying to propose here, and it's going to take a lot more discussion before this is ready to go to the public. Now, I see that we're, we're going to have to see what the approximate cost is.

On there because all of this comes at a cost. None of it's free. Larry. I'm used to Beau talking, so it won't catch me off guard. Beau, I appreciate your comments.

I thought they were very thoughtful. A couple of things. We talked about Juneau a little bit, but let me just read the last sentence of their study that we've returned to. This is the Juneau research note. Which page?

I don't know what page it is. It's the Juneau study, probably one of the first ones. First one's okay. Just try—. The last statement reads, while both— and they're talking about short-term rentals— while both have influenced the housing market, the democratic— excuse me, demographic changes in Juneau's population are a more significant factor in Juneau's housing shortage than conversions to short-term rentals.

Okay, and I think that's clear, and I think Dan Rohrer made that so eloquently at the last meeting. There are a lot of factors going on here, and I think before we— and I'm not opposed to finding out how many people are doing it, but when I hear about insurance requirements, zoning requirements, inspections, that's bureaucracy, and I have heard nobody suggest that we need that, and that would mean that Anybody that rents out a room in their house technically would have to do the same thing. We don't require people to have insurance who are selling foods at the open market. We could, I suppose, you know, just to guarantee the safety, but there's at some point people are responsible for what they do. And I'm, so I'm opposed to all these inferred add-ons to this whole thing.

Most of the people that are engaging in this, our own local residents who are doing it for income. And I think we have to be very, very careful before we do something that may have a serious impact on people in our community and their ability even to live here. I think we have to be very, very careful and very thoughtful. And I also believe that this— because this is a complex issue in every study, and I think I've read the literature a lot this weekend. And the statistics that Dave said one time were even higher.

In one study, they were over 33% increase based on this over— if you take it from, you know, a number of years. But I think the calculus of unintended consequences is something that we need to be very concerned about, because doing something without knowing all the details— I have not heard, heard a clear goal Is this about increasing housing availability? If that's why we're doing it, then that should only be our discussion, not these other issues before us, because that complicates the whole thing and raises a whole cloud. Should we know how many— the impact of these Airbnbs or short-term rentals in Kodiak? Probably that's a good idea because it does impact our market.

And I think we need to know that, and licensing is a way to do it, assuming the community will participate. And typically in bureaucracies, as soon as we ask the community to do something, we know that just like in Wasilla, where 2 people showed up for their licensing and they have hundreds of them, that people are just not gonna go. So we'll increase the fine, and that means somebody has to go out and argue with them, and then we have to maybe go to court over it, and you go down that whole road. So there's a lot of thought, as the mayor has said. I generally don't agree, but with you, but in this case—.

You're saying you agree? Is that what I heard? Well, I'm not sure. I'm going to be real tentative. But in any case, I think we're going a little fast here, and I'm frustrated because every time we do something, it takes forever.

So I feel like I'm saying something I disagree with, but we need data in our own community And most of these studies, um, Pennsylvania, San Francisco, the ones that have been quoted, um, are in big cities. We're a small town, and that may amplify the concerns or deflate them. I'm not sure on what the data says, but I'm pro-licensing to find out. I think we have a responsibility to do that, but anything beyond that— and I don't believe we have a clear definition of what a short-term rental is. If I rent a room out for 2 weeks in my house on Airbnb.

I don't advertise, but, you know, my Aunt Susie comes up, wants to stay here for a couple weeks and offers me $100 a day. You know, am I violating the law? I don't know. I really don't know. All of that we have to know and decide, and we have to set clear, succinct, succinct goals about what we're trying to accomplish with any kind of ordinance.

And I don't believe we have the data to do it. And certainly since we have the livelihood of our residents at risk, okay, which is important too, we have to be very, very careful. Thank you. Thank you. Jared and then Bo.

Um, thank you. Yeah, so I, I have a couple things for staff. Um, one is, um, I think we need a I guess a clearer— or I need— I say we. I'm going to say me. I don't want to speak for anyone else.

What I might need is, I think, a clearer breakdown into how this proposed licensing program fits into our current practice.

Just a side-by-side, or I don't know, however you want to— depict it. Maybe we should need a— or I need a clearer picture of what the current process is, and then the language that's included in some of the proposal here, what would that look inside of what we already have? And then if we really just need to tweak what we already have, Maybe that's a solution. But does that make sense? Okay.

The other one is, I brought this up a couple weeks ago at the work session, and I really haven't looked up an answer to this yet because I haven't really seen anything. The idea of non-resident ownership, I believe, is protected by the Commerce Clause. In the US Constitution that transaction of business across state lines is protected or is insured, maybe not protected, but is insured because the Articles of Confederacy were just, you know, bonkers. But so I don't know if that requires a legal opinion or maybe just some legal research. But I don't know in what ways that's been challenged and if one of the unintended consequences is that we're opening ourselves up to lawsuits if we decide to do something like that.

And then thank you, Larry, for bringing up your concerns. You know, part of me— I take that back. All of me is— asked and answered. A lot of the— I think some of the concerns that you brought up have been asked and answered. So I think it might be helpful to those who are proposing some of these things that what exactly has been unsatisfying?

What about the responses of the proposals have not satisfied the specifics around these concerns so that they can be addressed? I think purpose has been addressed. I think insurance questions have been addressed. They might need, you know, further discussion. But so anyway, I think when this moves on to the next level, I think once we start getting to the specifics, I think addressing some of the specifics around some of these questions, I think like some of the questions that the mayor has I think are going to be answered as the ordinance works through and we get staff feedback from how is this going to affect their work and their workload.

And some may think that the scope of it's going to be too big, but, you know, the more we talk about this, I don't think it will be. I think the example of Wasilla is kind of an outlier. Because there was as much as 72% in Juneau that did comply, and those are just the ones that they know of. So I think there's some evidence for that too. But thank you.

Bo, and then Dave. Thank you. I agree. You know, we've been— since the first week I was sitting up here, I've been discussing short-term rentals. This is nothing new.

This is a year and a half later. So this, this— I, I don't understand the need to, to hit pause one bit, um, other than to the previous point of I'd be curious if staff could look at this draft ordinance, if you haven't already, and help us understand the feasibility of it, of implementation as it sits. Again, these are just options to consider. I think most of them are reasonable. I excluded some that I felt were personally were a little over the top, but these are common requirements to obtain a commercial business license to operate as a short-term rental that other communities are doing, and it is enforceable.

I, I don't— it doesn't— I'm not discouraged by lack of enforcement in other communities because or tools that are available that we can use to enforce compliance that don't require someone going door-to-door, beating on doors to shake people down for money and insurance. But I would be curious to know what, what this would entail as far as staff if we were to adopt this ordinance, what that would look like on, on implement— the implementation side. That would be my only cause for pause. It's not because we haven't been looking into this. We've been looking into this for a very long time, and I think that's why— while I appreciate the, the concerns for folks to maintain this level of income, again, I'm not looking to end that for, for our residents here.

And Mr. Griffin's correct, we cannot limit out-of-state ownership. We could address that through owner occupancy in some form, but we couldn't say Residents can do it, non-residents cannot. That's not an option. However, I'm ready to— it's somewhat disappointing to me that this was combined with the general discussion because I want to talk about this specific omnibus ordinance and what a licensing program will look like, gather information from staff, and folks are wondering why we're not doing anything. We're still talking a year and a half later.

I don't know how long before this— I know it happened before. I didn't start following meetings till about 6 months before running. But this isn't anything new. I think people are becoming impatient to earlier testimony. Folks want to come here.

I see it come on social media. Hey, we want to move to Kodiak. We have a tentative job offer. And people literally laugh at them and say, good luck. Because they say, this is what my budget is for a house or for rent, and they get mocked and laughed at because that's the reality of our market right now.

And it's, it's really disappointing that, that folks can't come here that want to come here. I'm tired of waiting. Again, I'm not— this, this ordinance isn't looking to restrict anyone from operating. It isn't looking to reduce anyone's income. It's looking to establish a short-term rental business license program so we can better understand how many are operating, that they're operating in a safe manner with a level playing field for all other short-term accommodations on the island, operating as a business, and then we go from there.

That's, that's all this is proposing. But I am sensitive to staff time and workload increases and and the administrative burden that could come with this, but I'm not convinced it's going to be to a level that's going to require a lot of cost. But that would obviously depend on how much time would go into this. But I'm confident it would not be as burdensome as folks are suggesting.

Dave.

Thank you. I just wanted to circle back to the point about unintended consequences because I agree. Unintended consequences in every decision that gets made. And I'm sure there's some— I'm not anticipating in the things I'm proposing, but I also know there's severe unintended consequences of doing nothing. And, you know, you look at examples from other coastal communities in Alaska, you look in Hawaii and what they've done once they've determined that their short-term rental market was out of control, trying to claw that back, has shown to be incredibly difficult.

So I think the unintended consequence of allowing this to continue festering and, metastasizing in our community, is going to have some severe unintended consequences. When you look at, uh, my beloved hometown of Seward, and in the summer, um, they bring in a bunch of seasonal workers who live in bunkhouses because there is nowhere to live despite the 400 or 500, I believe, short-term rentals they've got in their community. That's a third of our size. So I'm very sensitive to what direction this can go if not addressed in a timely manner. And so, Bo, to your point, I understand that your goal is to get this, this licensing effort off the ground, but it takes a majority of the assembly, and it's going to take more if there's a mayor oveto.

And you're going to have my support as long as we talk about it at a minimum of a restriction on new entrants for non-owner-occupied homes. Because continuing to watch single-family homes get snatched up in speculation is what I ran against and what I will continue planting my flag on as an issue. Until this assembly votes it up or down, one way or another. Thank you.

Further discussion?

Okay. There's been some questions asked of staff, so we'll schedule this for follow-up work session.

We'll take a look at things. I'm not— we'll have to talk with Amy, see how much time is needed on things.

Jared, Amy, and I are out of town for a bit, traveling on borough business, a lot of it, and we have the budget stuff starting to come up. So we'll take a look, but not looking to delay this. I'm just saying there's different constraints that the three of us will get together with the clerk and, and figure out where we can get this in. So right now we have some— staff has some very pressing projects that they're working very diligently on, so we'll see how it goes from there. Next item, agenda item, is discussion of the state and federal CIP List resolutions.

Staff report, Amy.

Thank you guys for staying through the discussion. Good night. To support lobbying efforts at the state and federal levels, the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly creates two lists of projects that inform the state and federal delegations of the needs of the Kodiak Island Borough. The signed resolution of the The state list is entered into the Capital Project Submission Information System, which we would just simply refer to as CAPSYS, and shared with KAB's state of Alaska delegation. The signed resolution for the federal list is forwarded to the federal lobbyist, Mr. Sebastian O'Kelley, who then distributes the list into KAB's— or not into, but to KAB's federal delegation.

In tonight's packets, you have the proposed state resolution that was created by using what was approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission the approved planning and zoning resolution and the proposed state resolution. I have also just tonight, partly even while we were sitting here, received language from the acting city manager to clarify the city's request from the state of Alaska. And earlier this evening, Assemblymember Johnson forwarded me the city's resolutions for both state and federal. So we'll get those distributed to you tomorrow so you have them before you make decisions and we can make sure that the correct languages updated, especially for the St. Herman Harbor project for next week.

Discussion?

Questions?

Jared, there you are. Here I am. I was waiting for somebody. I thought I was not going to speak. Oh, you want to split it up.

Okay. Let's start with the state. So in regards to the state one first. Well, it's kind of a general comment, maybe to spur discussion a little bit more. So the mayor, I believe, and to an extent me and the manager will also be using this list to guide our conversations with Juno.

And then I believe the mayor will be going to D.C. to do some lobbying. Advocacy there. So I would also like you to think of this list as, here's what I want, you know, the mayor and the manager to talk to our delegation and our other decision makers. This is what we would like them to advocate for us. Because funding is going to be tight or nonexistent, but it's still an important list to have anyway.

Just in case, just in case something comes up. Thank you for that, Jared. And, and with that, I'd like to— the assembly to consider adding one project to the state list. And what that project would be is a rehabilitation of a borough park. What we would be looking at, the total cost would be $300,000.

The matching funds, local appropriation, would be $150,000. So the ask would be for $150,000. Part of my thought is there is— we continue to work towards rehabilitating parks that the borough has. And also, it's a— what do I want to say, it's a low-dollar request that maybe if there's something that comes up at the last minute. In years past, we've, we've had some of those on there.

So I won't be here next week, but I'd like you guys to consider adding that. So that's one thing. Any further discussion? Jarrett. I think the rehabilitation of Borough Parks could fit in there just nicely because from our conversations with DOT— with Alaska DOT at Suamse over the past couple of months, you know, if anything is going to be funded or if Administration is going to look at any kind of projects.

They're looking for projects that there is definitely some municipality buy-in, but also can be done in 5 years, 5 years or less.

And something like this could absolutely do that. But so they're looking for things— I don't want to say shovel ready because I really don't like that term, but 5 years or less, and something like this I think fits into it. Yeah, basically, you know, it's a matter of going through quickly the design plans, advertising, the procurement, it's about a year on there is what I'm going to say. On there. Bo?

Thanks. I would— I wasn't— I didn't intend to comment, but I think that's a great idea because I remember, I believe it was our lobbyist mentioned something similar that Smaller projects are likely going to get some attention, and following the legislature right now, it doesn't sound like there is going to be very much funding for capital projects. So I think it is a great idea to have a mixed bag of different funding amounts and for projects that are ready to fund and get going. And I think, you know, parks is always a great idea. So I like that.

Okay. Any further? Amy. Not that you guys have seen it yet, but we did put $300,000 in the Level 1 budget inside of Engineering and Facilities. Facilities for park rehabilitation, and we're going to try to do that as a recommendation from the Parks and Recs Committee on doing a park a year.

So it's something that we're supporting with the budget too. So if we were to get this money, that $150— the other $150,000 could be used somewhere else. So it's a great addition to that list. Thank you. In my opinion.

Thanks. On there. Um, any further discussion? Seeing none, we're going to take a 7-minute break. Well, it gets you guys thinking.

Thank you.

So— [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] We will go ahead and reconvene. Our 7 minutes is up. So the next item for discussion is the impacts of the Northstar Elementary School—. Federal. Oh, federal.

Go ahead. I was going by—. Federal list. No problem. Thank you, Amy.

And staff report, Amy.

It's the exact same staff report as for the state list, except this list will be going to our federal delegation.

This also kind of points us in the right direction of any requests that we want for congressionally delegated spending. So that comes from Senator Murkowski's office. We thought that that window closed tomorrow, but this afternoon she just extended it until the 28th. So we have some more time if we'd want to add more projects in there. But as of right now, outside of updating the language possibly for St. Herman's Harbor that we just got from the city of Kodiak, this is what Sebastian Commissioner O'Kelley, our federal lobbyist, drafted for us after speaking to us.

Any discussion or questions? Jarrod. Well, I'm not done with my drumstick, but— That's why I didn't start. Yeah. Sounds like a Jarrod problem.

Okay. So, on the federal list— We have— oh gosh, where is it? I'm scrolling through right now. I can't find it right now. Um, give me just a second.

Well, I thought I saw something related on here, but maybe, maybe not. I think one of my concerns, and it's not quite a capital project, and I guess this is just more for discussion, or maybe we can do something in some of the items that we already have in here. I'm really concerned about the future of FEMA at the federal level and its extremely important role here in Kodiak. And—. Or Alaska in general.

Or Alaska in general too. And so there's nothing really specific here on the federal list for advocacy for that. But if there are items on this list that we could throw in a phrase or a sentence connecting the importance of that capital project to emergency services or emergency management, something like that. I think there are a couple of— I mean, road improvements, I think, is probably one. Keeping the hospital functional is something, and for the fire station, fire and rescue.

I don't know, I'm seeing that a lot at KMXT and how much, you know, communications and that emergency communication is important. I just worry about losing that or FEMA being very, you know, kind of degraded with the current federal administration. So, I don't know, I just thought I'd throw that out there to throw in maybe a little support for them to, for Congress at least, to do their diligence with FEMA funding.

Good comment.

That kind of weighs into some of the grant applications that the borough fire departments have put into the federal, you know, originally there was the request for turnouts, which then we funded that with the ARPA money. And now the next thing on the list was radios that are qualified to go into the fire because that's become a real problem. We had a discussion, the fire board had a discussion about that Tuesday night about how the Motorola NFPA certified radios are $10,000 apiece for a personal radio on a firefighter. And now there's a third company that's come out, it's about $5,000. And so it's just very expensive.

On that personal protective equipment. So, and I think some of that is related to FEMA on the grant. I don't remember exactly how that works. I know that Bayside got a $10,000 state wildland fire grant approval, so award, I should say. Amy.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Assemblymember Griffin, are you willing to draft some language that you think that would fit in there nicely? Oh, if I have time. Okay. Yeah, I can do that.

Thank you. Just send it directly to you or send it to the clerks? If you send it directly to the clerks, they'll get there faster because I'll be at the same place you are. Oh, that's right. Yes, please.

If you can send it to me before packet release on Monday, that would be great. Thank you.

Larry.

Just a quick question while I'm looking at this. We're sending these into the feds as priority projects, but the list is not prioritized. Is that correct? Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't number them because inference when people read those is that they're a priority from— because that's what people usually do. I don't think that's our intent, is to prioritize that list.

And we went through this discussion last year because it was difficult for us to say, you know, 7 is more important than 8 and that kind of thing. And we decided they were all important. And I'd almost feel more comfortable if we had a statement saying this list is not prioritized, you know, by numbering or something.

Because I wouldn't want that inference. Some really important projects here. So I, I think number one is our congressionally delegated spending request, and that's just the— that the city of Kodiak does get their pending fiscal year '25 Senate appropriations of the $10 million for St. Herman Harbor. And the only other thing that we have specifically that is monetary is funds for the Russian River erosion control project from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The rest of this stuff is support of programs.

So saying that we would like you to continue the Russian seafood ban, we would like you to look at our fisheries disaster relief, it's not really monetary.

That's why I think that where that FEMA information would go in good after one, like, support of all federal agencies, that support, you know, fisheries regulations for the entire state of Alaska, that kind of stuff. So, um, we, we could do that, that like 2 through 12 are not in a priority order. That's language we could easily insert.

Further discussion?

Seeing none, we'll move on.

Next item is packet review.

Oh boy, I'm going to get ahead of us. Northstar discussion of the impacts. Northstar school closure staff report. Amy, moving on. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

On Wednesday, January 22nd The Kodiak Island Borough School District voted to consolidate North Star Elementary into Main Elementary and East Elementary. There are two projects needing to be addressed due to this vote. One is Jensa Jorben Wall's design plans for the North Star Elementary roof. We gave them very specific instructions to figure out how to keep a skylight in that area to ensure that there was light into the library. And the second one would be the inclusion of that pathway or sidewalk portion of Otmoloi Road.

Along Otmoloi there, we were using that Safe Roads to Schools program, and now it's a discussion on whether or not we want to continue to ask for that. The state, as soon as they heard that Northstar was going to be closed as a school, I think it was like 2 days before they reached out and were like, hey, I have a way we can save money. So because that Otmoloi project has been going on for so long, the money that was originally delegated or put towards that wasn't inflation-proofed, and inflation has happened over the last few years quite a bit, as everyone knows. And so there's not enough funds. They have continued to put a little bit of money in year after year, but they are definitely looking to save money.

So that's a, um, something that I think Mayor Arntt and I and Assemblymember Griffin, as we go to Juneau, we're meeting with DOT and the head of South Coast there, so that will be one of the things we want to talk about is how to deal with that project. So, and I know that's kind of hard to answer not knowing what we're going to use with that, do with that building, but it's something that we're going to have to address here in the next few weeks for sure. Thank you, Amy. Scott. In the packet It talks about cutting off the rebuilding of Mallard and saves roughly a million bucks, and that's reasonable to do under this circumstance, I would think.

In addition to that, when the school district decided— school board decided to close Northstar and merge the students into Maine and East, There was concern that the gym at Northstar is a full-size gym, unlike the gyms in the other elementary schools, and that there's a great deal of community action in that. Little Dribblers was one of them, and, uh, some other things as well. And if the school district is not going to have students in there in that gym, the community might well want to have that gym available for community efforts, and that would probably mean that we would have to partner again with the city in order to have that work. I know that the way the building was built, you can close off the gym and leave two bathrooms open and everything, and it's separated from the academic side of Northstar, which also has the cooking facilities for the cafeteria and the library, as well as a bunch of classrooms. So, and I don't know whether Canna is interested in that as opposed to building new, but that's something we could look at as well.

Bo. Yeah, thank you. I'm not sure how appropriate this is either, but I have some thoughts about just this topic in general. And a reporter reached out to me this week asking for my opinion on what we should do with that facility. And I just simply commented that it's too soon for me to form an opinion on that.

But I found it interesting, and I didn't get to go buy a paper today, that there's an article about all of the recommended or suggested uses for that facility, and that gave me— I don't know, the warning lights flashed for me a little bit. And I think we need to be mindful of communicating what the borough intends to do with that building without having a discussion in this venue before we talk about that offline with folks. I think people are getting their hearts set on certain trajectories, and I don't want folks to get disappointed without us having a meaningful discussion about potential uses.

I'm not opposed to additional use for that, but if it's at the— I guess I just categorically, I'm concerned if we— if the school district closed that for necessary cost saving or cost reductions for their budget to meet, to balance their budget, but we shift cost from the school district to the borough, it's still coming out of the same pool of revenue. So again, I'm not, not saying that I'm opposed to some form of use for that building, but I am opposed to using tax dollars in reverse fashion for the same facility, if that makes sense. But I would hope more information was made known to us, and I'm not hearing it from third-hand sources. Amy, I'll let you go. Larry's technically next.

Go ahead, Larry. It's your birthday on Saturday. Well, thank you. I'll remember this present when your birthday rolls around, sir. [Speaker:DR. LISA SMITH] So I've had several different people and organizations contact me about what the borough's intent for the building was going to be.

I did have two nonprofit organizations contact me about the possibility of renting a part of the building for a daycare. I have an organization that is currently just forming that is interested in after-school school program but only wouldn't require very much of the building. I have had a children's museum that wants to form contact me about using the building. I've had a potential water safety course, which you might be questioning, and I did too, how we would do that at Northstar. But, um, they have a good— they have a good plan.

Um, and then I have had an offer for someone who wants to buy the entire building and all of the land. So, um, I have also reached out to the superintendent to try to get a timeline of what the school district is thinking about when they would be out of the building. Right now it is at the end of August, but it's highly dependent on them finding a storage facility. They have a lot of stuff in that building, a lot of furniture and supplies and stuff that a lot of it will go out to the other elementary schools, but a lot of it is is just going to be extra. And so they're not sure where they're going to move their stuff.

There has been a lot of people from the public calling and saying that they are very interested in that gym staying open. It isn't as easy as including it in that three-way agreement because that three-way agreement has people already assigned to pay the heat and the electric and do the maintenance and make sure that it's clean and monitor it so it's not being being, um, you know, damaged in any way. And so that's a— and then if we would have renters in that, um, they would be probably the first to decide do they want to use the gym and then what hours they would want it and all that stuff. So I think before we can answer all those questions that the community is asking, we need to discuss when the school district is going to be out, if the school district is truly going to give us the building back, as it seems like they're going to, but there's also discussion in all directions that they should maybe keep it for a year, or, um, and we shouldn't do anything with it for a year. And that's one of the things that was said in the paper, but not from someone from the borough.

So, um, it'll be interesting to see what other uses come up. But, um, yeah, it's, it's absolutely the borough assembly's decision on how you want to go. The, the offer for it to be sold would completely take that building off of our hands, and we obviously don't have to worry about anything after that— no roof design issues or operation costs or anything. So just depends on what we want to do. And then I know we won't make a decision tonight, obviously, but it is something we're gonna have to address as the end of the school year comes around.

Larry, and then Scott. Um, I think Northstar was built for $10 million. I think to rebuild it, if we need another school, is I think going around $30 million right now. Correct. So the district needed to consolidate students, move.

And so the question is, what is the capacity? Where are they at capacity of the schools that are remaining. The real question is, if we do anything with Northstar to prevent it from being a school again and the student population starts overflowing those other schools, we're going to need a $30 million school, you know, and that doesn't make any sense, you know, especially with people laying out numbers of growth, you know, in our community. I mean, we have the best weather in the United States lately, if you like rain, you know. And, uh, so eventually— so what I believe is, you know, we need to look at those numbers.

And secondly, any use of that school needs to be done in such a way that it can be retrieved as a school within a couple of years and be a school again. I don't support selling it or doing any 10-year leases because we would be in the position of overcrowding at some point in time. And that's why Northstar was built, because we had these large cohorts coming through. And they've worked their way through. But I think we need to be very, very careful about— I think it should be used, because if it's not used, it will decay.

And there will be no ownership of it. So I don't believe in mothballing it or anything like that. It has to be heated and somebody has to keep it clean. And I also don't believe that whatever we do with it, if we rent it out to subgroups, we should not be in the business of monitoring that. We should lease out the building to somebody to do that kind of thing.

But again, the bottom line is that we need to protect the asset because it's the only one we have if we have to grow. And it's our newest school. It's in the best shape. Shape, minus the windows, but— Pardon? All brand new windows.

I'm talking about the skylight. The skylight gets a flat roof. You know, or whatever. And so that's my point is that a lot of the things that you mentioned, you know, I think it could be used for a lot of things, but I'd like to be a borough assembly or a school superintendent that comes in, or school board that says, oh, we need another school. In 10 years, and it's going to cost us $30 million or $40 million.

It's just, we need to be careful. And one of the questions I have, and I should know this, but I don't remember, is how much does it cost to heat, you know, and electrify the school? And sewer and water. Yeah. So I think that's a question that, you know, the assembly needs to know.

And, you know, The storage problem is not just a school district problem, it's a borough problem. And we have no warehouse in the borough to put things. The school district has no place to put things. They—. And if you, you have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment in that building, and commonly some districts just take it all to the dump or they give it away.

In any case, all those— as, as Bo brought up, those costs, if you close it, go to the borough, you know, whether you're replacing equipment or buildings. So I think we just need to be very, very careful with what we do and remember and make sure that school can be reopened within a certain amount of time and warning. As a school, we'll know if the kids are coming. So it's not like it has to happen right away. Thank you.

Scott, and then Ryan. I just wanted to say that I agree that selling it is a dangerous idea, especially with the concept of having the Navy move several ships here. There's going to really be another pulse of young people coming through, and I'm not sure that the two schools we have right now and Peterson can handle all of them without having the capacity of Northstar as well. So I agree with Larry on that.

Ryan.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Can you hear me okay? Yes, you're coming through fine. I take it you're on the phone. Perfect.

Thank you. Yes, good learning opportunity. Zoom does not allow you to unmute while you're driving with 4 forward sync. So I appreciate the opportunity to chime in here. I am safely parked at my destination.

Uh, that being said, I appreciate the great listening. I've listened more this meeting than spoke— than have been able to speak before, so it was great. However, now that I've got the microphone, um, I'm, I'm gonna be a little different on this one. Um, I actually don't agree that we should keep the school. Uh, I think that If we keep the school, I think that the borough has, um, proven that we are not in a position to provide maintenance at a regular routine level.

And, uh, I think that we should either consider selling the school, or if we are into a position where my opinion is not popular that we should look at a bare minimum of a triple net lease to any potential leaseholders so that we're not responsible for maintenance, that we don't have to conduct repairs, uh, or upgrades or renovations or retrofits to bring things into, you know, new consensus standards or compliance. Uh, I, I fear that, uh, from a building owner perspective, that if we retain it, it will ultimately fail or falter. Uh, that's a huge concern. Uh, and I want to echo Larry's comments that in order for us to make the best financial decision, uh, for what happens with Northstar, I would also like to get, uh, a complete printout month by month over probably a 5-year average since we are having an anomaly with weather. Of what the utility costs are, fuel, electric, water, sewer.

We've got garbage services. Obviously, we can make some adjustments as go, but we, we do need a complete picture of all of the fiscal responsibilities that come with this, uh, in order to make any decision, retainage or, uh, disposal. So, that being said, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan.

Bo? Yeah, thank you. I appreciate all the discussion as well, and I still don't have an opinion on what to— what I would vote to do with that facility, but I agree with a lot of what folks have said. Until we know what our costs are to maintain that building, and if we were to hang on to it and folks wanted to use it for various programs It would be difficult for me to support anything that didn't result in at least a cost-neutral proposal, including maintenance and utilities, all of it. Because again, this is borough funding, whether it's school district funding or from the borough itself, comes from the same revenue source, generally speaking.

I, I'm hopeful we can figure this out. I don't know if we went the route of selling that property where we could even build a new facility. And if there was an appropriate or suitable location, if the proposed offer would be enough to tuck away in a fund, I don't know if that's possible either, and generate some fixed income. Over time, should the need arise to expand back out, that's something that we should discuss. But again, I don't have an opinion, but I think we need to gather a lot more information before— and I urge caution to folks suggesting what we could do with it because we don't have this information yet.

I'm certainly not going to make a suggestion on what to do with it, but it's difficult. There's clearly a need for space for the community, but we also have to balance fiscal responsibility. This is a really difficult scenario to be in where I don't think there's any scenario that's going to unfold where there's not going to be some losers and winners with how that facility lands. But, um, I appreciate the discussion and I look forward to more information before I form an opinion. Dave.

Thank you. I wanted to go back a little in this discussion into the street and the state. Um, with Northstar closing, we're going to see an exponential increase in children on those streets in the morning now waiting for buses. So any— I would be very reluctant to agree to any descope that puts children on streets in, um, Minashka in the dark because I live right up that road and it terrifies me how close I get to kids every dang morning, um, as slow as I drive through down Otmaloy, because they're darting across in their black clothes and there's no street lights. So, um, as we go, you know, from my perspective, as we go back into discussions with the state about that project, I don't support descaping sidewalks just because it's not a legal requirement without a school.

Jerry. Um, what is it all worth? What's the assessed value of the land and the building?

Larry's— Larry's estimate on construction at $30 million is accurate.

It was $10 million when it was built almost 30 years ago.

Plus the land. I'm telling— no, no, that's— yeah, plus the $10 million was without the land, and there was another, at that time, at least half a million for the land that was paid. So you— I'm looking at the value of the land and the building at roughly $30 million on replacement value. Yeah, that's replacement value, but like market value. Value, though.

It might be something to look at. That might be a difference. You know, you have to look at the use change. Exactly. The assessed value is one thing, but market value, of course, is something totally different.

Absolutely. Yeah. So I think— I think Steven went to go at least get the assessed value, and that might help us with some of that.

I'm glad we're talking about this. Now, because I imagine this is going to have— this is going to impact the FY26 budget, so this is actually a good pre-budget discussion for us to have because we are going to start looking at that budget soon. One thing that has not been brought up, and I would be really interested in what Dave and Larry have to say about this.

Yakutat, they had a school that closed and they, the borough, the municipality, let the, let the school district keep it and the school district began to lease it out and kept that revenue.

And I wonder I wonder about that here. Even the school— even if the school district right now has said that they don't want to keep it, what if— what would you as a school board and as a school board member and superintendent think about the idea of keeping the building and then subletting it and keeping that revenue, generally speaking? I'll, I'll give you my opinion, which I've been— well, you're going to get it anyway.

Um, the— I've, I've been very clear on what I think should happen, and that is that the school district keeps the building for the next 10— 2 years to see the way— the waywardness in their piss-poor decision. On there. So, um, that's my opinion, is they need to not turn that thing over to us for the next 2 years.

Larry, I think that holding on to the building through the school district is probably a good thing initially. It would certainly de-stress them in terms of trying to figure out what to do with the equipment and storage and other things. That is also very valuable. Um, I don't have any specific, you know, recommendations other than it's a critical asset, you know, to the future of our community. And whatever we do, I'd like to to preserve it in such a way.

As far as leasing the space out, you know, one of the areas that we do have need is early learning and preschool, and it's built for that, and it's a safe building, and it's bright and cheery. It has a playground built for that. It has our— it's a full meal deal. And daycare— one of the biggest problems with daycare is getting set up in Kodiak. Kodiak is spaced and the— because I sort of supervised it, but the, the regulatory requirements for both staff and buildings for preschool and daycare are incredible.

And to have a facility available may ease the burden on many families in Kodiak. And when I first was principal there, we had a draw center that started at 7 o'clock in the morning, and parents who have kids and work, they could drop their kids off at 7 and pick them up as late as 6 o'clock in the evening, and they would have programming for them. So there's so much we could do, and there's so much the, the district may be able to do, and the college and different agencies. But it would be nice for, uh, it to be maintained under district responsibility to to a certain extent for the next year or two. It's going to cost us either way.

I mean, you know, it's whether the district does or we do it, but I think that would give them a better way to wind down their use of the building. And in the gym, it would keep the gym open, and if they don't use it for— need a lot of custodial other, then they could do that. And I'm not speaking for the district, I'm just saying that I think it could be done, but I do think that the district will be scrambling to get everything, you know, the fact that they're stratifying is, I mean, it's really a big logistical challenge. And then trying to figure out what to do with Northstar without storage and et cetera, et cetera. So hang on to it for a year at some kind of expense of sharing of some sort or whatever would be a good idea.

And that would give us the time, the time as an assembly to really, in a community, to figure out how to manage that building in an appropriate and cost-effective manner in the future. Bo, would you mind if I let Amy speak? I think she's got some information to share. So our assessor went and looked, and for 2024, that building was assessed at $7.6 million, but because that's an exempt piece of property, it doesn't get looked at very often. So if we want a real number, we'll have to go reassess that.

So that's an old number. Yeah. Go ahead, Bo. Thank you. Again, I appreciate the discussion on this topic as well.

This is going to be challenging. I have no doubt this is going to become contentious. We're going to have conflicting input and priorities from the community. I have no doubt that. Conflict is coming.

My, I guess, just topics for food for thought, and this isn't an opinion, this is just something that comes to mind with this discussion, is if we were to hang on to the facility, let's say the school district— I'm not sure, I guess rewind just a hair— if the school district holds on to the facility, they're responsible for maintenance until they release it, correct? Correct. Okay, that's what I figured. But thinking about potential uses for different programs, which a couple that were mentioned are clearly a strong need in the community, which when I think about not just the immediate need, but when we think about long-term planning, if we were to dedicate that facility or repurpose it to these types of programs, which there is a critical need for two that were mentioned already, and we also experience at some point we haven't— outmigration starts to slow and then we swing back to the up curve and we start seeing a net migration into the community and the need for expanding presents itself, what are we going to do with these programs that would be well established at that point? Point and, and would be expected to continue.

I mean, these are just things that I think people should think about, not just the immediate need, but what would the long-term impact be if we were to convert back to a school facility, but the community depended on and relied upon programs that were established established in there. That's just something we need to think about. That could be a problem down the road, but just food for thought. Again, I don't have an opinion on what to do with that. I would be curious to know.

All, all information I think is useful, including what would the value be? Do we have a suitable location to build a new school? If the funding would be enough, the revenue would be enough, and, and we could tuck it away specific for that need. These are all things I would be curious about. But again, I urge caution with committing to near-term needs without thinking of long-term implications there.

Chair? And one more thing, the keeping maintaining Northstar, not selling it because I think its value as emergency, emergency shelter, emergency facilities, which was very helpful during the pandemic. It's built for— it's in a way built for that kind of stuff. I would hate for that part of our community to lose that. So I think that's a value-added thing there for keeping Northstar.

Larry. I forgot to mention one way we could use it is to deoccupy this building and move to Northstar. Move borough government to Northstar.

Then you could tear down this building and build condos.

It sounds like we need that skylight then.

Flat roof, just flat roof. You'll eliminate— put a flat roof in there, you'll save 15% on your heating costs.

Any further comments? No, I will contact our finance director and um, the school district and find out what the costs of operating that school have been over the last 5 years so we have more information on operations costs. It does have all new siding and windows, and so we've put some money into the school so it's in good shape. And then we'll also address the capacity issues for the schools that we have for how many students we have versus how many I think those, I think those numbers, um, were given during the school board meetings. Um, they were like historical, like once upon a time East had 450 students.

Um, but I think times have changed since then with our special needs students in the space that they need. And so we can't just say those once upon numbers are the ones that can fit in those buildings. So, um, but we'll get that information for you. Is there date that you would like to come back and talk to us about, about this, that we can—. We have a joint work session with the school district on March 12th.

I don't know if they might have— I'm sure we could have a discussion with them is what I'm thinking on things too. So March 12th is when that, uh, they requested that joint work session date. So any further? I do know that they contacted a real estate agent to help them with, uh, possible storage solutions that they just don't know about yet. So we should know more by then.

Um, Ryan has his hand up, and Ryan, can you hear us and take yourself off mute? Oh yeah, I was just, uh, waiting for you to look up. You have the floor.

So I, I got to tell you, I really respect everyone's opinion about retaining the building, and everybody gives wonderful examples— emergency shelter, the, uh, you know, moving the borough offices. I agree that all of those have value and all of those have purpose and all of those are great, um, and we won't solve this tonight. I think there are lots and lots and lots of conversation But I don't want one thing to be missed, and what I want to be cautious of, or at least voice my concern, is that if the school returns the facility to us and then we say, okay, well, you can keep your stuff there, uh, to me that is a lease agreement. That is some source of revenue to offset the expense of maintaining the facility. If it's not, then it needs to be documented as in-kind contributions, which then would lower the school budget allocation when it comes time.

There needs to be some financial mechanism that is accounted for rather than just, hey, we're really sorry you had to close the school 'Let us just eat some of this for you.' I think that that's not fair for the taxpayer, and I think that that's one of those closet deals that I think could probably get a little murky, and we're trying to declutter the murkiness. And I just, while I have the floor and while I have control of the mute button, I just again want to stress that if we we keep the building, uh, that the maintenance is, uh, paid for by others. And if the building stays ours and that the maintenance remains our responsibility, uh, we might as well start budgeting for tearing that facility down within 10 years. So thank you. Thank you, Ryan.

Any further discussion? With that, we'll go ahead and move on to packet review. Um, first thing is a proclamation declaring United States Coast Guard We Applaud You Day. Um, and then we have public hearing— hearings. There's a State of Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office beverage dispensary liquor license transfer of controlling interest for Bernie's Bar LLC.

Staff report, Nova, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the assembly. So this is up for public hearing. We have sent out 150 notices, and, um, the transfer of controlling interest is transferring 50% from Mr. Bernie Balao and his wife Annabelle to now 100% to his wife. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

There were no other comments from departments objecting to this transfer, and you'll probably notice in the recommended motions we have two— one to move to non-protest and the other is to protest. So based on the information that is before you, you can choose which one you would like to to use. Thank you. Nova, one thing I would say is to me it gets a little confusing. The ABC board says we can't protest on some things.

Do we get to interject on others even though the city is—. We can on this one. The, the other matter is about the continued operation of licenses during their biannual, and we're going to be discussing that later. But this one, sure, we do have equal rights with the city. Okay, I wanted to clarify that for the public because it's clear as mud in dealing with them, so as we're finding most recently here, so Thank you for that.

Any discussion on this? Seeing none, we'll move on to second public hearing, which is an assembly review of the State of Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office liquor license transfer of ownership from Suk Si Young, doing business as Second Floor Restaurant, License number 3293 to Nunyek Café and the Deli, and transfer of location from current location of 116 West Reznoff Drive to 113 Lower Mill Bay Road. Staff report, Nova. Yes, Mr. Mayor and members of the assembly. This one is a transfer ownership and also a transfer of location.

So there's two things happening here. And then also we have two recommended motions for you to choose from. And I have created this infographic for the assembly to let you know, because it, it is really confusing on what's going on, what's going on with this licenses. This license has a pending renewal that's before the ABC Board, but because of the timeline that they have provided us to comment regarding the transfer— so there's a renewal going on and they have not decided on our protest to the continued operation. We also have a protest for the renewal of this license.

Both of those two, the continued protest, uh, protest to the operation of that license and the renewal, are on hold as of the moment because they were postponed by the ABC board to a meeting after March 9th. So those are pending. However, since we do not know when they're going to have that meeting, if you're not going to make a decision on this before March 9th, you're technically allowing this. You're not protesting it. That's why it's before you.

I know it's, it's convoluted. That's why we put this little deal right here for you. And then the City of Kodiak also filed a protest on this license, so that's pending before the Office of the Administrative Hearing. We have provided you a copy of the letter from the City of Kodiak, and I think it's, it's a very good read. So I strongly urge you to read the information that is before you because you're gonna have to select which motion you're gonna make at the next meeting.

I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Amy, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So Nova and Lena and I and the mayor all sat through that 8 hours of AMCO board listening to all the different— yes, uh, all the board decisions that happened that day and When it got to the Kodiak section, they were confused. So as you read this and it's confusing, the, the professionals did not know what to do and did not know how to handle it. And there's been new code added that made it even more confusing.

Um, so on a date after March 9th, they are going to hold a special meeting just to deal with the Kodiak licenses. They thought that we had more than our 4 allowable they had to be corrected. They would not let me protest the 2611 because the city already had— there was argument about that. So we have a decision on whether we want to protest them not allowing us to protest. Um, and so it does get very confusing, but the— I think the boiled-down summary is that, um, if we follow the process, we have to make a decision on this license on whether or not it should the owner should have it at all, and then we need to make a decision on whether or not it gets transferred.

I'm gonna make Sima get up again. Sima has a date on when the last time this— the owner of this license filed business personal property tax, which would be required if your business was actually operating. And what year was that, Sima? 2011. And in the AMCO meeting, They said very specifically that they were operating all the way through 2023.

So there is a sense of misinformation happening. They also reported zero sales tax to the city of Kodiak. So for quite a few years. So there's, there's some craziness happening in this case. And if you refer to the page 3 of 3 of the handout, I've I pulled out the times that they have applied for business licenses within the state of Alaska, and all the licenses are expired.

And also the waiver of operation applications, I have jot down from 2015 to present all on what's going on to those waiver of applications because they needed to file waiver of applications if they have not operated for 240 hours per year. So they just filed their waiver number 1 and waiver number 2 for the years 2022 and 2023. On December 29th, 2024. I also contacted the AMCO and asked them if a waiver number 3 for last year has been filed, and there was no waiver filed for last year, and that was due on November 1st, 2024. So right now, there's no waiver for waiver number 3.

And the waiver number 3 should go before the ABC board for approval. And that has not happened yet. So there's quite a bit going on to this license, and I just wanted to give you the information. Thank you.

Dave. Yeah, I could go the rest of my life without hearing our EPL. And be happy.

This is—. I just don't feel like we need to belabor this point. The license shouldn't be active. It shouldn't be issued. We should be protesting the transfer of a license that should not exist.

Right. Is there— I see all nods in agreement. Can we move on? I agree wholeheartedly. It's going to be a question— there may only be 4 people.

Here next Thursday, and it'll have to be unanimous on there. So please familiarize yourself with all the information here because it, you know, listening to them, you know, they really don't like to even go to a third waiver, and it wasn't requested, and it's past the deadline, and the license, it's— you said it very clear and concise. But we couldn't seem to get that through to them and get them to understand. So it's a challenge. That's all we can do.

Bo. Thank you. I did read all of this and wanted to thank you and Lena and Amy. Thank you so much for continuing to package and repackage just so we can have some level of understanding of what's going on here. I read it all again this morning.

Morning. Um, excuse me. And so I just wanted to make sure one thing was clear for me. Um, so when the application for transfer occurred, granted, it's really disappointing that this wasn't made known to the assembly by the licensee. That's really frustrating for me.

Um, it doesn't do any favors to the question at hand on how we feel about the transfer application because we got blindsided by it. I just wanted to make sure that we weren't punishing the transfer applicant based on lack of information. I— it seems to me at face value anyways, they did their due diligence, followed the process correctly, I'm, I'm still not sure how I feel about taking action that would punish someone who did their due diligence to transfer this over, to put it into use. And so, but, but what I want to make sure I, I understand perfectly clear is that at the time they actually applied and began the process, if Amco settle if— is the goal of this next meeting to determine if they would have been eligible for that transfer at that time, or are they going to squint their eyes and say we're going to work with it because we didn't do our work on our end, so we're just going to see what we can do?

Amy. So I think the only thing that we can do is follow the process that's laid out before us. We— I have AMCO is so far behind. They said that they got that application for transfer sometime in 2023. It didn't arrive at the borough until January of 2025.

Um, they had— we were already a year into a 2-year license before it even arrived at the borough. So a lot of the problem, as one of our public comment people mentioned, is just the, the pace that AMCO is keeping up. The the, the license in question, because they came in and they're telling Amco that they were eligible and operating all the way through 2023, when the facts just don't align with that. If we follow our borough process, and that's the clerk send an email out to all the departments, and they do their investigation, and they talk to law enforcement, and they talk to the building officials, the assembly's role there is saying either the borough has a reason to protest or does not have a reason to protest. They don't have to listen to us.

We're just advisory. So if we go in and we're trying to protest the fact that that license would be in continuing, and then we have to also make the decision on the transfer. So our decision and a letter to the board has to be in before March 9th. If we don't do that by that date, then it's a non-protest. So And Nunyak, a representative from Nunyak was on that call and sat there, you know, that entire, like an hour and a half and did not get to speak at all.

And I even pointed out that they were there. I was like, hey, she's here. You can ask her questions. And she had applied for a license previously, been given a license, and then they came back and took it away. So the process is not A to B, kind of situation.

But by clearing up this license, it's a license available in the community. And also 2611 is going to be a license, if it's not reissued, will be a license available in the community. So if the goal is to have all 4 of our licenses— I'm not using the acronym for you, Mr. Johnson— working and available in the community, then us following the process and protesting We'll put 2 out in the community. And I don't know how many people are asking, but we know of 2 very good candidates that have expressed desire for those licenses, and their requests are in. So I believe— and Nova, correct me if you think something different— but by clearing up those 2 licenses, they can still end up in the hands of the people who want them.

Yeah. But the way I look at it is the license should have been surrendered many years ago to the state and been made available. And, and so it's not really— you have to operate, and it's been every bit of 10 years, every bit of that, if not longer. And so, you know, they had the one downstairs that isn't as close, but this one should have been surrendered instead of trying to hang on to under the auspice that there's some monetary value in transferring that to someone. It puts everybody on an even playing field on there.

So my problem is, if you say you don't want to hinder the transferee, what you're doing is allowing somebody to lie through the process and not represent it to the state properly, and then say you can transfer that. Bowen, then Jared. Yes, just to follow up, thank you for that. So if at the time the transfer application process began, if at that date technically they should not have—. Correct.

—Had that license at that time, then that makes sense to me. I just want to make sure someone wasn't being punished without making that very clear to everybody. It's, again, it's really disappointing how this all took place. I wish we would have known this earlier. I don't know if that would have changed anything, but it's unsatisfying that folks have been looking forward to using this in the community and they're going to potentially have to wait longer.

But we should— honor transparency in government, and so if that was not available— should not have been available at the time of the transfer application landing, then I can't support keeping that in motion with the hope that those two— that Amco doesn't take forever to make these available. That's what I'm worried about is how long are they going to take. If they didn't even make it known to us that this was happening, happening until a year later, I think about— and again, this probably won't sway my decision, but I worry about how long they're going to take to make these available for these business owners who are just dying to get this revenue going and provide this service for the community. So I hope they can shore up their— whatever their down— shortcomings are at AMCO. I think the manager did a fantastic job of realigning them with expectations that they follow process.

I really appreciated that. Mic drop moment. It certainly made the room really quiet. Now I am just ranting, but really unsatisfying at how they handle business. Jarrod.

Thank you. I think this is something that we should bring up with our legislative delegation. I know back when we were having issues with the DMV down here, it took some pressuring and some lobbying efforts with our rep and with our senator, and I think it got itself— I think that helped to straighten some of that out. So I wonder if we could just give them a little poke with this too. I know that's a whole other branch of government they're not really much involved with, but it might help.

And then this is kind of a little tangential. This is not just a transfer of ownership, it's transfer of location. Who owns 113 Lower Mill Bay? [SPEAKING SPANISH] The same person who owns the license right now. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Kim.

So, Larry, just to get this straight in my own mind, when the applicant originally applied for transfer, there was a valid— invalid license, but it was still a valid license in play even though By examination and sales tax, it wasn't. It was still, as far as the Alcohol Control Board, it was a valid license. As far as they were concerned, but for that '22-'23 time period, AmCo never actually asked the borough for an opinion. It never came to us. We never got that request.

And so we didn't get to weigh in on that time period. No, I understand that. But when they applied, it was valid, and technically they could have transferred it. If we didn't get involved because they would have assumed it was a valid license. Well, they would have had to come to us and ask about the transfer just like they are now.

It just would have happened in 2023 instead of 2025. Okay, we would have been in this same process, and I think we would have found these exact same results then versus just doing it later now. Well, I, I just share Bo's reluctance to— I mean, you want to do the right doing the right thing, but then you have to follow the—. Well, the— so the night that we— this is going to be rude, but the night that the assembly voted to allow that, we had gotten misinformation from calling the state ourselves. And the vote was, I feel like she's trying to do the right thing.

And that is exactly what Amco did last week or two weeks ago, the night of the work session. One week ago. Wednesday. Um, time flies. Um, so that, that's, that what we did there as a borough is exactly what Amco did.

And that's that mic drop moment that I did. I was like, look, you have tasked us to do this and follow these rules, so I don't understand how you're not following the same rules. So if— why do we even participate in the process and go through all of the steps if we're going to get there and you're just going to be like, oh, if feel like she's doing the right thing, because that's exactly what happened. And that's why we're having our own meeting. Not only were they super late in getting the information to us, and it makes it all muddy and creates the feelings that you're feeling now, but it also creates a, like, do not pass something that's not enforceable.

Do you know, not, um, this is follow the black and white and not follow the I know the community member. And Nuniak is fantastic. I want them to get that license. I like that owner. I, I look at her as a friend, but the rules are the rules and we should follow the rules.

So one thing that I'll, I'll say too is over the years I didn't have any idea about these. They never came before the borough and just It wasn't until last year. Otherwise, my previous 5 years continuous service here, they never really came. And then it came, and I was confused because somebody said, well, it's a, it's a second floor one. Well, that hasn't existed in 10 years.

So do you mean the downstairs one? Well, we didn't know, wasn't it? You know, I asked the question NOVA did the research and had no idea there were so many different liquor license in Kodiak and throughout the state, and that we only had 4 of these restaurant licenses, and one person had 2 of them, 2 of the 4, and hadn't been operating one of them for at least 10 years and the other one for at least 4 years. So, um, I want to thank Nova. She did that color sheet, which really helped me and listed the different owners.

But that was Nova. That wasn't something that we got that way from the state. And the other thing was there was a new state law that went into effect 2 years ago on the liquor laws. And that was Uh, Pete Machicki, who's now the mayor of the Kenai Peninsula Borough, was Kenai's senator for 10 years, and it took him 10 years to get that new rewrite through. And they screwed up several places that we have found, and I only hope they can fix some of this stuff much sooner than that.

Amy, two really quick comments. I think A lot of the times it doesn't come before the borough is because these liquor licenses get put in their consent agenda. In that 26-page agenda, there was page after page after page that they were like, any questions about the agenda? Okay. Or do we consent?

We do. And then hundreds got passed in just one vote, right? So, um, a lot of times those were wrapped up in those. That's why they didn't come here. And also So I got a text from someone in the back row back there that said if we would have looked at this in 2023, we would have also found reason to protest because there were things that were going on with that business that would have caused us to protest at that point.

Nova. Yes, I would have to agree that we didn't. So in 2022, for the renewal of 2022 to 2023 license, the borough never got a notice. The city of Kodiak did, but the borough did not. We were in the COVID sheet, but when we went back to the email that was sent to the city, the Kodiak clerk's office was not addressed— it was not included in the to address.

So we missed our opportunity to review these licenses during that period for 2 years. And then we caught it when we were doing the biannual for this year. And the application for these 2 years was sent to the— to AMCO on February 27th, 2024, but it didn't get to us until January 8th, 2024. So it took almost a year for us to get it, and then we got the transfer application on— when did we get that? January 8th.

January 8th, 2025. So that's the order of those licenses, or that license. On what happens. I understand your quandary, but I hope you understand the step process. It's been complicated.

Bo? Yeah, thank you. I appreciate everyone's comments and insight there. And I did— again, I did read this, and it sounds like— or not sounds like, it clearly appears that The Honorable Dana Walickiewicz from the board chair here kind of reiterates everything that was said here and just making sure I didn't miss anything as far as the timeline. And it doesn't sound like when the transfer— getting back on topic to this agenda item, that when the transfer application was submitted, that wouldn't have been a valid license at that time.

Time if we had been notified in a timely manner from AMCO. So extremely disappointing that AMCO has created this situation, in my opinion, and people are suffering because of it. But yeah, I mean, it's fairly clear at this point for me, I can't support the transfer given we should follow the rules as Madam as the city manager put it. And I hope that this will result in a timely turnover for the community to be able to use these licenses. Scott.

I'm aghast at the incompetence of AMCO. And is state government really this sloppy? I mean, we read in the paper that the state has been shorting people on Medicaid payments. Or Medicare payments and everything. Is this the way we're running the government here?

I mean, I think we should put some kind of a big-ass protest about Amco in here because a lot of people are being cheated because of their incompetence.

Thank you.

Moving on, resolutions is next in the packet review. We have resolution number FY2025-15 authorizing the manager to accept the 2025 volunteer fire capacity grant for the fire protection area number 1 in the amount of $10,000. Staff report, Amy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The USDA Forest Service through the State of Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry and Fire Protection made grant funds available to volunteer fire departments.

The criteria to meet the— to be eligible for the funding was to serve a population of 10,000 or less, be registered with the Alaska Division of Life— Fire and Life Safety, be National Incident Management System compliant, and be in compliance with the Volunteer Fire Capacity Awards, provide documentation of a minimum availability of 10% matching funds. Grant funds include Grant fund uses include increasing fire— fire safety, improving the firefighting capabilities of rural volunteer fire departments, and enhancing protection in wildland urban interface. Requested items listed on the grant application included portable radios, battery chargers, batteries, and floodlights. These funds will be accepted via resolution because they have a specific destination.

Any questions or comments on this? Seeing none, we'll move on to the next resolution, which is Resolution FY 2025-16, adopting a state legislative capital improvements project priority list for the 2025 legislative season. Staff report, Amy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We'll go ahead and make those changes that we talked about tonight on the agenda item to both this resolution and the federal resolution and make sure that the— that information gets to the clerks so they can update it for the regular meeting next week.

And I feel that Amy just got done addressing the next resolution, which is the 2025-17 on the federal priorities list. I don't think we need any staff report there. Any questions? Seeing none, we'll move on to ordinances for introduction. It's ordinance number FY2025-02A, amending ordinance number FY2025-2, fiscal year 2025 budget, by amending budgets to account for various revenues that are over budget, providing for additional expenditures, and moving funds between projects.

Staff report. Amy.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The— this ordinance presents the net changes for additional funding requests which occurred during the current fiscal year for items or circumstances not known or expected during the initial creation of the fiscal year 2025 budget or project estimates. There's two categories: funds not including capital project funds. Funds are accounts established to account for the revenues and expenditures of money with a specified purpose. The following funds are being changed with this budget amendment: will be the General Fund, the Solid Waste Collection and Disposal Fund, Hospital Facility Fund, and the Kodiak Fisheries Research Center Fund.

The projects within the capital project funds will also be affected. Since most projects cover multiple years, the borough does not create annual budgets for individual projects. Instead, each project budget is developed with the project when the project is originated. Throughout the life of a project, the scope of work, deadlines, and the need for money may need to be amended. The projects being amended in this budget amendment are— I will read— uh, Fisheries Development will have an increase of $20,000.

Seawater Storage and Filter Vessels will decrease by $30,000. Exterior to the KFRC building will decrease by $52,335. The Baylor Building UST removal will be decreased by $22,052. The Leachate Aeration LTP Pre-treatment Upgrade project will increase by $250,000. The structural analysis and project list development will decrease by $11,538, and the fire alarm replacement and upgrade project will decrease by $692,482.

And the reasoning of those are all listed in the ordinance when you go in and read it, so you can, uh, find out. So as we go through projects every year and we close projects out and there are still funds available in them, this is the process we use to get them from the project back into the fund. So just for example, Capital Project Fund 497 for Project $621,000, the fire alarm replacement and upgrade, that project changed direction. So that $692,482 that was being held in that project will now go back to that enterprise fund. Does that make sense?

Any questions or discussion? Staff at this time? Seeing none, move on to other items. There is the confirmation of the Merrill appointments of city and borough representatives from the Planning and Zoning Commission to the Borough Lands Committee, which is Ms. Tracy Craig and Ms. Sarah Frazier. Last night, the Planning and Zoning Commission had work session, and basically, it was the first meeting for Sean Cleary.

Nick Mangini wasn't able to make it.

Basically, it's the first time in a while that there's been a full board, and they're looking forward to that. The only thing they have for next week, their regular meeting, is election of officers, be it chair and vice chair, and then also them making a recommendation on these 2 seats. And basically, they agreed that they were going to— they were in agreement with Tracy Craig and Sarah Fraser. I had shown these before in order to get on the agenda because I need both of them for a quorum next month at the Lands Committee meeting. So, any questions or discussion?

Bo? Just a quick comment. I watched that meeting as well. I'm a rebel and I watch all the meetings having coffee in the morning. I'm grateful as well for folks volunteering.

It was nice to see that you do have full seats now. I encourage both committees to move forward. The community is waiting for land to purchase and develop housing. I would— personally, I would prefer seeing lots in town, close to town, for workforce support. I'm not sure how I feel about the more remote locations for land, but back to my original point of encouragement is let's move quickly.

We've been waiting for this, and I'm glad folks are volunteering their time. Let's identify some land that we can consider disposing, get it in front of us the public. We've been waiting for a very long time for this, so I encourage to— for them, both bodies, to fill their agendas and fill them quickly and keep busy because the community is waiting. We're waiting to make these decisions as soon as possible. Thank you, Bo.

Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll move on to manager's comments. Amy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, in our continuing work with the Russian River bank stabilization.

The residents have been working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to address concerns along the riverbank. There's— they were just told about an emergency program that helps folks out who have had major land loss due to a single major weather event. The homeowner would have to have KIB sponsor them, report the loss, and then they'd have to file within 60 days. That is our fastest method of getting those folks help. As you saw in the federal CIP list for congressional delegated spending, we are asking for $200,000 to start the floodplains management process with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as well.

So we have multiple paths going to try to help the families along the river get the help that they need. Assessor Sima Group will be the administrative official for the February 20th and March 6th regular meetings. I met with representatives from Kodiak and Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council today to develop a new methodology for bringing SERVS public outreach training to Kodiak. Kodiak doesn't have the type of passenger vessels that other communities have, and so we're working on alternate solutions. They usually have 45, 50, sometimes 60 people depending on the community go on a passenger vessel boat right out next to the SERVS boats and get to watch them deploy boom and learn about oil spills.

We just don't have that kind of vessels here. And so we're working on drones and getting video from Alyeska and teaching Kodiak here a different way. It's Kodiak's turn for that training next spring. So hopefully we'll come up with something that's great. I attended a meeting with AML today solely about the interpretation of the word charitable in Alaska state code and how it applies to property tax.

There were both lawyers and assessors there. It's not the meeting I thought I was going to, but I learned a lot while I was there. I didn't know they were all lawyers besides me, and they were— you— they were so smart, and they were— they just had such a better understanding than what I did. And I was like, who are these people? And then when I found out, I was like, okay.

But the— it really affects us and our property tax, not only with our current Supreme Court case, but with land that has exemptions on it. And one of the big problems in the state of Alaska are nonprofits who own land and do charitable things and do charitable events on that land like one week a year, and then they aren't assessed property tax because they're charitable. So a lot of communities are trying to figure out how to make that more equitable with other people. The both the finance— Department and Community Development are working on literature that they have made for short-term rentals and accommodation tax. Um, once we get that updated, I'm sure the assembly will like to see it.

It's part of an education piece so people understand what the requirements are when they are, um, starting a short-term rental. So if we do go with that business license program or whatever we do go with, we'll be able to include it right in those brochures. Uh, there is a House Bill number 60 Um, that is going to require school districts and municipality-owned hospitals to purchase their agricultural goods and seafood from local Alaskan sources. Uh, there is a summary from AML attached to your packet tonight. I've also shared it with the superintendent.

Um, it is just a bill going through the House this year. It is not finalized, but AML is reaching out and asking what the potential impacts could be to municipalities and school districts. So that's why I sent to the superintendent in it, just to give her a heads up. She said they would look at it. This week, ENF staff worked with Jensen Yorba Wall to list and prioritize projects that are both being worked on currently and will be worked on in the upcoming years.

Staff organized projects by the current level of design for each project, the level involvement from our architect, the engineering firm primarily responsible for design, the anticipated design year, the proposed bid year, the potential— It goes on and on. So, um, the way that we've done projects before hasn't been in this kind of organized list. So our project manager, Cody Allen, has been working with Corey Wall from Jensen Yorba Wall to make a list so that when people say, hey, what are you guys going to do in the summer of 2026, we can answer. So I'm excited about that. Um, it's turning out to be a very colorful spreadsheet, which is my favorite kind of spreadsheet, and I think it's going to be very useful for our project planning in the future.

In finance, we're in the middle of the 2024 foreclosure, uh, process. The local newspaper is publishing the foreclosure list. The 4 weeks began on February 21st. If you see your name on that list, please contact the finance department for an updated payoff amount. Our property assessment and taxation implementation project still are telling us 21%, but we're still working Our go-live date is still expected to be June 25th of this year.

Our electric timesheet, uh, software— staff is working with the vendor to set up business rules and processes. We have a lot of different people who, uh, record their hours in a lot of different ways, especially those who assign them to different projects throughout the week. So, um, we're hoping to go live mid-April depending on staff training ability and if IT can fit it in their workload. In community development, that February 27th date is coming closer and closer. We are going to ask you about that 364-page document.

So if you are bored, please read that. Planning and Zoning Commission met last night. The mayor just told you what happened and what is going to happen the next week. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. In assessing, we had a total of 33 seniors and 4 disabled veterans.

That didn't file for 2025. 6 Senior citizens and 1 disabled veteran who is a new file have provided us with late file applications. 1 Disabled veteran pulled his exemption this week after determining that he was staying in Florida and wants to claim residency there instead of here. Um, and it's really great when they say that they're moving or they're staying somewhere else so that we don't have to go through that whole process. So thanks to him.

For values, same thing that we said last week, we're not seeing leveling or decrease in values for properties. Um, our notice of values will be mailed on February 26th. The appeal period begins February 27th and runs through March 28th. Alaska Taxable reports that the Kodiak Island Borough's assessed rates are at 79%, and they have to be at 80%. I did make sure that that was emailed to the assembly last week, so you should have your very own copy of 2024 Alaska Taxable available to peruse.

Also fascinating. In Engineering Facilities, we have our multi-facility elevator modernization RFP out and back in. The assembly will be asked for approval at the March 6th regular meeting. Again, we only had one bidder, just like the KFRC, same person, so you should— their name will be familiar. The Borough Building Abatement Project associated with our roof Roof drain piping has been scheduled for the 14th through the 16th, so it should start tomorrow and be done by Sunday.

That's in the hallway right outside of engineering facilities. The roof drain will be repaired by plumbers and staff after we get cleared from the abatement. The Borough Building boiler installation, it says no updates, but then right as Cody was driving away from the building, I got a phone call that he just got an update that all but one of the punch list items is done, so we just have to replace one stack and that 3-year-long project will finally be done. Mental Health Building— the contractor has begun hazardous material sampling and anticipates mobilizing the last week of February and begin demolition the first week of March. When they were here for their walkthrough, we had PCB testing.

Those testing requirements are going to be an additive cost to the project because we found that form of forever chemicals in a lot of different surfaces and materials in the building. We're not sure of the full extent, but they— those kind of chemicals don't— aren't accepted at any landfill in the state of Alaska. So those are kind of the stuff that have to go on a barge to Oregon, get put on a train to western Oregon, and there they will live out their life with our name on them. KFRC, there's no changes this week. At the landfill, the Baylor Building Tipping floor caulking was completed on the 8th.

Uh, the project is considered complete, so we're going to transition to closeout on that. We are evaluating, um, options for reinforcing that floor. Uh, that's one of the other things you got this week was that structural analysis. Staff has applied for, uh, AML-sponsored heavy equipment request. Uh, they're doing a statewide request mostly for rural communities to be able to get heavy equipment.

There's a 25% match, but we would have to buy that equipment full price anyway, so we're excited at the chance of getting our— some help on that. And they're also finishing up an RFP for the regional solid waste management plan, and that's that $250,000 grant that we got from the Denali Commission. At the Leachate Treatment Plant, staff is working on the installation of new membranes. Uh, if you've been out there, those are the long white things at the end of the process that take everything that's left out of the stuff. Out of the leachate.

Univar Solutions visited the site to conduct flocculant testing on the waste activated sludge, which, um, Jenna just put in there the acronym, and so I had to ask her to explain what that was, and she told me it was a process to get the solids out of the system so they don't build up for the belt filter press operations. We also have ongoing discussions with the engineer, plant manufacturer, and ADEC improving water quality discharge, and that's just a really nice way of saying we're having a hard time meeting our permit requirements with the current leachate treatment plant and pretreatment plant. At the high school, we have multiple roof leaks. We have initiated a warranty claim and will coordinate the repair efforts with the certified installer. Out at Carlock, ADEC would like a further characterization and delineation to to provide more information on the extent of soil contamination and to demonstrate whether the groundwater is being affected.

So staff has reached out to the contracted firm that has previous experience on this site. And it looks like we're going to have to do monitoring— more monitoring wells out in Karluk. For service area contracts, we have our follow-up meeting with the Alaska Department of Labor scheduled for the 25th of February to ensure our new contracts are compliant with wage and hour regulations. Also, the road service area modifications to the Department of Transportation standard specification for highway construction were sent to the road service area board members for review and comment from the 3rd to the 7th. We didn't actually receive any comments.

We posted the road service area specifications on the website if anyone wants to reference them. Once we have that Alaska Department of Labor meeting, those contracts will go back to the individual road service areas, and we will ask them for anything that they see that is different for their specific road area. Because if you remember, for Bayview and Minashka, they're like, you can't do the same thing because we have different needs. And so we're gonna make sure that all of those needs get included as we move forward. In information and technology, under security, we're working on an approval workflow for our help desk software.

That's ready to go. We're just waiting for our HR representative to return from vacation to train and deploy. Uh, we've installed software at Women's Bay Fire Department for their responder PC. We have finished our redesigning of the display and camera layout in the conference room. So when you go down there, the TVs have multiplied.

There are two, and they put a new camera in there. So our video conference capabilities have improved. Um, IT is configuring iPad for a new Planning and Zoning member, because when they come on, they all get an iPad for their use for borough business. And, uh, we are pushing out all of the Windows 11 major update to workstations and monitoring that progress. GIS is working on maps for the mayor for Lands Committee and maps for the public by request.

We do sell maps when people need them. And I just want to address, although it has been a long time since she was here, Um, one of our public comments tonight was specific about opioid settlement funds, um, and that is the first item on our reminder for budget discussions for fiscal year '26. After the report tonight, you'll see that extension from Senator Murkowski's office for congressional delegated spending. You'll also see an update from Kodiak Soil and Water Conservation District with a lot of great information and pictures about where they've worked in the borough, um, in the 2024. And that is the end of my report, except for there is also— sorry— that impact statement for House Bill 60 about the local agriculture and seafood as it might affect local school districts and hospitals that are owned by municipalities.

And I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions of Amy? Larry. Just going back to You're meeting on service areas, and I just wanted to ask you this question, and maybe it wasn't inferred or not. What responsibility do we have over service districts?

The code says that, um, the service district contracts will be administered by the manager or their designee. And so mostly the service district chairs work with their designated— or the contractors who won that contract, and they cover all of the work that's necessary. If there are complaints that come into the borough, it is again to the manager or the designee to try to work with the service district chairs to figure out how to take care of those complaints. Does that mean the borough assembly or the borough manager has ultimate oversight? I've got some comments on that too under the mayor's comments to— Yes.

Any other questions? Bo? Thank you. I'm glad to see the opioid settlement topic at the top of our next fiscal year discussion. It was disappointing that we suggested putting those to use this fiscal year, and I don't remember the exact circumstances of why we were unable to, but that's frustrating for me as well that that money is just sitting there.

And not going to good use for those who need it. I hope we can make that work this time. I have a similar question about— well, not necessarily a question, but I guess something to think about for service districts. Do we modernize how we address the complaint process to— I would imagine without fully appreciating the administrative burden this may bring, I do think it would be beneficial for us to start thinking about what a standardized complaint process looked like, where citizens can— or members of— people who live in certain service districts, they can submit a complaint to a centralized system or location. And that way, it's monitored and tracked.

That way, nothing falls through the cracks. We have timelines associated with it to make sure that folks who are requesting need receive resolution, whether that's the issue they're looking to get worked on happens, or we can say, hey, you know, this doesn't fall under the scope of the service district. So I think we, we have some room for improvement there on how we address that. It sounds like we, we can find some areas for improvement there, but that would be my hope, is that we have a standardized process for tracking complaints without fully appreciating and understanding what that would look like. Amy.

Although there wasn't a question, I'm going to answer both of them. Opioid money. Last year when we talked about the opioid money, we talked about it after the nonprofit process, and so not everyone was given the same opportunity to ask for those funds. And so we said we're going to incorporate it into the funding for nonprofits this year and make sure that it was available to people fairly. The second point there is that, um, it was very— it's very hard to budget for and figure out because as different settlements are settled on the federal level and that money trickles down to us, it's different every year.

But last year we decided that we would include that and let people tell us what they would do with it and give us the reasons on why it would be good for their organization this year. That's why it's first, is because we identified it so early. We were actually in the budget process Work order complaints. I say work order complaints because that's how Women's Bay does it. When a complaint comes in, they have like a work order system that they track it.

And so that could be something that we ask the different services areas to do. And then when they have their quarterly meetings, at least their quarterly meetings, they can— the service area boards can review those work orders and And then the— as far as the administrative load, the number of phone calls I get, um, are many and frequent. And so having that system would actually, I think, make the administrative load less. So I think that's a good idea. Okay, Jared.

Sorry, a quick question about the high school roof. This is unrelated to the damage that it that we had on it a couple years ago that we had to fix, or is it just the rain? That's what I was wondering. This is unrelated to that. So the damage the last time we fixed it was partially due to a senior prank.

Um, this is not in the same area. So, um, the— I thought every time we had a leak that we would see if there was a warranty and we'd go after the warranty claim. That's not always what do, but we're doing it this time, so it's taking a little bit longer. Usually when we have a roof leak, we're like, ah, fix it right away. This isn't a very serious leak, and it's not landing in areas that people are like slipping and falling or causing a lot of problems.

And so we are having someone come down to evaluate for warranty work, and then we'll have the warranty cover it, which will be lovely.

Okay, anyone Anyone else have any questions of the manager report? Seeing none, we'll move on to Clerk's comments. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the assembly. So I've been work— I worked on the research for code change regarding remote participation for meetings, and I have sent that out. So hopefully I'll hear from the sponsors of that agenda item request, and then we can get that drafted.

A friendly reminder that the APOC financial disclosure forms are due March 15th. It is important to file on time to avoid any penalties. Records update: we have processed 26 records requests for this fiscal year. A records disposal report is in the works, and that will be presented to you in the next few months. Our online, online code is current, and we have distributed paper supplements on February 20th— February 7th.

We have distributed the notice of expiring contracts for calendar year 2025. We've been busy with liquor license renewals and liquor license transfers. Talking about the liquor license, we're going to switch from the 3293 that we discussed earlier, and now we're switching over to to the 2611. This was the one that was heard at the last meeting of ABC board, and it was the continued operation protest that we filed was denied. So you— I have received the letter today, and we have 15 days to make a decision whether you want to protest it.

There is already a protest from the City of Kodiak. So I do not know what you want to do. I don't know if you want to put this on our next regular meeting agenda next week so you can file a protest to the Office of Administrative Hearing, or are you going to drop it? I'm, I'm not sure. I had a lot of questions and they were very hesitant in answering my questions, as you can tell.

I, I had to pick up the phone and talk to them because they don't want to put anything in writing because of the potential appeal that the assembly may be putting forward. So I am confused, and I do not have all the answers for you, but right now what is before you is an opportunity to appeal that declination of your protest of the continued operation of this license. So let me know what you would like to do so we can place it on the agenda for next week. You have 15 days. I know, which means it's— that's all we have, so it has to be that meeting on there.

Let me know if you want to pursue it. Personally, I think it needs to be listed on the agenda. And I think we need to protest. We need to vote to protest in order to hold our ability to protest through this, because they denied that we had it. There's a— there's conflicting language in their regulations is how they're getting there.

But in order to protect our position right now, I think we need to protest. So we can— I'm looking for heads or thumbs on there. So I add it to the agenda for next week? Yes. Okay, thank you.

Dave? Okay, yes. Okay, I'll add it for next week. Boards and committees, the clerk's office will be staffing, or we've been— we will be staffing the Planning and Zoning Commission meetings for this month. And then we're also start staffing the Kodiak Fisheries Workgroup and the Borrowed Lands Committee.

We're preparing for the Board of Equalization appeal. Uh, the BOE meeting is scheduled on Monday, May 5th. The BOE will have training on April 24. The BOE filing will be from February 27th until March 28th. Um, I have attached the agenda item request, um, form tracking elections.

We're preparing our calendar for the upcoming elections. Absentee by mail request forms will be available April 1st. Uh, denominating petitions will be available in July, August August 1st through 15th will be the filing period. Seats that are coming up: mayoral seat and 2 assembly member seats, 1 school board seat.

If you are traveling, please let me know, because I think we're gonna be— we'll have quite a few assembly members traveling, so we need to track those, track attendance. And just a reminder that you have a joint work session with the school board on March 12th. And that's all I have. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Any questions of the clerk?

Dave. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Very brief. Would it be appropriate at this time for the clerk on behalf of the assembly to engage the borough's attorney to start writing our protest in anticipation of that meeting?

Mr. Mayor, I have sent a copy of the letter that was sent to me today. I advised the attorney that that's what we have received. I would greatly appreciate his help because it's, it's really difficult navigating this system. It's all new to me also. Yeah, especially the confusion.

Yes, on it. I think that's legitimate. She's already talked to him. I'm seeing head shaking yes on this. Please do.

Thank you. Um, any other questions or comments of the clerk report? Okay, then we'll move on to assembly member comments. Bo, I'll start with you. Thank you.

Excuse me, I'm just— I appreciate folks coming out again and giving us their input. And all of the discussions we had, things are going to get more challenging. I think the next few months here are going to be— we are going to have some difficult decisions ahead of us. I appreciate all the guidance from the community and from our directors and the manager and clerks, and it is a lot of information to digest, but I am grateful for all of it. So thank you.

Thank you. Chairing.

Just a couple quick things. I'm not sure if we fully responded to the manager's request that we maybe give a little bit more direction about North Star. I know there's a joint work session coming up. I imagine we'll be talking about it come budget time, whenever that particular item is is up for review and discussion. I do think we should, because it is definitely going to affect next year's budget, we should keep that at the forefront when we get— and that will be level 1 is beginning of March?

You actually will have level 1 next week on the 20th. Sweet. Okay. And then good luck, SEMA as the AO over the next couple meetings. Is that all, Chair?

No, that's it. Okay. Thank you. Dave. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I will be very brief. I just wanted to thank DOT for their new enthusiastic enforcement of parking regulations at the airport. Despite having my— despite searching for a good 20 minutes for for a long-term parking spot. When none was available, I foolishly parked in short-term, and as advertised, they towed my truck and charged me $160 to get it back. So, um, yes, if anyone's wondering, DOT is now towing vehicles that are parked illegally.

I'm hoping they will follow through with all the abandoned vehicles in long-term parking so I can find a spot there next time, but Yeah, that deadline— their deadline's coming up soon, so forewarned is forearmed. Thank you, Larry.

Thank you. The recent city borough meeting that we had, I wish we were talking about more meaty issues sometimes. I think the issue we talked about was good with regard to Licensing, but I really like to get in some really meaty discussions with them, and I appreciate those, and I wish we met with them on a more regular basis, certainly quarterly. And I've always found those meetings useful and good, so I hope that we can do that, and maybe we can look at the agenda at some point in time. And I really appreciate the progress on lands because it just seems like like we never do anything, but the biggest landholders in Kodiak, they're not the borough, it's not Native corporations, it's individual owners.

There's almost, what, 400 or 500? Native corporations are the largest landowners in Kodiak. In terms of land that is subdivided and owned and ready to build, it's private landowners. And I wish we could explore some way to to incentivize folk to build. Tax relief, something that a community could do to motivate people that own multiple properties or even a single property to sell and build and to do something.

I know some communities do that and they incentivize both developers of land and individual homeowners because because every time someone builds a house, CEMA is there, you know, with their hand out. And well, okay. Continue, Larry.

So at some point in time, I'd really like to have those kind of discussions because that's something that we might be able to do as an assembly to find some way to bring that land into useful use, and I like that. Also, I did expect Jared to mention this, but he did not. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day.

It's good for you to remember, Jared. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Also, And I realize everything is up in the air, but some of the stuff I've heard about NOAA would be interesting since we certainly care about their operation, and we care about our building and the lease and all those things to, at some point in time, maybe find out what there is to know when nobody knows anything. So I'm a little concerned about that.

And the final thing I wanted to say, I really appreciated the discussions tonight, um, on short-term rentals and long-term. I really believe in the wisdom of crowds. That means when we have good discussion, I believe the ultimate decision, even if it's not something that I agree with completely, will be a good one in an assembly decision. And so, and I really hated when I've been Assemblies or boards are different, where everybody always votes the same. There's never any good discussion, and I really appreciate the discussion, and I do listen, and I do learn from it.

Thank you. Scott. Oh dear. Um, the report on the invasive species always leaves me cold. Here we take organisms that are superior competitors and we artificially murder them, and it leaves me puzzled why people would want to do that.

There was a case in Southern California with a company harvesting Macrocystis, a large kelp that they had— they were using as fodder, I think, for cows. And so the sea urchins were eating it, so they sowed the entire area of the ocean, hundreds and hundreds of acres, with calcium carbonate and killed the urchins by essentially poisoning them. So that was in order to help the Macrocystis, which is probably the fastest-growing plant on Earth, so you didn't probably have to help it at all. But we do that here with, um, what's the name of that one? Hawkweed.

And hawkweed is, it's kind of like a black spruce. It's an ugly little creature, but it's really good at populating itself everywhere. Yes. And, uh, I think we ought to celebrate it. And put it on our banner or something.

You want it similar to, uh, fireweed?

Anything else, Scott? No.

Yes, I'm going to go to Ryan here next. Ryan.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, I'm wondering if, um, Larry can start all over since he didn't turn his microphone on until the last 15 seconds. Oh no, please. Okay, well, with that then, uh, I have no comment. I appreciate the opportunity.

Thanks. Thank you, Ryan. Um, Mayor's comments. I'm going to make it real quick so we can get out of here. There's a very robust complaint system that Engineering and Facility has in the borough on it.

It's not a matter of creating any anything. You get it. And then when the complaints come and somebody was just to complain here, it would get referred to Engineering and Facilities and go to the Service District Board. The other thing is there will— in March, there will be two meetings here and they'll be having opportunity.

The— some of the— I'll just say there's been part of Julianne Curry and Ray May's complaint addressed last year that's outside of the borough, outside of the service district. It was referred to borough engineering and facility staff. So there's two sides to every story. Please make sure you get both on there. But, uh, so you'll be listening to the service district meeting, I hope, or, or attend both, either way.

On it. So, um, have a nice Valentine's Day tomorrow and, uh, enjoy the weekend. And good luck here next, next 3 weeks. Jared and I will be missing the 2 meetings and the work session on there. And, uh, DDF, we're going for a 6th straight championship.

I will be on a field trip on the 27th, so I won't be here then. Okay. I was speaking on a turntable. No, that's okay. Please say that on the record with your mic on.

I will not be here on the 27th because I'll be taking the Shakespeare's to defend their state titles, their 6— 5 straight state titles in drama and in public speaking. With that, we'll adjourn the work session at 9:59. Oh, I didn't have time to read that.

It wasn't on my thing.