February 25, 2026 Special Joint Assembly Finance Committee with Airport & Hospital Boards

Call the Special Assembly Finance Committee meeting to order. Um, we will skip roll call since we'll do introductions in a second. That brings us to approval of minutes. You have the February 4th, 2026 AFC meeting minutes in your packet. Any objections to those from the Finance Committee?

Seeing none, those are so moved. And with that, I will pass the gavel to Madam Mayor to bring us into our joint meeting.

Uh, thank you, Madam Finance Chair. Um, I am co-chairing this meeting with Mr. Epstein, uh, who is the co-chair or vice chair. Sorry, you guys have a different name. As, uh, Ms. Soutier is on Zoom, if she's there. So anyway, we will start with introductions.

Do you want to start?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, is Ms. Soutier on Zoom this evening? Can we bring her? I sure am. Okay, uh, Madam Chair, can you introduce yourself and, uh, advise how long you've been on the board?

Sure, I have been on the— oh, sorry, my name is Eve Soutier. I'm sorry I'm not there in person today, um, and I've been on the board, oh goodness, for long enough to not remember. I'm in my second term. I think I've been on the board for 4 years, maybe 5.

Thank you, Ms. Sutier. I'm David Epstein. I served on the board from January of 2010 to June of 2018. I termed out, and, um, a year ago Mayor Weldon asked me through Mr. Godkin to consider coming back on the board, and I I was honored by that request and I accepted. And we're certainly glad you did.

So I'm Beth Weldon. I'm the mayor, third term. Uh, Mr. Godkin.

Thank you, Jerry Godkin, Airport Board. I've to say, I think I'm working on my 17th year with a break, mandatory break in there. And then getting called back also to service by the assembly. So it's a privilege.

Hi, everyone. Christine Wall. I am in my 6th year on the assembly, um, and I am also the assembly liaison to the airport board as of November.

My name is Nano Brooks. I'm first-year assembly member on my first term.

My name is Neil Steininger and I am in my first term, midway through my second year on the assembly.

About to time out on the board. I'm in my 9th year, just a general airport hang around on, pretty much go around up around the airport.

Paul Kelly, uh, in my 3rd year on the assembly.

Maureen Hall, and first term, second year on the assembly.

And we'll get to staff in just a minute, but is there anybody else on Zoom, Madam Clerk?

Mr. Redmond, would you like to introduce yourself, please? Sure. Yeah. Hi guys. Uh, yeah, my name is Jeff Redmond.

I'm on airport board. This is my first year, about 6 months in.

Uh, thank you for that. And just a heads up for those on Zoom, because of the presentation, we can't see you. So, Um, you might have to yell if you have a question or something. So, um, with that, we're going to go to staff.

We'll start with you, Mr. Delgado. Good evening, I'm Andres Delgado, the airport manager. I am about 6 months into this, this position and 3 and a half years with the airport now.

I do, I have our business manager, Angelica Lopez Campos, who has been with CBJ for over 20 years and has been with the airport for going on 3 years now. Thank you. Robert Bart, Deputy City Manager. I've been with CBJ for 13 years. I didn't know this was a longevity test.

Katie Kester, City Manager. I think I've worked here for, uh, 6 years, about half of them as City Manager.

Good evening, I'm Finance Director Angie Flick, and I've been with the city for about 4 years and in this position for almost 3.

I'm Adrian Wendell, I'm CBJ's budget manager. I've been with CBJ for 6 years next month.

Uh, thank you for that, and it's— I'll get to him, I'm letting him sit down first. Um, just nice for you guys to see some of our staff and their faces. So, Mr. Williams, would you please introduce yourself? And how long you've been on the board. My name is Charlie Williams, and I've been on the airport board for about 2 and a half years now.

So, thank you for that. So, uh, we will go right into our airport managed budget presentation. So, Mr. Delgado, you want to take it on? Good evening, and thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, so we'll start with our budget.

I'll work through expenses, then on to revenue, then on to CAP. Um, I could probably get through this fairly quickly. Um, our FY26 projected budget is looking like we're underspending, uh, by about $110,000. Um, two primary reasons for this is, uh, last winter was fairly mild, and deicer— runway deicer is very expensive, and we did not use very much of it. So there was significant cost savings there, uh, that rolled over into FY26.

Um, one thing you'll notice in our, um, projected expenses for FY27 is that we fully encumber, uh, de-icer because we just don't know how severe the winter is going to be. Um, like Snowpocalypse from this year, um, we certainly used a lot of de-icer there. Um, Mr. Delgado, I forgot to ask you, do you want questions as we go, or do you want to wait till the end? I'll take them as they come. Okay, so just raise your hand.

Um, the other large expenditure that will move on to federally funded— the federally funded side of airport expenses will be our runway and taxiway painting. That has historically been done using our operating fund to the tune of about $225,000. As of the 2024 FAA reauthorization bill, it is now federally eligible, and we are currently working to get that out to bid. It will come as a 4-year period of performance, or a 4-year contract, which means it's a, it's a million-dollar grant coming in just for painted loan on the runway. Um, the reason we do this annually is because of the snow removal.

Uh, those brooms can, can peel the paint right off, uh, fairly quickly, and, uh, it's taken some time to phase it in just right at the start of summer and spring, uh, so that it'll last all summer and, um, gets peeled off again in the winter and wash, rinse, repeat.

Um, for expense assumptions for FY27, we have our finally deputy airport manager position. Now, you'll remember this from the 2024 and prior discussions that this position was sacrificed. Well, let me rephrase. It had some difficulty finding a candidate, and I know Patty had— Patty Watta, former airport manager, struggled to find a suitable replacement for her. With the cascading effects of the security program that had just escalated in demand, um, on staff, we ended up sacrificing that position for a security manager position, which is now staffed, but it still leaves the deputy airport manager to, to fill the ranks.

And this is primarily for continuity of operations so that I can take a vacation every once in a while. And also it provides much-needed backup for fiscal support, pursuing grant opportunities, managing staff. That's, um, is quite a lot to take on. And then the other placeholders we haven't, uh, sorry, I believe, uh, Airport Chair Sutia has her hand up. Yes, I just, um, I, I don't want to get the, the deputy position lost.

One of the things that the board had talked about was content continuity of having an airport manager as well, using that, that position as potentially a training launching pad. So I want to make sure that the importance of that position is, is really understood. Thanks.

Thank you. Um, and then the other placeholders are for union rate increases that stem from MEBA increases, and as The assembly voted on today the, um, Public Safety Employees Association, and, uh, CCFR is another one as well. So we have those in place and ready to go. Um, we have here our spending. We spend quite a lot on personnel, and a lot of this is CCFR.

We do contract with CCFR. We've seen some increases on their end. That's really the largest increase we've seen percentage-wise out of our, our expenses. Full cost now in insurance has gone up slightly, or gone down slightly here. Commodities and services are our big ticket item.

We spent a lot pre— in the previous years. This was mostly through other federally funded grants projects that have been completed, and it shows here as expenses projected for FY26. Here we show significantly less, to the tune of about $400,000, and this is— this stems from multiple things, one of those— two of those things being the runway painting and de-icer. Travel and training has gone up a little bit as well. FY27, we're implementing some training expenses for staff.

Um, any questions on this here?

Any questions? If not, I have a question. So why the big jump in travel and training though? That's a $100,000 jump in travel and training. So that's split up a little bit between, well, primarily CCFR.

They'll have a lot more training to do, uh, and this keeps up with the ARFF training requirements, um, and also a little bit on the JNU side, uh, some of that being for OSHA training or, uh, airport certification training. So there are some industry, um, associations that, that provide this training, of course at a cost, but it is there.

Mr. Williams. So, um, I actually look at it a little differently. Um, I think we were underspending on travel and training. There was things that were not getting done and training that needed to be done that wasn't being accomplished. And so, you know, I, I believe we were under-budgeted on those, and that's why the big difference.

All right, thank you.

Sorry, I would just add that, um, when we, uh, were fortunate to hire Mr. Delgado, it was the, uh, hiring committee and, and the board recognized that, uh, we would need to invest in our airport manager. And we have told him that, you know, we wanted him to get out and do the certifications that may be needed or to maintain. And so we are, we are pushing him to, to get, keep growing, and we supported him in that endeavor.

Any more questions? I'll have another one then. Sorry, in your commodities and services, is that where you guys have equipment like your graders and everything else? We'll save our trucks for a little bit later, but I'm just wondering where you guys are because I don't think you're part of our CIP. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

And no, this is, this is not reflective of snow removal equipment that's federally funded. Um, our CIP covers the local match component for, for those grants. Um, so for anyone who might not remember or know, uh, the FAA for fiscal year '26, federal fiscal year '26 only, they cover 95% of the cost of equipment. Past that into federal year '27, it goes back down to 93.75%, and then we cover the remainder. And so that's how Juneau Airport is able to maintain such a large and expensive fleet.

These machines are not cheap. They run nearly $1 million apiece, and we have quite a few of them. Well, maybe the city should just be part of the airport. Continue on. I don't see— oh wait, Mr. Steininger.

Uh, thank you, Madam Mayor. You kind of inspired a question I had on the non-operating expense line. There's about a million-dollar drop. Um, can you kind of describe what's falling out of that, that bucket of money? Yes, uh, through the mayor, um, that again comes from the, the runway, uh, taxiway painting that will be federally funded.

The other side being the savings that rolled over into FY26 from FY25 in that mild winter that we just didn't use much sand, salt, or runway de-icer. Follow-up. So the runway de-icer is falling in non-operating, not as a commodity? Through the Mayor, yes, it is a commodity that goes in there, and that runs about $800,000. Alone.

So, uh, if I may, uh, to put into perspective, we— our full inventory is worth about $800,000 in runway de-icer. Um, this year we spent $493,000, and that's that savings that rolled over from FY25. So we're roughly $300,000 under spending for this year on that alone.

Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, I see up there on the full cost of insurance, it stays pretty constant throughout the actuals and projected. But, uh, you know, you're already talking about doing the personnel rate increase and then potentially, you know, trying to fill another full-time position. Uh, you know, how, how are those, uh, the personnel costs increasing but the insurance costs staying flat?

To the mayor, that full cost allocation comes from CBJ. It pays for the overhead on that end. So whenever we do receive federal grants, we, we rely a lot on, on Angie over here and her staff, who have been amazing. We rely on Law Department. Police is also one of those— that's actually a separate contract.

Um, but we rely on a lot of departments here at CBJ to provide a lot of that overhead work for us, and that's where that comes from.

Anything, Ms. Hall? So I would assume then what Mr. Brooks was referring to was the insurance in the full cost, and insurance is not related to personnel, correct? In the roundabout way, yes, but not J&U personnel specifically. Okay, thank you.

Go ahead. Thank you. Um, inserted a couple nice pie charts here to really illustrate where our expenses go. Commodities and services and personnel are the vast majority of what we spend on. Now, as you may know, uh, air— the airport, well, airports in general are mandated to be financially sustainable to, um, pay for itself, pay its own way, um, for as much as it possibly can.

Um, it's one of the reasons why the airport relies so heavily on federal grants, uh, why there's rates and fees and increases that go along with those rates and fees. And that's something that we look at, uh, every year. We compare to other airports. We, we look at where the industry is trending. Um, so these expenses that we have here are paid for by those rates and fees.

Um, there's no questions. The numbers are roughly the same as the previous slide, but I'll continue. Revenue assumptions. We updated the financial model, and this is where you may have questions. Um, the airport financial model is— was— rather, it still is very complex.

It took quite a bit of effort to streamline it so that we may understand it better and be able to explain it better. And be more transparent with, with how rates and fees are calculated. Um, what I mean here, when we updated the model to assign 100% of Part 121 and Part 135 benefits to airfield leases and commercial parking revenues, uh, essentially Part 121 are your air carriers. They are the Alaska Airlines and Delta Airlines and American Airlines of the world. And Part 135 are your commercial operators.

They are your Wardair, Alaska Seaplanes, Tempsco, Coastal, North Star. Um, there was an allocation mismatch that was pointed out, and we corrected for that. We adjusted for that, and that caused rates and fees to drop in one, one area and rise in another, but is now considered to be fully just, equitable to all users of the airport. Um, and I can touch on that in a later slide, but revenue assumptions here, this is not an arbitrary number. This is, uh, determined with our master plan consultant, Michael Baker International, and it is also negotiated with the FAA.

It's what they see nationwide, and it is what they see regionally and even locally at JNU. We're projected to increase passenger movement by 2.8% annually through 2030. Really, the projection goes through 2043, and, um, those projections do show JNU growing considerably. So we are currently sitting at roughly 460,000 employments per year. It is projected to go past 600,000.

So we've got about 20 years to, to get the airport in position to handle that kind of traffic. Landed weight and fuel flowage, really all this is showing is that load factors for aircraft will climb steadily higher, meaning those aircraft are going to get more packed with each passing year. Passenger movement outpaces landed weights is what that really means. Let's pause there for just a second. I have a question if nobody else has, and maybe I'll spur someone.

So that's just the growth, but that's not an increase in your revenue, or is there a tie to increase in revenue? There certainly is a tie. I can't say what it will look like 20 years from now. This also does not assume any new routes that may open, any new airlines that may decide to come in to Juneau. I haven't gotten there yet, but that's certainly part of the vision.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, Part 121 passenger movement, is that just enplanements or is it both enplaned and deplaned? It considers— through the mayor— this considers the enplanements only, and this is the basis for which FAA determines how many federal dollars we get. Mrs. Ball.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, my question is about the rate adjustments. Um, in terms of like before, what direction it was off in terms of feeling fair across different groups, and now it's been corrected. What, what did the before look like? I guess like who was benefiting and who was— what did those adjustments have to look like broadly?

Through the mayor, um, it came in the form of, uh, airfield land leases, uh, where 135 operators were— they, they're the lion's share of revenue from that particular sector, and, um, which is odd considering that the 121, the air carriers, are a large operation. They don't occupy as much space as the 135 operators. And so there was definitely a, uh, a discrepancy there that has now been adjusted and cared for, which resulted in fuel flowage fees dropping significantly and landing fees rising significantly. Um, how the fees apply to each user group is landing fees apply to aircraft larger or heavier than 12,500 pounds. And so that, that would be the Alaska Airlines, the Delta, the air carriers.

Um, and anything smaller than that, of course, does not apply to the Alaska seaplanes whose gross takeoff weight are less than 12,500. But I digress. Um, fuel flow drops significantly as well, um, and that affects the 135 operators. That's their that's their share of expenses. So our, our job is to make sure that each cost center, the airfield, terminal, those, those kinds of cost centers are paid for and not unjustly causing a burden to any of the user groups.

Um, we just had a board member join us this evening, and we started the meeting with introductions and an explanation of your tenure on the board. So now's your chance, Ms. Rodell.

I'm Angela Rodell. I've been on the board now for a year. Prior to that, I was on the board for 6 years a while ago. Um, And I chair the Finance Committee, so thank you for the meeting tonight and look forward to the discussion.

Thank you and welcome. Any further questions on that last slide?

Okay, we'll finish. Go ahead. We're going to explain the PFC-10 swap. Yes. Thank you.

And through the mayor, um, our PFC 10 swap— PFC are passenger facility charges. These are a charge of $4.50 per departing leg for each passenger that goes or exits through, through JNU. So this is, this is that fee that shows up on your ticket. Um, so during fiscal year '25, '26, um, We spent $1 million from the airport fund balance to finance the purchase of an ARFF truck, an aircraft rescue firefighting truck. This was because the ARFF truck was deemed ineligible by the FAA, not because it's an ARFF truck, but because of the procurement method that was used.

It was something that came out of the blue, caught us by surprise, caught the FAA by surprise, and they rescinded that grant. And so, um, because our trucks are so important to Juneau, to the community, to the region— and you'll learn more about this after this presentation— um, we had really no choice but to finance the purchase of this. Now, how PFC comes into play is, um, we receive PFC revenue to offset the cost of this truck. And this is negotiated, and this is really approved by the airlines and by the FAA. Um, PFCs come with considerably less— considerably less strings attached than an AAP grant would, the federal grants would.

This is really considered to be airport discretionary revenue, and it's why we're going to be able to swap this funding and regain that airport fund balance back. And if I may add, that's also one reason why expenses are higher for fiscal year '26 as well, but not so much once PFC money comes back in. Mr. Brooks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, so is what you're saying is that the, uh, the our truck essentially got rolled back just because of how it was bought, not necessarily that it didn't meet, uh, qualification for service. Through the mayor, that's correct. And so we had used a cooperative purchasing agreement, which is fairly common to use. We had used it before with the FAA.

Um, this time they came back and said, uh, actually, never mind, this doesn't fit the bill anymore, so we're rescinding that grant. It was not a good day. Yeah, and we'll talk about our trucks at the later part of this meeting. So any further questions? Mr. Steininger, you can't raise your glass during this time.

All right, go ahead, Mr. Delgado. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, this covers our revenues.

So you'll notice here, in fact, my screen's kind of blocked, but you'll notice, uh, landing fees and, uh, fuel flowage fees are much different than it was the previous year. Let me minimize this here. Um, much more different than the previous year. Uh, fuel flowage fees for FY27 are much lower and, uh, landing fees are much higher. And that goes to, to the adjustment we had made on the airport financial model.

Another increase we'll see here are security screening fees. These are fees that are applied— another fee for your flights out of here that we all pay for whenever we fly. These pay for the security manager, they pay for the security technicians that give you parking tickets and provide a lot of really valuable services to the airport security-wise. Um, this, this pays for quite a lot of the JPD contract that we have as well. Um, and any questions on that?

That's fairly straightforward. Mr. Kelly, thank you. I was noticing that there's just quite a bit of fluctuation in this. I mean, it goes up between '24-'25 goes up $300,000, and then it dips a little bit for this year, and then for next year it's expected to go up to almost $1.5 million.

Can you kind of explain that? Yes, absolutely. Through the mayor, um, JPD bills us actual, so it's not necessarily a predetermined amount. They, they invoice us actual, uh, what they worked that day, what they worked for, um, for the month really. Um, one reason why 2026 is so low is because our security managers started, uh, late in the, in the fiscal— after the fiscal year had already started, several months after.

So there's some savings from there. Um, not that big of a fluctuation, um, but Um, the other reason it's actually— no, that, that's really the main reason. The JPD actuals came in a little over. So, uh, so just as a follow-up, like, why are we expecting it to jump up $500,000 for next year? The mayor— so that's our security manager, the security techs, and, um, The badging officer as well.

That's the one I was forgetting. Badging officer is now allocated more to the security side. Um, and would that include their contract increase also? Yes. Yes.

Okay. You don't have to raise your hand. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, with regard to the first 2 revenue categories, fuel flowage and landing, we went through an iteration or 2 on those. And, um, I'd like the folks here to be assured that we didn't just apply those unilaterally.

There was some consultation with the users. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yes, through the mayor, these are negotiated fees with the airlines. Even passenger security fees are negotiated with the airline. They're the ones that, that provide that collect that money.

Fuel flowage was negotiated in our finance committee meetings we've had, and we've responded to input and feedback from those user groups. So this is— yeah, as, as Mr. Epstein said, this is not unilateral, this is negotiated. Um, this will smooth out in later years. The, the big jumps are due primarily to that financial model change. But it will smooth out.

Okay, I might— I'm probably missing something, but we talked about your expenses first, and now we're talking about your revenues. So projected 2026 and 2027, your revenues are below your expenses. So how are we paying for that? So expenses have a lot to do— they include a lot of the federal spending for projects. Um, it's, it's not a very good illustration of really what goes on behind the scenes, but a lot of these expenses are federal expenses through projects and whatnot.

So we're able, if things work out well this year, we'll be able to stay in the black on our airport fund balance. So is that why your row for federal reimbursement is Blank is you just don't know how much they're going to reimburse you yet. Um, those are, uh, vestigial CARES Act money. So if I would have put 2022, 2020 really through 2023, we'll, we'll have seen millions from federal reimbursements, and that's really all CARES Act money. Um, or really, yeah, CARES Act money was, it was a big number in the previous financial fiscal years.

Any further questions? All right, keep going. We're doing great. All right, another pie chart. Uh, landing fees and rent lease concessions are the big, uh, revenue streams for the airport.

This is all self-explanatory unless there's any other questions on this.

Okay, so on to CIPs, or capital improvement projects for the airport. This is a fairly rough estimate for the next 2 to 3, 3 years really of, uh, projects that we're expecting at JNU. This is not totally in flux. This is mostly, uh, well, well established with the FAA.

Um, there are some things in flux here with the FAA. The Runway 26 MOLSR reconstruction, that's the approach lighting on the TEMSCO side of the runway that will allow aircraft to come into Juneau much more easily. So, one of the things that we were hoping for in the last few years was to extend those approach lights. The FAA is, is really, we're waiting on final approval from them, but they're, they're hoping to reconstruct the entire approach lighting system.

To the tune of $25 million, and it'll be multi-phase, multi-year with environmental. That's, that's the big driver for, for any changes that will happen to the CIP.

Any, uh, Mr. Delgado, uh, when they reconstruct the malls, or are we going to get the full 2,400 feet or some Um, through the mayor, it will be the full 2,400 feet.

So, to follow up on that, it— the initial plan was to extend 1,600 feet on top of the 800 feet we currently have. Um, the marriage of those two systems were proving a little difficult, and so the FAA would rather just reconstruct the whole thing instead of just piecemealing it. Follow on to Do we have an approved environmental document for that? No, the one we have now, according to the FAA, is stale. So we will likely have to go through a whole EIS on that one.

Just on an approach lighting system. Yes, sir. It's a wetland and refuge. Okay, sir. I'll just ask all the questions, apparently.

Uh, how much of that $53 million do you expect from the FAA? 93.75%. All right.

Um, the only thing I don't see, and I know that there's been talk about it, is a new control tower. Where are we with that, or is that a topic we want to save for another day?

Um, so we currently have grant applications in with the FAA to the tune of about $5 million, uh, 3 grant applications to be exact. Uh, 2 of those address the tower directly. We split those up because the scope of work was just slightly different. We wanted to increase our chances to get the contract— the grant we really want, which is for electrical and mechanical work to the tower. Um, the tower is not federally owned as it is in most other airports.

The airport owns this tower, and we're We're responsible for its maintenance. We're responsible for its occupants, really.

Because it's airport-owned, there's not very many grant opportunities out there for Juneau to participate in. The NOFO grant from the— for federal fiscal year '26 in the airport terminal program was announced, and we decided to seize upon that opportunity before time ran out. And so now we have 3 grant applications in, and we're hoping to get it and to perform that work to the, to the tower. That's one reason I didn't include it here, because it's still up in the air. It's—.

We're competing on a national level for these grants. Ms. Hall. Yes, thank you. Um, is there an opportunity to transfer that ownership, to transfer the ownership of the tower to the FAA? Would that be something that would be advantageous or even possible?

Yeah, through the mayor. Yes, it would be advantageous. Um, the FAA does not want to own that tower, and I don't blame them. They have, however, approached us about 2 or 3 years ago about siting a new tower. Now that's a 10-year process.

Um, it's not one easily done, and it takes a lot of commitment from the FAA to, to go through with it. Um, it was just the one meeting, and any discussion about a new federal tower at JNU has been— they've been reluctant to give us any kind of an answer, but The opportunity is out there, and once we do see a window of opportunity, we do plan on jumping on that.

Continue on. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, projects we have completed in the past or near completion are these: terminal renovation. It's still an open project and therefore not completely closed yet. The 121-135 ramp rehabilitation, if you flew out anytime in the last couple years, you will have noticed a lot of construction work out on the, uh, the apron. And I say ramp a lot. Ramp for me is apron, right?

The vast asphalt surface out there is ramp or apron, and I know some people get confused on that. Um, that was the $20 million project that went very well. Um, ARFF truck acquisition, it's a topic we'll discuss shortly. Uh, that one as well is in flux. Um, we expect delivery of that truck in April of this year.

The wetland rescue vehicle is one that was mandated by the FAA. The airport is mandated to have a water rescue plan, and sometimes we have water out there, sometimes we have wetlands. And one of the reasons we picked the vehicle we did was because it checks all those boxes. Um, the airport master plan update— this is what will guide the development of the airport for the next 10 to 20 years. Um, we are nearing completion on that.

The runway safety area grading and design— grading design phase is currently in the FAA's hands there. We are waiting for their review of that design, and they'll likely expand on what we had initially planned. Uh, and then Mendenhall Riverbank stabilization. This stems from the 2023 glof. Uh, we finally completed repair work to the embankment, um, that was nearest to the float pond.

If you have walked the airport dike trail, um, you will have noticed especially immediately after that glop, you will have noticed that there was a bit of sloughing off into the river. And so this project completed, uh, restored that, that riverbank.

Ms. Rodell, thank you. On the Mendenhall Riverbank stabilization, Mr. Delgado, I believe the airport expects to get reimbursed by the state through, um, through funds. That we applied for in 2024 and are still awaiting, uh, those funds to come through DMVA. Is that correct? Through the mayor, that is correct.

We are waiting on just under $300,000 reimbursements from the DMVA from the state of Alaska. So we've— they, they were busy with the other flooding in western Alaska, and so we were on the back burner for a little bit there, but I believe it's progressing very well, so.

You have a quiet crowd tonight. Any further questions? Mr. Kelly. Thank you. I realized there was one question I forgot to ask back on the revenue slide.

It's looking like under the interest income. If I'm reading the parentheses, the parentheses are indicative of being negative, right? How are we getting a negative negative interest income?

Through the mayor, um, that is a very good question and one that I am looking at Angie— Director Angie Flick for.

She understands that portion much better than I do.

Director Flick. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, no microphones, 2 microphones, so many choices. Um, and a negative interest income typically would mean that, um, there is a negative cash balance, which typically happens with the airport because so much of their capital projects are refunded. So you have to expend the funds and then, um, and then go back.

I haven't seen all of the detail in this particular budget, but that would what I would typically expect.

As well, thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, sorry if you said this and I missed it. Um, can you talk about the— what is the size of the fund balance for the airport? And, uh, do you have a policy that kind of defines where you want it to be as an entity? Through the mayor, uh, it's a 3-month operating reserve, and that amount will fluctuate, um, with each year.

So as our operating expenses go up, so will the fund balance requirement. Um, as of now, our desired fund balance is in the $3 million range.

And are you hitting that target, or in these— in, let's say, in the FY27 budget will you be at 3 months or, um, above or below that? As proposed, we'll be just above it. Our goal is to maintain a balanced budget, not overcharge the user groups too much. However, this may change. We're still in discussion with CBJ Finance on some final details, but And I'm looking at Miss Angela Rodell, uh, if you have anything you'd like to say about it.

Ms. Rodell. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, yeah, I think this is the big question, um, because we are closing out the terminal reconstruction, uh, that was done that many of us have enjoyed and walked through. And as with any project that has multiple sources, um, closing that out and making sure things get allocated properly and accounted for properly is always, um, it's always a joy to behold. Um, let me just say that we— it was our understanding as a board that all of that excess, to the extent that there were leftover funds from that project, that they would flow to our unrestricted fund balance and help replenish that, that fund balance.

Um, as, as we go through it, to the extent that there are potential restrictions, we would like it to, to come in as unrestricted as possible. It may be that it has to go into the capital reserve account, which has a few more restrictions, but is also really important because the capital reserve fund is our source for doing local match for a lot of these projects. It's where we can get reimbursed with the PFCs in the future. It doesn't have, as Mr. Delgado said, all the strings attached that AIP can have. So as we go through thinking about where those funds are and the actions that we will need and the support we'll need.

It is our goal, I believe, as a board to try and maintain as much flexibility. Um, and so our first request is, you know, to boost fund balance. Um, but the board is still waiting to hear sort of where we finalize all of those pieces with the finance department. So I'm speaking for myself as a board member, not for the other members here. I want to be clear.

That they have not— we have not taken any action.

Follow-up, Ms. Wall. Quick follow-up. That was helpful, and I, I heard some of this discussion in the board meeting, so I'm a little bit more caught up with other assembly members probably. But can you— the scale of what that fund balance difference might look like if, you know, depending on, on what happens, I guess, just so people have a sense of you have 3 months operating, or you're at $3 million, I think you said, versus what exactly?

Yeah, through the, um, through the mayor, I believe we're looking at about a million dollar difference. And so depending on what, what the leftover funds are that $1 million would, would give us a nice cushion into that unrestricted fund balance. Um, so, you know, it's roughly, you know, $900,000 to $1 million. So you're talking about unrestricted fund balance. Do you have a restricted fund balance?

Uh, we have what's called a capital reserve. And that is a restricted reserve of money that has almost exclusively been used for capital projects on the airport that don't meet the FAA full grant. We love you, night, you know. It is also where we try to use local match sources if we've got money there that can be used. And get the reimbursements out of that.

But it is our reserve for, um, you know, for, for all projects, not just AIP. Okay, any further questions, comments from the board members before we have a little discussion about ARFF trucks and indexes? Anything from staff? Mr. Barr? Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I just might foreshadow, um, as, as, um, Board Member Rodell mentioned, we are— we finance or airport finance are still working on sussing out all that information, um, about, about the $900,000 to $1 million, um, that, that Mr. Rodell mentioned. And it, it— as we do that work, uh, it may end up being the assembly— it may end up being an assembly decision, it may end up being an airport board decision as to what happens with those funds. We're still working on that, so I'm just foreshadowing that it may be an assembly decision if those funds were appropriated by assembly fund sources— sales tax funds, general fund dollars. It may not. We're still working, working those details.

Okay, well, we will look forward to all your working and get the final answer soon. So All right, no questions, comments. Like I said, quiet group tonight. So, um, Mr. Barr, you may have to foreshadow what just happened last week or the week before. Where were we when all of a sudden you were asking me about airport indexes?

I am happy to foreshadow that, but I think I would defer to the expert. So anyway, go ahead, Mr. Delgado. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So, we— well, JNU has, uh, 3 ARFF trucks, uh, airport rescue firefighting trucks. Um, our newest one is from 2016.

Our second newest one, uh, is a 2003 model. Um, prior to that, it was a 1992 model. Um, We— the 2003 model is permanently out of service. The 1992 model has been surplused. And so, uh, to replace those 2 trucks, we have a leased truck from the City of Palmer, and we are borrowing, thank goodness, a truck, a 2014 truck from Gustavus.

Um, so two-thirds of our fleet belong to somebody else. Um, we had a bit of a scare these past couple weeks when we lost two of those trucks. Uh, there are 2016 rig and the City of Palmer rig. Um, the 2016 rig had some turret issues. That is one of those mandated safety things from the FAA.

If it doesn't work, mark it down. It's, it's out of service. Um, the City of Palmer rig was also having turret issues, and it also blew pump seals as we were trying to do some of the required testing that the FAA has us do for the foam proportioning system. Um, that left only one truck in service, the— which is why I'm so thankful it's here. Um, it left the Gustavus rig in service.

So what that meant for the community for a brief moment was that had that truck, the remaining truck, gotten a flat tire, we would have been at what's called an ARFF zero status, which means no air carrier service to Juneau. Um, Juneau is typically— and I'll point to the Nice handout that you brought us. Thank you. Handout. This has a lot of fairly basic information.

Uh, Mayor Beth Wellen requested a one-pager and I gave you 3. Because it's— there's no way I could have just condensed the information to accurately describe how the kind of situation we were in. Um, Juneau is typically what's called an index C, which allows us to operate to— rather, to receive and, and handle the 737 MAX 9s, the 800s, the 900s that Alaska Airlines brings in. When we lost both trucks, that dropped us to what's called an Index B, which, as you see from the handout, it limits what we can handle on aircraft size. The aircraft that are index B are essentially only the 737-700s that Alaska is looking to phase out.

Um, luckily they were able to make it work. It took a lot of coordination with them, a lot of notifications going out in the middle of the night, but we made it work for, uh, that week. Um, what happens with these trucks is that whenever they go down, especially as they get older, the parts are no longer manufactured. If something goes out, it becomes essentially a nationwide search for these parts. Um, we ended up sending, um, some personnel, some of our personnel to South Carolina to pick up these parts and deliver it to us, um, so that they can complete the repairs in time.

Uh, well, rather as, as quickly as they could, because we just could not risk losing that last truck by any means whatsoever. Um, why we're here talking about it today is because we have an ARFF truck that will be delivered— sorry, it's scheduled to come off the assembly line in late April of this year. It will take several weeks to arrive to Juneau where the CCFR personnel have to train on it, they have to certify it, they have to equip it, and that takes another month. Uh, it will be June, maybe early July before that truck is placed in the service. The Gustavus rig meanwhile has to be back and in service in Gustavus by May 1st, which means it leaves Juneau in early April, if not late March.

So that leaves two trucks, our 2016 rig and our City of Palmer rig, in service and that have now proven to be Um, troublesome, troublesome is a very good word. So we're a little shaky on that. Once that new rig comes in, the city of— that essentially takes the place of the Gustavus rig. We'll have 3 rigs again. At some point, we want to get rid of the City of Palmer rig.

It is currently leased. It belongs to the City of Palmer. We don't want to buy it for obvious reasons, but if those two older rigs go down, that leaves just the one truck in service again.

So, um, the solution to this issue is to acquire a second truck. Now, we recently had a window of opportunity to purchase one, and it was sold in two days. Obviously, the procurement methods for the City and Borough of Juneau aren't that fast. Um, and so we were—. You've encountered that before, just so you know.

Yeah. Uh, and so, um, we appreciate the flexibility and the coordination it took to, to get everything that happened done. Um, so the way we've acquired these trucks in the past is with AIP money, so Airport Improvement program is, is an FAA program that has very many strings attached. We've tried to— we've showed them our fleet, we've told them, hey, we need a second new truck, and they said, well, you can't really have one until 2031. And when we're talking about a grant with the FAA, it takes about a year just to program and to get the grant, and then it's a 2 to 2.5 year lead time to get the truck.

This is not a risk we can take, waiting, you know, nearly a decade for a new truck. It just cannot happen. So I'm here today to, to really illustrate the importance of these trucks to, to not just the airport but the community. Without these trucks, we are not allowed to operate as an airport. We are not allowed to to leave.

So this, this is extremely important to, to the community and to the, to the safety of the community as a whole. And then I'll, for any other questions, I'll let you read the 3-page handout and I'll take them as they come. So who has questions beside me?

Uh, thank you, Mr. Delgado. I want to echo, uh, what he said about the importance of having, um, a competent and sufficient inventory of firefighting vehicles on the airport. As Mr. Delgado noted, our loaner from Gustavus has to depart the premises in a little over a month. And we're not expecting to have the new truck in service until July. So, in that period, if something goes wrong, we're in trouble.

And I don't want to run an airport that, uh, has a single point of failure. We just can't afford that. We can't have a capital city with an airport that is not capable of accepting air carrier service. When we have a hiccup in one operational vehicle. So I'm here to support however we can do it.

Maybe we have to— we can't apply for federal funds until 2031. That's too far, as we really have no other choice but to pursue the purchase of a second ARFF vehicle with our own funds somehow.

Uh, Mr. Williams. So this has all transpired since our last board meeting, and so many of us have been keeping up with, with the communications, and thank you for all of them. Yes, I know, so that's a lot of work too. Um, so understanding that we can't move quickly on obtaining another used truck, um, can we work towards getting that forward funded so that we can be very quick to pick up a good used vehicle if it were to become available. And I know that some of that's city finance requirements and some of that's how do we, you know, get the programming for the funds, that sort of thing.

And assuming we can put all those things, is that something that we can do? Mr. Delgado, that's an interesting question. Through the mayor, yes, yes, we can. So we can rely on airport fund balance. Balance, we can also rely on sales tax collections, and we can also rely on CBJ Fleet Reserve for forward funding and then have that reimbursed with PFC collections.

That is something that is on the table, um, and that's, that's essentially how we could spring into action and get that second truck, whether it's new or used. And follow up, Mr. Williams, sorry. And follow-up to the mayor, um, the ARFF, uh, organization is actually not part of the airport's budget. That's correct, Mr. Delgado. I'm sorry, could you repeat that question?

The ARFF budget for funding these trucks, technically that's not actually part of our airport responsibility, correct? So we do have, uh, that contract with CCFR. They maintain, they provide the testing, they provide the personnel. They don't provide the new trucks. That's something that historically has been handled with AIP funding and something that we know now is, is not flexible enough to, to fix this issue.

And I'll note that, uh, Miss Soutier has her hand up as well.

Eve, before you speak, I just want to say that it's the city and borough of Juneau that is bound to comply with the grant assurance of the federal funds, not Capital City Fire and Rescue. It's, it's the airport. So, um, how the money flows one way or another, uh, Quite frankly, I'm not 100% positive, but the airport's on the hook for complying with the grant assurances. Yes, um, kind of scaffolding on what Mr. Epstein said, the airport is also on the hook for complying with the FAA. Um, there is no alternative to complying with the FAA.

Um, it's just how you're going to do it and how fast are you going to do it. Um, and I, I really want the assembly to really fully understand just how dire the situation was and really appreciate what the airport employees under Mr. Delgado did do to keep it running. I had to get to Colorado for a surgery and I was looking at, well, I've got some private pilot friends who might be able to get me to Sitka or to Ketchikan so that way I can get out to make my surgery. If we went down to ARFF 0. If we go down to ARFF 0 in May or June, that'll be during the travel season.

That'll be during everybody wants to go out and travel and we have a whole bunch of tourists coming in to travel. If we go to ARFF 0, They won't be coming in. The legislators will also not be going out. And so I think that we really need to understand just how one dire the situation is still, but also to appreciate Mr. Delgado and his crew getting this done as quickly as they did and with baling wire and a prayer, really. Um, so, um, hopefully— I, I'm kind of with Mr. Epstein.

I'm not sure how we're going to get it, but hopefully we can get the money, get it into some sort of reserve so we can scoop up another truck as quickly as possible. Thank you. Thank you for that. Um, I'll comment unless Mr. Steingart— I can't tell if you're jumping in there or not. Sure, I might as well.

Um, I'm just trying to think of how we kind of got to this position, I guess, how we got to the point where we have such old vehicles that we're relying on. Was it, you know, do we have a kind of formal replacement structure for the, or policy for these trucks that wasn't followed, or was there a financial decision made at some time in the past? I mean, I don't want to dwell too much on the past, but I'm kind of trying to understand, like, how we got to the point where we have you know, 3 very old trucks that we're relying on, or 2 very old. Understood, we don't go there again. Exactly, yeah, yes, exactly, Mayor Weldon.

Thank you, and through the mayor, it's a mix of that, and I think primarily how our trucks were prioritized with AIP in the context of AIP grants. So when an AIP grant comes in, we provide local match to fund that project, and I believe that other projects were prioritized over ARFF, and I think as long as the ARFF trucks were functioning on paper, they were fine. No need to really focus too much on the trucks as long as they were just running. And I think now that the trucks are truly showing their age, we're reaching this, this point of no return, really, where the trucks now have to be replaced. There.

It's not a matter of if or whether they're running now. It's just the fact that, um, there's a very high, very high chance these trucks could go down all at once. Um, not something we want, but, um, I, I believe that a lot of it has to do with AIP funding and the reliance on the airport's part to, to, to focus on AIP grants almost exclusively because it was— it's federal money, right? No, go ahead, Mr. Steiger. And I guess as a follow-up then, is the Airport Board considering a more formal policy to make sure that, you know, in the future, 10 years, 15 years, however long— I don't know how long an ARFF truck is supposed to last, probably not 40 like some of the ones you have— um, set a formal policy to ensure that we're prioritizing this must-have issue over maybe some AIP-funded things that maybe weren't as necessary to keep the, the place running?

Through the mayor, yes, although it hasn't been addressed with the board just yet. This is something that we're still tackling with CCFR, specifically with our chief. There will be a policy in place to replace these trucks every 10 years and not the 15. We don't want to reach a position where we can't find parts. So, will part of that be— you will now be part of a fleet replacement fund then?

Where— how are we doing it, I guess? Did you want to say something? I was just going to state that in answer to your question, we can't let ourselves get in this position again. So, I think Mr. Delgado's answer was better than mine, but yeah. It kind of grabs onto his coattails.

Thank you. And Madam Mayor, to answer your question, um, I think, uh, our focus has been on tackling the current issue. Um, we— the, again, the vision here is to establish a replacement schedule where each year there's some money allotted for whether it goes into CIP or whether we keep it in, uh, airport fund of some sort, we set aside money to replace these trucks every 10 years, like clockwork. And Mr. Delgado, the goal would be to— that replacing every 10 years would be done with AIP funds, correct? Eventually, yes, provided that whether it's me or the next airport manager is, is there to ensure that continues.

We could also keep it on the PFC schedule, which is, is a bit more flexible. I, I would hate to get into, get backed into a corner by the FAA saying that we can't get a truck for another 10 years. That's right. And this is probably a question for the finance director. Can we give them permission, permission, access to buy, especially like a used truck, faster?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We, um, actually had a strategy session last week to talk about what we could do quickly. Our procurement code allows actually some very swift actions for used vehicles, so that can happen fairly quickly. And we also discussed, um, the appropriation authority that exists within the fleet reserve and the ability to tap that quickly to make a purchase. And in that conversation, um, Mr. Delgado, uh, had mentioned that, uh, we could get PFC reimbursement.

So while the airport hasn't necessarily built up a fleet fund balance within its own fleet line to cover that, we could use the appropriation authority to get the vehicle purchased until the PFC reimbursement could come through and, and repay that, um, that fund. So yes, there are definitely ways that we could move quickly. So in a nutshell, Ms. Rodell said they have a fund balance. So sound like you have a fund balance to pay for a used vehicle, and then we have plans to save for a new vehicle. Is that kind of what you said, um, Madam Mayor?

Not exactly. So, um, the airport does have a fund balance, but in order for them to utilize it, it requires an appropriation, which is an ordinance and two assembly meetings, which is not quick. However, within our— the city's fleet reserve and fleet replacement program, we would have sufficient expenditure authority or budget authority to make a quick turnaround purchase and then come back to the assembly through an ordinance if we needed to address a need there to take care of the rest of the city. Thank you for Thank you for the clarification. Okay, Mrs. Hall.

Yeah, thank you. Um, I was just wondering if, you know, you said the FAA only allows a purchase of one of those vehicles every 10 years, is that correct? Through the mayor, not exactly. Um, it depends on the condition of the vehicle and it depends on what they deem to be a— our minimum response capability. So because we have 3 vehicles, we meet the requirement.

And because 2 of those vehicles are in good or fair condition, they think that— well, actually, they say that, well, your truck is projected to be in poor condition in 2031. Yeah. And that's where we're at. And we've we've tried with them. So, um, did they provide funding to purchase a vehicle down the road?

I mean, will we be able to pursue that? It is, Mayor, in 2031 we will. Okay, it's just a long ways away, and this won't jeopardize—. Well, I, I understand the urgency of needing to act immediately. Deputy Manager Barr has been keeping us informed and stressing the urgency of all of this.

So, um, okay, thank you. Mr. Kelly, thank you. And this question is kind of directed to follow up with Miss Flick on, on something she said a moment ago. So it sounds like we're talking about using the city's fleet reserve in order to get the truck for the airport, the air then we do an ordinance to reimburse that.

But being as the Airport Board is a separate enterprise, it— does that do any— I mean, is it kind of mixing things a little too much? Is it going to create any concerns with our audits, or would you be able to speak to that quickly? Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Um, The, the airport is part of the city, so they, they have an empowered governing board. They are under the assembly, so they participate in the fleet reserve just like the police department does or our streets department does.

So there's not a concern there with our fleet fund. We very distinctly track monies that come into that, particularly from, from everywhere. But when we have an enterprise fund, like the airport is an enterprise fund, we absolutely ensure that the money that comes in from the enterprise fund is— they can track it right back to how they're spending it. So we wouldn't have any audit concerns. Ideally, the airport board would have some sort of an ability to say, yes, please buy a truck.

And I think that if we needed that in short order, Mr. Delgado could could make that happen, but we would have all the technicalities in place to move quickly if a great opportunity came along to buy a used vehicle.

Um, thank you, Madam Mayor. Ms. Flick, I just want to be clear on this because I'm not sure I completely understand. If, if we exercise the option of getting money from The city's fleet recovery fund with the airport beyond the hook to reimburse the amount of money that we get from that. That's an excellent question. Um, yes, sir.

Um, the airport would be expected to replace that or to seek another, um, an action through the assembly. But, but we could do a short-term, quick solution to manage the need and the urgency. If an opportunity arose.

Perfect, thank you. Uh, Mr. Williams. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, so can we define quick? Because it seems to me that, you know, Captain Avia is here, but we would not want the travesty of not being able to have aircraft coming in and going out during our busy season.

It would absolutely impact the entire community. So can we do this in 10 days, 20 days, 2 months? What would that be? Excellent question, Mr. Williams, and through the mayor, um, we can turn around a purchase order and wire funds probably within a day. Now, having said that, we probably don't want to spend $1 million on a vehicle sight unseen.

There's some due diligence that we would want to ensure happens, and that truck is probably not going to be parked next door to the airport. And so just the logistics of being in Juneau and getting said truck into Juneau, and then not my area of expertise, but I believe it does take some time to get it outfitted, staff trained, and get the go-ahead to say, yes, that's officially in use. So the short term would be cutting the check. So yeah, that was my— that was the gist of my question, is how soon could we get the check cut? Because there's all this other time that has to happen.

And I think we're really in very dire straits, as Ms. Sutier said. Okay, just remember the check takes a short time, but then there'll be an invoice following it. All right, well, we're getting pushed on our time a little bit because the hospital board is sitting behind you waiting to come up, so any last thoughts from the board?

Go ahead, Ms. Sutier. Yes, thank you. I just, I wanted to make sure that everybody understood. The folks on the board are working really, really hard, and we're responding to the concerns and the needs of the airport, and the airport crew is doing an incredible job. And I will say that the asks that we've kind of put forward today with the deputy manager as well as the ARFF truck, we wouldn't ask if they weren't absolutely necessary.

And so I just really, really wanna underscore that those are two, two things that, that are, are necessary for the operation. And Mr. Delgado and his crew are just incredible. They are doing an amazing job. Thank you. Uh, thank you for that.

Anything further? All right, I just wanted to thank the Airport Board for all the work that they are doing. Appreciate that. And Mr. Delgado, you're doing off to a great start. Good job.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We'll work on the one-page memo though.

Yes, we will recess for 5, 10, looking at my assembly.

Oh, 10. We're recessing for 10. And thanks for making it possible for me to be on Zoom and Mr. Epstein, thank you for chairing, um, for the Airport Board. I appreciate it. Yes, well, good luck healing.

Thanks.

Bring the Special Assembly Finance Committee back to order, and now we have the joint meeting with the Bartlett Hospital Board of Directors, and we will start to my right with introductions. So Your name and how long you've been with the board. Uh, Deb Johnston, and I have—. This is—. Oops.

Deb Johnston, and this is my 8th year on the hospital board, uh, my 2nd year as, uh, how come we're getting an echo?

Continue on. Second year as board president.

I will roll off in 2027, will be my final year on the board. Perfect, thank you. And we'll go around and then we'll have you, or Mr. Warner, introduce your staff. So Beth Weldon-Mayer, go ahead, Mr. Geiger.

I'm Hal Geiger. I'm the board secretary. I, I wasn't prepared for the question of how long I've been on the board. I think I'm in my 5th year. I took the place of somebody who left.

Yeah, and I think, yeah, this is my 2nd full term.

Hi everybody, Christine Wall. I am in my 6th year on the assembly.

Nanobrooks, first year of the first term.

And I'm Max Mertz, and I'm in my fourth year. Uh, this coming June will be 4 years.

Neil Steininger, and I'm in my second year on the assembly. I'm Brent Singey, second year on the hospital board.

Paul Kelly, third year on the assembly. Maureen Hall, second year on the assembly.

I, I'd like to also introduce, uh, Jeannie Monk, who is with us tonight. She— this is her first year on the hospital board. We're very glad to have her. And I believe Chris Letterman is also a board member, um, who is—. Will—.

Is online as well.

And Joe Warner. Yep, we'll start with Joe and work our way down our staff too. And Joe, if there's any staff— looking at the gentleman in the back— that you want to introduce, please feel free. Joe Warner, I have 5 years cumulative working for Bartlett. I'm in my 17th month in this position.

Uh, with me I have my HR director, uh, Chad Brown. The remainder of my staff is unfortunately ill today.

Katie Kester, City Manager, third year as City Manager, sixth year with City and Borough of Juneau. Good evening, I'm Angie Flick. I'm the Director of Finance here for CBJ. I've been with the city for just about 4 years and the finance director for almost 3. I'm Adrienne Wendell, CBJ's Budget Manager.

I've been with CBJ for nearly 6 And we'd like to do our staff, not just to acknowledge them, but so you guys can put names and faces together because you often hear us talk about all these people. So with that, I'll go with you, Ms. Johnston, and where are you taking us? Well, uh, we've done this a few times. Uh, some years have been, uh, better than others. Our discussions have been longer than we anticipate tonight.

And a little more dire, and some have been pretty optimistic. Last year, and last year was pretty optimistic. It, it still is. However, however, as with the city, with what's going on with the city, there is uncertainty in our future as well. We have some uncertainty surrounding, in particular, hospital reimbursement, the type that— and our funding sources.

So I'm sure that Joe will talk to us a little bit about that, and we might have a little bit of a conversation about our options going forward depending on what what happens with our funding sources. But all in all, things are looking pretty good for us. But Joe and ultimately Max will, will end the conversation with what's going on. So thank you for that. Mr. Walter.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I do have a few slides in the deck. I'm probably going to concentrate mostly on one and try to— it's going to be more narrative than going into the details. Let's see if I can work this.

So as we look at FY26 and where we ended up, or we were projected to end up this year, um, our expenditures look to exceed budget at this point. Um, we've had a busy year since we've been in here last. We've added two primary care clinics, both family practice and Glacier Pediatrics. We've added additional providers at both of those locations. We have new— two new providers at Family Practice, one new provider at Glacier Peds in the short time we've had them.

We've had expansion in the specialty services. We have a new GYN practicing at Family Practice on a week— once a month. We've expanded ophthalmology, we've expanded orthopedics, and we've increased access to some other specialties. Through telemedicine, through our clinic. So overall, it's been a busy year, but with, you know, new providers, new clinics come additional expenses.

So when you look at that, where we're going to end up annualized for FY26, we will— are looking to exceed what we did for budget. This is primarily to meet the demands of our patients and, uh, support the health of the hospital as we move into the future. Some of the things you'll see in the budget as we look at FY27 is we are projecting an increase in outpatient revenue. Some of the new clinics came on later in the year. We went full steam ahead with family practice in September, and Glacier Peds started with us in January.

Some of those are annualized. We also had some reimbursement issues with Wildflower Court to start the year that cost the hospital roughly $1.2 million just to do timing of our rate setting with the Department of Health. It was a one-time thing, and that should not happen in the future years. Um, we've also had some one-time costs with startup of the clinics, you know, buying their assets, uh, bringing on the staff, bringing on new providers. Um, a lot of these have additional costs associated with them.

Um, as we look forward to the second half of the year, we've also looked at some of our internal processes, specifically around how we charge for pharmaceuticals. Um, and so we've found some manual processes that weren't exactly— well, we were having some issues with some manual processes, so we had to amend them. Um, in doing so, after analysis, we figured that it looks like we left roughly $3.2 million of revenue on the table for the first part of the year that we plan on capturing the second part of the year. And so that's why you see kind of a net loss to start the year, and it flips to positive if we— as we finish up. Um, and as we look at FY27, some of those things carry over.

We are going to have additional staff costs associated with clinics and specialists associated revenues, associated costs with pharmaceuticals and the supplies to run the hospital. The one thing in '27 that we're not including is, uh, in prior years we were paid through a demonstration program for our Medicare population. It's the Rural Demonstration Program. That is something that has dropped off for us starting this fiscal year, and so we were It's roughly worth $4.2 million to the hospital that we're not getting today. And so that was a decrease in revenue this year.

It's not included in next year's budget. We had been working closely with both Sullivan and Murkowski staff in hopes of getting this extended. It's lapsed 4 different times in the past and been extended 4 times in the past, but to date it's still not been extended. So with that, we're also looking at different revenue or reimbursement methodologies through Medicare, Medicaid Can the, can the hospital look at different programs that are out there? Can we change how we're paid that puts us in a better financial situation to make sure we're successful?

This doesn't only apply to the hospital but can also apply to the different clinics we have now as well. We can look at provider-based or rural health clinics and some of those other status and how we're reimbursed. So we're focusing a lot on how we improve our operations and how we improve our reimbursement while maintaining the high level of quality that we've come to expect with our hospital.

Um, and so I guess the summary of our budget, uh, we're expecting to be in the positive next year as well with a net income of $5 million, not including demonstration. So if by some chance we are able to maneuver or change our reimbursement methodology to either critical access or perchance the head model in conjunction with the DOH, um, this could improve upon that. Um, but with everything, there's always uncertainty in the healthcare market. Um, so we have, you know, there's increased competition in the local market. We have a new specialty clinic down the hospital from the clinic, which is cardiology, endocrinology.

Um, and then there's been addition of additional imaging specialties in the CBJ over the last year as well. And so we do have headwinds with that, and we have headwinds as we look at the rural health transformation in the coming years as we see the Medicare— Medicaid rules start to decrease. But, you know, as we lead into that, there will be opportunity as well. With all change, we think there is opportunity for improvement and betterment.

So it's kind of quick and dirty on the budget. I don't know if there's any specific questions on the numbers I provided that we'd like to shoot across the bow before we get into the— some of the other subjects I wanted to talk about. Any questions on the budget so far, or we just need a moment to digest it?

That went really fast. Next year we're going to have this available a little ahead of time, would be lovely. Um, Ms. Wall, do you have questions? Okay, move on. So when we talked about kind of the headwinds and the opportunity in the future, speaking specifically about rural health transformation.

And so as everyone knows in this room, there is roughly $272 million that will come from the federal government to the state in year 1 of the program, and ideally in year 2 through 5. So as we look at that and we look at transformation and how we better set the hospital up for success in the future and we transform health, we have several projects in line. Both that will kind of increase the technology and services we provide while hopefully giving us better access to technology to improve the care we provide patients and ideally decrease that cost as we go through this program. So as we start nearing the year 5 and year 6 of this program, when funds start to diminish and we spend through, there will be reduced number of Medicaid patients. Um, and so the expectation is that the uninsured population will increase for the hospital.

So people need care, they will continue to need care whether they're insured or not. And typically someone that is eligible for Medicaid last week will probably be eligible for our financial assistance policy once they come off it. And so we're trying to set the hospital up so we're able to both mitigate that, try to create a healthier population, while setting ourselves up financially to be successful at that time.

Ms. Wall. Do you have a sense of the scale of that impact financially? And does, you know, I know when the Rural Health Transformation was pitched, it was meant to be, you know, somewhat of a balancing, you know, for the hospital. Does it, if you're successful, will it work out that way, that that money will offset what you're going to see the changes are on the other end? We're hopeful that—.

We're—. We are hopeful, but until they start going through letters of intent and approving those for application, it's yet to be determined. Um, I would say if we're able to get some of our top priorities accomplished this year, it will move us or set us up well into the future. So even if we don't get subsequent grants for this. If we can get the staff to set us up this year, I think we'll be successful into the future.

Quick follow-up, and, um, the— do you have a sense of the projections for the— with the changes in Medicaid, what that financial impact will be? Well, the numbers I've heard have kind of been across the board, you know, roughly a 35% decrease in expansion population. But when we look at our Medicaid and what we have, trying to peel out a normal Medicaid from an expansion Medicaid population is impossible for us because they all show up as Medicaid. So it's one of those things we're hoping— we're hopeful that the impact's not severe to us, but trying to measure it is— we're trying to get those tools at this point, trying to work with AHA and this DOH to try to understand the population. Okay, uh, Ms. Hall.

With the Rural Health Transformation Funds, you mentioned having some projects ready for application. Are you able to speak to that now, or is that something, you know, just in general, you are on it and you're ready to go with some projects? I would say without getting into specific where it's going to be a focus on technology and technology upgrades and our ability to access our patients where they are. Okay, thank you.

Then I don't know if this is kind of along that line. You have a line number 14, charity care. You want to talk briefly about that, what that is? Charity care is the financial assistance. So as someone comes in and they're uninsured or underinsured and they're unable to meet their, uh, financial obligation to hospital, they're able to go through the application process and we grant them charity care.

Um, I don't particularly like the charity care verbiage. It is more of a Medicare requirement than ours. Financial assistance is what we're trying to achieve. We do have a sliding fee schedule, and so it meets all the— try to, you know, up to 400% of the poverty level.

Um, but as you see those Medicaid populations start to decrease, they will fall into the charity care bucket once they start receiving care after that time. Okay. I think though, as we look at the future, we're able to leverage some of the primary care services we have. Ideally, we can get ahead of some of these chronic diseases and keep the person out of the hospital. Um, and that goes back to like the technology and systems we have.

We have 5 different medical records at the hospital, which doesn't create a cohesive system for improving patients' care. So one of the things we want to look at is pull all that together so we know where the patient is, what their chronic diseases are, and how we address them and keep them out of the hospital. The most expensive care you receive is in the four walls of the hospital. Yes, I'm sure. Mr. Mertz, you had something to add?

Yeah, I was just going to add to what, what Joe said. Um, over the last 20 or 25 years, there's just been a change, a significant change in the way Bartlett's reimbursed under the Medicaid program and also under insurers. So we used to be a first-dollar insurance town because there were so many people working for the state. And for the feds. And now that we've retired a good chunk of our population, we have a lot more Medicare reimbursement.

So people are kind of— a lot of people have a kind of an understanding about Bartlett's revenue stream that really is kind of outdated at this point. And we really are much more of a Medicare. We've also been Medicare hospital, Medicaid. We've enjoyed the benefit of the expansion of Medicaid such that it's really masked the exposure that we have to a lot of underinsured and uninsured people in this town. There's a, there's a high number of people that are either self-employed or they're, you know, they're gig workforce people that don't have really great insurance.

And so there's a real concern there that under the current model that we have for our reimbursement, which is not a cost-based reimbursement, it's a fee-based reimbursement. We won't get into that, but, um, it, it could really have some dire, uh, impact on the hospital going forward. So seeing nothing further, go ahead. So the next talking point, as we move into this as well, um, Bartlett is an aging facility at this point. I think the average age of your plant is in the upper teens, 18, 19 years.

And so as we look at our facility, we haven't been keeping up with the upgrades that are required to keep a modern facility moving forward. So with that in mind, we've gone through a facility master planning process. We actually had the presentation in January to our board. We are still trying to fine-tune that, and some of that pulls in together— or pulls information together so we can start looking at the services that this aging population will require in the coming years, and how do we expand and update our facilities to accommodate those services. Um, some of that backlog of updates and upgrades does come with an additional cost, and then using all the buildings we have on the campus, updating facilities.

But that'll be something that the board will hopefully be fleshing out and getting a 5 to 10 year plan in front of us so we're able to start actioning some of those things. We have some near-term issues we have to get resolved so we can take care of the population as well as long-term as some of these— as our population ages and requires more and more services. And this is not only the services the hospital provides, but the specialties that are required to provide those services. And so it kind of gives us a roadmap over the next 5 to 10 years for both those kind of, uh, trains of thought.

Um, and with that, with facilities, the other piece of the hospital that we're trying to make sure we have a good basis on is the employee provider engagement. And so 70% of the hospital's costs are employees. They're what take care of you. Without, uh, the employees, it's just a pile of bricks, right? And so we've engaged on an annual survey.

We just completed 3-year— that year 3 of that survey. We've had marked improvement on a year-to-year basis in our employee engagement. We are at the 39th percentile at this point. I think we started in the teens when I got here 2 years ago. Our goal is to, you know, move into the 75th percentile, be an employer of choice just from how we treat our employees and providers.

Um, so as our patients age, so do our employees, and so we have retirement, and so we want to make sure that we are an employer of choice so recruitment isn't a burden to us. And so management and my team has spent a lot, a lot of time and hard work making sure that we're getting out, talking to our employees. We're rounding on a weekly basis. We go out at nights, you know, see the night nurses, make sure we're touching base with everyone, trying to listen to them, understand their concerns, work to make sure that they don't have barriers in their work, as well as making sure we're providing high-quality, safe patient care. Um, I guess with that, I'd open up to questions.

Any further questions from anybody? I know we'll probably talk about a little bit later with home health and hospice, but where does it fit in on this sheet? Yeah, uh, Mr. Mertz has a few talking points. I'd like to hand it off to him if you're— unless anyone has any questions specific to me.

Thanks, Joe. Mayor, which sheet are you pointing at there? Oh, sure, that— what you're looking at there are consolidated hospital results. So, um, you know, it's a, it's a division within that. We haven't broken those out.

We do look at it. I'll talk a little bit more about hospice and home care in a minute. I just want to touch on a couple of things.

I won't be long, and it really is around strategic relationship with CBJ, between the hospital and the CBJ. You know, our charter, I think, dates back to 1970, and I think the last real change to the charter with respect to Bartlett was 1974. When I started my career, I, you know, I audited the hospital starting in 1993, and man, healthcare has changed a lot. You know, it's a completely different animal than it was 30 or 40 years ago, and it requires a response by the hospital that is very different than it was then as well. And a lot of that has to have you know, it's the internal capabilities of the hospital respond to issues as they come up.

The relationship that we have with CBJ hasn't changed at all, really. I mean, the, you know, the kind of the day-to-day things that we do, you know, the interfund and cash activity is largely the same as it was many years ago. CIP is exactly the same as it was many years ago. You know, the capital project process, you know, insurance. There's a lot of things, and we haven't had a broad discussion about that issue as a hospital, but it seems to me that we would all be both CBJ and Bartlett to have an intentional process, probably at the staff level, potentially involving, you know, stakeholders and also outside experts to look at the relationship and see if it should change.

Uh, you know, is there— and I'm not talking about it not being a city-owned facility, let me just start there. I'm talking about, uh, you know, how both entities do business to make them as flexible and capable as possible. It really is up to y'all, the assembly, to decide whether you want to go forward with something like that, obviously. Mr. Mertz, you mean— might have to be more specific for me. Are you talking like our procurement process?

What are you talking about? Procurement, CIP, interfund, cash management. You know, there's a long list. Those are probably the top of the pyramid that, you know, the shared services that you have in general with between the CBJ and Bartlett, it's very unusual. When we look at our peers, both in the state and down south, there's a whole lot of community-owned facilities around this country.

There's very few that have the kind of relationship that they do with their owning government. And that's what I'm speaking to. And for me, it's all about efficiency and being able to provide the highest quality care to our patients as possible. Could you give me that list one more time? I couldn't write it fast enough.

I'll send you an email. The, it's, so CIP procurement, interfund cash management. There's some shared services that probably fall inside of that.

You know, CIP and procurement are kind of closely related, but there's some differences there. But those are the big ones. You know, self-insurance, there's a lot of things that can go into that. And one thing I just want to close with, and I'll talk a little bit about hospice and home care, and that is that we're really proud of and that, that's the fact that we've, we have a healthy hospital now. We feel, we feel good about where we're, where we sit.

We have a lot of improvement that we can do, and it's, it's super important that we maintain a strong independent community hospital. When I started my career, I was an auditor of hospitals in Texas and New Mexico, Arizona, Southern Colorado, and many, many of those hospitals are now closed, or they're what they're deemed as feeder clinics is a common phrase where, you know, you might go to the hospital, get your arm set, but if you really want anything of any acuity done, you've got a 3-hour drive. Well, for us, it's, you know, it's a lot further than that. And those communities, the impact, you know, one is Las Vegas, New Mexico, which is literally, there's another Las Vegas, there's Las Vegas, New Mexico, it's about our size or about a 3-hour drive from the major city of Albuquerque. They lost their hospital.

It's a feeder clinic now. And the impact on Las Vegas over the last 20 years since that happened has been devastating. You effectively end up with a monopoly provider because you have one facility that owns that facility. They're providing everything to you. And what all— every study that's ever been done points to is that monopoly healthcare is bad for the people receiving it because typically focus goes to how do you control costs, what do we do to squeeze more out of every dollar, and it's not necessarily to provide the best we can.

I think our model is far superior where we have a community-owned hospital, and I just want to say that I hope in 20 years we'll I would still be saying the same thing, and that's the reason I serve on this board. So can you put up that slide, Haas? We wanted to—. Yeah. Sorry, just a question on that.

So basically, you're, you know, since the charter dates back to 1970 and the last time it was updated was '74, you just want to sit down and have another close look at that relationship, recognizing the seismic shifts in the delivery of healthcare services since that time? Yes, ma'am, that's exactly right. Yeah, and I, you know, I think you could look through, you might have a different landing spot for each one of the different areas, you know, so I think there's, you know, you're kind of, you know, you laundry list it, prioritize them, you look at each one of them, identify what best practices are, what other, you know, communities are doing, and then see if that then leads you to a different landing spot. Than where you are now.

One of the things that I think is, is not only a goal for us, but I— but should be a goal for the city and borough administration to make it more efficient for, for Ms. Flick's staff to, uh, to communicate with us and to case in point to speed up the audit. Every year, every year there's a delay in the timing for us and it's, hopefully it will provide some economies of scale and efficiencies on both sides. Perfect. Can you make that bigger? It's awfully small.

So the hospice and home care is something we wanted to touch on as a board. We're very proud of this. You know, it was, it's one of those areas that we deem this to be a critical healthcare service that we're providing. Every month in finance, we take a very close look at how hospice and home care is doing. We have separate financial statements for that.

It is a challenge financially, and we've identified the metrics that really make the difference, and this chart is a pretty cool chart. And the yellow line— and I do have handouts here— but the yellow line is average length of service for people on hospice service. And it is critical that you increase the length of service for hospice patients to allow them to have, you know, honestly, kind of the best experiences possible. So often people entering in hospice will come in literally the week before they die. And to the extent that you can move that out as far as 6 months, which is kind of a Medicare limit, you're, you're well served there.

So it's all about education. Bruce Weyrauch came and talked to us last night from the end of life group, and I just wanted to let you know that we're very focused on that and also as a board very committed to have successful hospice and home care services. Services for a long time. So, thank you.

How are we doing financially on those two services? Well, um, we are losing money at the rate of about $30,000 a month on hospice and about $50,000 a month on home care right now, if— más o menos, in that, in that vicinity. It is— those are the— that's another area where the funding mechanism provided by Medicare, especially for home care services, has changed dramatically. And the reason there's no home care providers out there anymore is because of that. And so we're dealing in, you know, we're dealing in an environment where it's very challenging to provide effective home care services, especially in small markets.

More challenging here. So remind me, do you guys work hand in hand with the MICP program or not? Is there a relationship there? That's our mobile paramedic.

Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Did I say it wrong? I probably did. I will have to look into that.

I know we do. I know our social workers work pretty close with them, but I don't know if our home care providers do. Okay. This is Hall. Yeah, sorry to hear that.

I was hoping to hear that the revenue would be up, but I understand the reimbursement issues. Is all the hospice care delivered in the patient's home, or do you have an inpatient hospice ability too? It's all in the patient's home. There's occasionally that you'll have hospice at Wildflower Court, but the vast majority of it's home delivered. Okay, so folks that might not have necessarily a, a home or an adequate place to deliver that care, are they still able to receive it, or how does that work?

Joe, do you want to talk to that? Yeah, that's probably a Joe question. And so the hospital does provide comfort care, not hospice care. So if a patient comes to the hospital and they haven't been admitted to hospice. Even if they have been admitted, we will take them into the hospital for the last days.

Yes.

I don't know if your plan was to go over your slides with revenue and expenses, but you might pull them up there just in case anybody has questions. Oops, Ms. Wall. Madam Mayor, I was gonna maybe stray off slightly off topic here, so if there's more slides to present, I can hold that. You guys aren't following your slideshow. That was part of my intro.

I'm historically bad at not following slide decks. There you go. I apologize. Anyway, so there's some other slides that you might want to just breeze through, so if there's any questions on those, we can ask. And then Ms. Wall can ask your straight-off question.

I think, I think you want— I want to have you bring them up. Sorry.

And just briefly talk about each slide, make sure we don't have any questions.

Do you want to just briefly touch on this slide, please?

As you can see in this slide, we have seen a dramatic increase to personnel services that was driven by our addition of specialty services and clinics. Um, those are all revenue-generating services. We also see A decrease in commodities. I have to follow up on that. I think sometimes we take depreciation out of that particular line item.

The 2 big ones on here are capital outlay and capital projects. Those are to bring or update our hospital and facilities. Um, in this packet, there is a detailed list of capital items that we'll be working towards and projects.

Any questions on the expenditures? Again, you guys are a quiet group tonight. Okay, moving on.

As you move on to the next slide, this will be our funding sources. You can see the, the corresponding increase to funding from charges from services. This also does incorporate a 4% Chargemaster increase. This typically only impacts our uninsured which typically fall into a charity bucket, and our commercial insurers. And so out of that 4% increase, we end up— we'll net roughly 1.2% because Medicare is not going to pay us more, Medicaid is not going to pay us more.

We have our investment income, our leases, and we did have a general fund on here. I think that's more wishful thinking because it was on there from last year for home health. Hospice. It's always, it's always good to have wishful thinking. Any questions on these?

Ms. Hall, you look like you want to ask something. Um, I was just gonna— the charges for services, I'm just curious about the cruise industry. Um, how's reimbursement for passengers and for crew when you do provide services? Do you get reimbursement when providing those services? So two different buckets.

For crew, we do get reimbursed at a commercial rate. Um, passengers, it's kind of a mix depending on where they come from. So there it does bring a complexity. So we end up dealing with a lot of out-of-state MedicAids that we have to go through a process, make sure we're enrolled. We do get some commercial and then out of country.

Um, the out-of-country commercial insurances are probably the hardest to process. We're still collecting on some of the ones from last cruise season. Some of these can take up to 18 months to actually go through the process and actually receive collections, but it's not a straightforward answer. It goes patient to patient sometimes. But a lot of staff time dedicated to trying to collect that revenue from the cruise passengers.

Yeah, we also have to— we do a lot of upfront when these foreigners— I want call them foreigners, but— oh, out of the country, out of the country cruise passengers end up in our hospital beds. We try to do upfront collections as much as possible because when they— oftentimes when they leave the door, we have no means of collecting. Okay, thank you. Do we charge— I know the ambulance can charge a difference between resident, non-resident. Can the hospital, or is it all across the board the same?

So all across, we have one Chargemaster. We treat everyone exactly the same.

All right, next.

The last slide just goes over the fund balance. Um, so we have the debt service reserve at that top line. We have our beginning fund balance and then the decrease, which is driven by capital and CIP expenditures. Um, I will say, as we go through the year, we approve our in-house capital projects as we, you know, assess the financial viability of the year. So we don't go— all $9 million doesn't get approved at once.

We do them, you know, as things become open, as we look at the financials. And where are we on the emergency department renovation? The—. We're almost complete with design. We expect to start construction in April, and roughly 18 months after that completion, you'll see lots of communication coming in the coming months.

Ms. Wall. Um, thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, I probably asked— I think I asked this question every year, but can you remind me what's your goal for days of operation, or What's your goal for the size of the fund balance and how that relates to your operations? Well, we kind of look at, um, like AAA bond-rated nonprofit hospitals as the benchmark. Roughly 170 days cash would be ideal.

My preference would be in the 200 range, just gives you that security blanket. We are at 105 days when we closed the last month. We do have some more to do. I will go back and say in About 2 years ago we were in the 70 range, so we've improved. Mr. Mertzen, do you want to jump in there?

Okay, you got it. So this fund balance is all operating ahead of schedule, there's no CIP, or what does this fund balance show us?

There would be CIP included in this, is my understanding. This is excluding— okay, okay, CIP is pulled out. I know it's Bucketed different. It is bucketed different on our financial statements as well. We pull it out into different categories.

Okay.

Any questions? I don't think we need to go down the fine lines.

Joe, actually, if you wouldn't mind going back up to that and touch on the last line on the CIP though. Uh, next, next one. Oh, is that— is it on that page too? The housing piece, just what we've, we've got some broad plans around housing.

We do have some broad plans around housing, so we have put an amount in the capital budget for this year, and the amount of $3.5 million, as we look at some of the housing issues we face, um, this will be one of the submissions for year 2 of rural health transformation. So we do just put it here as a placeholder. Ideally, we're able to access some of those funds and do this renovation. Housing is probably, with many Juneau businesses, an ongoing issue. We had roughly 15 employees rescind employment last year after they accepted due to not finding housing.

So our first— as we look at solutions, we have rented in the local market competing with other residents of Juneau. Um, but long term, we would like to increase, double the size of Bartlett House, adding some 2-bedroom apartments so we have landing spots for our employees, as well as expanding access to increasing the number of beds that our patients can access. So we have a lot of town residents, a lot of southeast residents come in and they stay at the Bartlett House. Um, in the summer months, we're almost continually full. And so as we look at that, we want to make sure we're providing good access.

We have a lot of people come in for surgery. Chemotherapy, infusion therapy. So, and a lot of these people can't afford lodging on the market. So, are you looking at adding a new floor, or how— what are your thoughts? Uh, it'd be an expansion, and so it'd basically be doubling the size, adding a wing, and kind of pushing it out towards the parking lot.

Um, we, we've looked at a couple of different designs, and as we get farther into it, we'll look at what makes sense for us. Uh, the first thought is making all the first floor the patient housing piece and making the second floor all the employee housing. We have a lot of employees that— a lot of patients that obviously have mobility issues, and walking up the stairs becomes an issue. So, okay, Mr. Mertz, just maybe just tag on to that. Obviously we've been working with Bartlett Foundation on this, um, and then they, they engaged Wayne Jensen of Jensen Yorba Wall to do some kind of preliminary cost estimation, look what the possibilities would be in that footprint.

So there's been some pretty intentional work around, you know, what that would look like, because as Joe said, it's, you know, as we all know, housing is a huge issue here, and we just, um, we can solve some of that ourselves. That'd be great. Okay, and if CBG, CBJ needs to borrow it, we only have to pay $1 a night, right? Medicaid rate at least. Yeah.

Um, anything further from anybody? The one other thing that we haven't touched on is Wildflower Court. How are we doing there, and is it full?

And so we've actually, up through December, we're actually doing exceptionally well at Wildflower Court. We had a census of roughly 55 patients every day. That was our average daily census. We did have a pipe burst in one of our wings, and we were forced to shut down 8 of those patient beds. That happened on January 1st.

Um, initially construction was actually supposed to be finished last Friday and we're supposed to be getting those beds back, but they pushed it out 2 weeks. So we're about a week and a half from open up those 8 beds. At this point, I think we have 47 of the 51 beds full today. All right, so that's holding its own then if we're full. Or how are we doing?

If it's full, um, with our new rate that they currently set, we are basically— pushes us to break even on it. So it's, you know, it's not only can it sustain us financially, but it is an outflow of our patients from the hospital, the more expensive, uh, care setting. All right, Ms. Hall. Yeah, just one thing I wanted to touch on with the closing of Rainforest Recovery.

How is that working with GHS? You know, patients that might come into the ER and be identified for maybe entering into treatment, do we seem to still have a great need in the community, or can you speak a little bit about that relationship? So our relationship with GHS has gone well. I know that they've been able to keep those beds relatively full. We have been sending out one of our mid-level providers to take care of the medical needs and some of the medication needs to make sure they're able to take care of that somewhat higher-level patient that they weren't before.

Um, from our perspective, it's been great. Um, as we look at the ED and kind of the incidence of the patients that are coming in there, we don't see any major changes from before to after. Um, so to me, it's, it's been a great solution. Okay, and do you see a need for increased services in that, uh, realm, or do you feel like we're meeting the need in in Juneau right now for folks needing recovery? I would have to reach out to GHS and do some more research on that to see what their average daily census is in those beds.

Okay. Yeah, thank you.

All right, one last shot. Question, comment, either from the board or from the assembly?

Let's go ahead and go. Oh, that's right, you had a squirrel. No, it wasn't a squirrel. Um, Madam Mayor, is this a good time to ask question for the board, or—. Yep, um, this is that time.

Okay. Um, I had two things. I, I think the first maybe has been covered. Um, you know, I think the last time we were all together was that, you know, big meeting where we went through kind of all of the service areas that you all had identified as things that were costing the city, you know, a lot of money. And, you know, we know what happened with Rainforest Recovery, we know what happened with hospice and home care, we just talked about Wildflower Court.

There were a few other things on that list, if I remember correctly, and maybe getting a little bit of an update on you know, how those are going. I know there were some changes that you all kind of wanted to make, if I'm making sense.

No, I think we're all struggling to remember what all those changes are without paperwork in front of us. Go ahead, Mr. Bird, save us. Aurora Behavioral Health Center was one of those, and, uh, Joe can talk on it as Well, I can't— I— you want to cover that, Joe? I think that's one of the areas, just the, you know, the fact that the census was so low. Yeah, so it was the Behavioral Health Crisis Center is the first one of the closures.

Um, it was the— I'm going to say it wrong— it was the autistic program that we had on the second floor. We ended up shutting down as well, in addition to the Rainforest Recovery Center being the third big one. The other ones that we looked at in addition to that were home health and hospice, and the board elected to make sure that we ran those for an additional 5 years. I believe that covers all the programs.

Not a follow-up. I have another question, but I'll let others, including if Bartlett has questions for us. I don't— it's a quiet crowd tonight. Go ahead, Ms. Wall. Um, another thing that we changed in the last year was, um, having Bartlett do their own audit separate from the city.

Curious how that's going. Did that meet your expectations in terms of having the autonomy? Where are we on that now?

And I think the other thing you guys want from that audit is to give you guys some direction. So just seeing where we are with that. I know we're a little behind, but, uh, in general, how are we doing? Who's answering that? I'll do that.

The Mr. Mertz. I've spent my fair share of time with our new auditors over the last several months, and I—. The—. We've gotten a look at areas that hadn't previously been looked at, and there were some significant adjustments that we knew that were out there that needed to be made that were made this last year. One of those, and frankly, we're looking at some pretty significant prior period adjustments.

They figured out how to get those booked into the current period. Period, but a lot of them had to do with capital projects. A lot of it had to do with the contractual allowances around Medicare and Medicaid billing. And, you know, some of the areas that we felt weren't getting enough attention are getting enough attention. Anytime you go through a first-time-through kind of audit, as this is, there's always a few bumps in the road, and we've had more interaction that hopefully will get better.

In the future. One of the areas that they gave us, I think it ended up being a significant deficiency around the timing of the interfund transactions, wasn't it, Joe? So they did, you know, comment in their letter that those interfund accounts had not been reconciled timely throughout the year, and that's an area that we're all hopeful will get resolved this year. And I think Angela Davis, our CFO, has got a plan for that. So I would say it was super positive, frankly.

So the way that you term that, that means we're going to expect some findings in the audit, but hopefully you've addressed them. They're to be addressed. Yeah, yeah. And timing— oh, there's a hand. Ms. Monk?

Um, yeah, I actually had a comment on a different issue, so if you want to finish this audit one first and come back to me. Okay, we'll do that. Uh, Ms. Wall, when are we going to be seeing the audit finalized? Friday morning at the latest. That's hot off the presses today.

Perfect. All right, Ms. Monk, you're up. Yeah, um, I'm a brand new board member, so this is just like my second month on the board, so I'm new to all this. But one of the, the reasons I joined the board was I really want us to strengthen our hospital in, in Juneau. And it's great to be here, you know, once a year talking with all of you about the budget.

I would really like to have more dialogue with the assembly members and the community in general about the value of having a community hospital. I think it's easy just to take it for granted that the hospital The hospital will always be there, but it's really hard to run a hospital in this day and age, and it's particularly challenging to run a hospital as part of a city. So I think it's just super important to continue this dialogue and to remind people that if we want to have a community hospital, the most important thing that everybody can do is to use the community hospital. And I think sometimes people forget and they're like, "Oh, I'll just go get my mammogram," Seattle. I'll just go do this when I'm out.

And every time we do that, we weaken our hospital. And so I think I really have appreciated all the budget discussions the city has been leading, and I think at some point it would be great to really have more community discussions on the value of having a community hospital, and if we, you know, want to make sure that is sustainable. Thanks. Thank you for that. I would say I'll let the airport lead the community hospital discussion, but if any time that you guys have things you want to talk to us, all we need to do is set an agenda.

We typically don't talk just because there's not too many items on an agenda, but if you guys have anything or we have anything, we'll call a meeting. Ms. Hall, did you have something? You said the airport lead the discussion? You mean—. I'm at the— sorry, airport was earlier.

The hospital. Yeah. No, I, I— this is, this is a question for Ms. Monk, and you bring extensive, uh, experience in this realm, and we're very lucky to have you on the board. And do you have a suggestion of how, how that community conversation or increased interaction with the assembly, how that could look, or, or any—. Yeah, I, I don't right now since this is just my second month on the board, and I would look to the hospital you know, staff, but also to you all.

But I think some kind of regular engagement with the community on the value of a hospital and what we need to do to support the hospital. Sounds great, thank you.

One of the things that we as a board have— we did our board self-evaluation, and one of the things that has come out, um, along with our strategic planning process is a higher level of community engagement, not only with our employees and our physicians, but, but with the broader community. So we're working on a plan for how the board can better engage without creating a meeting every time more than 3 of us get together to engage with the community. So that's something that you'll hear more about, we'll hear more about going forward. Well, thank you for that, because I think that I agree with Ms. Monk. I think that would be helpful.

So, and we are hearing some good things. I'm hearing good things about your ophthalmologist, and I'm hearing good things about your orthopedics you have in town. So I know several people that have had surgeries here when otherwise they would have gone out of town. So good job there. Anything else?

Mr. Tingy, you've been very quiet. You have anything to add?

I should say Dr. Tingy. Sorry. No, thanks, uh, Madam Mayor. I, I don't have a whole lot to add. I'm not near as well versed in the financials as as Joe is or Max.

And so I, you know, second year on the board and I'm just getting up to speed. So you're ready, Jeanie. It takes a little bit to get into this, the financials part. But I would just reiterate what's been said about the community hospital. I really, from a broader perspective, I really agree that, I mean, I joined the board for the same reason as Max.

I feel like it's valuable to have this community hospital, and, and I've lived here for— well, this is my 20th year, you know, living in Juneau and raised my kids here, and I'd love to stay here and retire here, and I'd like to see the hospital stick around. And the landscape of healthcare in the, in the community has changed a lot in the 20 years I've been here, more so in the last 6 or 7 years than any other time that, you know, that I've been here. And so I think that Um, the assembly ought to be just aware of that. And, uh, yeah, that's— thank you for the chance to talk. And remember, on the assembly side, that you guys can go to any hospital board meeting you care to go to.

You don't have to be the liaison. Mr. Mertz, did you want to add something? Mr. Geiger? But you don't have to add anything if you don't want. I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot.

Well, I've been just sitting here thinking As people have been talking, and so I was a little confused what year this has been for me on the board, but every year that I've been on the board, things have been improved. And we just went through this employee engagement survey, and I think everybody on the board was sick of me talking about how this is the— this is such an improvement over the way we did it when I first got on the board. And the, the, the way the staff reports the finances is just so improved. When we first got there, there was just thousands and thousands of numbers and pages and pages of spreadsheets. And now we go to our meetings and, and we get analysis.

So, um, I don't know that I have a really important point to make other than to say, in the time that I've been on the board, I've just seen continual improvement. And I'm pleased to be on there. I, I've been in this town for 44 years. My children were born at Bartlett. My grandchildren were born in Bartlett.

I've been treated there when I was seriously ill. And this hospital is so important to me. But I don't think many people realize just how fragile it is and how easily it would go away, or at least be diminished so much from what it is. And it takes constant vigilance to have a hospital like that. So I don't know. That's my ramblings.

Thank you for that. Ms. Monk, did you want to add anything more? And Mr. Letterman, you're up to bat, just so you know. Nothing else for me. Mr. Letterman, do you want to add anything if you're still with us?

We don't see you, so it's hard to see.

There we go. Um, Yeah, I, I think for, um, this is—. This—. I'm going into my second year on the board, and I, I, I would like to just continue to stress some of the points that have already been made. Um, you know, our President Johnson mentioned the emphasis that, that is coming out of strategic planning of really trying to build up the brand of Bartlett within the community and stress the importance of having a community hospital.

And all of the changes that Joe and his senior leadership has done over the last year to help sort of right our ship and steer us into, you know, a better position going forward, I think it's just a— it's a testament to everyone coming together as a board and, and the assembly and the support. Uh, yeah, I, I, I just— I, I can't express the sort of the, the pride and the respect that, uh, I have for everything that we've been able to do together.

Thank you for that, Mr. Waller. Um, and then I'll get Madam President, one thing we did forget about— in the past you've had trouble with the staff morale. How are we doing with that with all the changes? Are your staff happier? Are they still out to get you?

I would say overall they're happier. Oh, the—. With the pace of change that we're pushing upon them, we have to start being diligent about the burnout. You know, constant change just starts running through people. So that's something we're going to start focusing on over the next couple months to make sure we're taking care of our staff and they're taking care of themselves, you know, separating for work, taking your vacations, taking your breaks, exercising, eating right.

And so that's, uh, something we found in the engagement survey that we're going to focus on. But they're happier, it's just pushing them hard. Yeah. So, okay, I was just going to ask you, how do you measure that? But it sounds like you do a survey, so thank you for that.

Yeah, Mayor, if I could, Joe, why don't you circulate the Survey, they, the contractors just presented last night and it's really good information. And as Hal said, it's year 3 now that we've been doing it the same way, so we're starting to be able to kind of track how it's going. And pretty much across the board, we saw improvement year over year. So, okay, yeah, Mr. Warner, if you'd share that, that would be great. So, so I'll just share it with you.

Yeah, yep. All right, Madam President, we'll end it with you. Thank you, and I always appreciate these joint meetings. It gives us an opportunity to all be in the same room and talk frankly about what's going on. Like I said, I'm in my 8th year, and the amount of monumental change for the better that has happened over this 8-year period is amazing.

To me. I came here, um, uh, just— it was drinking from a fire hose. And having come from, uh, an adminis— an administrative background, there were some things that I knew that needed to be improved in the communication, and we've really done an amazing job. The, the staff, the, the longtime staff has really stuck to it, and I'm thankful and blessed every single day that, um, at the work that everybody has done to make us this success. I look forward to the, to what's happening in the future and I hope that it's smooth sailing.

It won't be, but I hope that it's smooth sailing going forward, and I appreciate your time with us tonight.

Thank you for that, and we appreciate all of you and serving as lovely volunteers and spending a lot of time, I'm sure, with each other. And we thank your staff, and Mr. Wanner, we certainly thank you, and so far you're doing great, so I appreciate that. So if you guys would just sit for 2 minutes, we'll let— we'll give it back to the finance chair and let her finish the meeting.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. That brings us to, um, item or number 4. Um, there is an updated AFC budget calendar in your packets. Um, On the last page, and I did want to just note, you know, things are always changing here, as always. So always take a look.

We did highlight on this version your due dates. So March 15th coming up, if you are sponsoring an assembly grant, community grants, your request is due. To the finance department. Is that correct? Um, on March 15th.

And then, um, if you read your packet well from Monday night, um, there is a requirement for all assembly members to come with budget reductions, um, as initial starting place proposals. Um, and that due date is highlighted there on April 16th. Anything else staff want to say on that calendar that I missed? Um, no, that's fantastic. And, and the calendar that Miss Wohl is referring to is in the supplemental because it changed from the first print to the supplemental packet.

So, um, the third line on the title has an updated date, so you're looking for the February 24th.

And that brings us to next meeting date, March 4th. Next Wednesday will be our next AFC meeting at 5:30, and with that, we are adjourned.