Assembly Special Work Session of April 16, 2026

OK, I will call the April 16th Assembly Special Work Session to order right at 8:00 p.m. We will open it up with citizens' comments. This will be the only time, the only opportunity for citizens' comments at this particular meeting. So for those who wish to call in, the local number is 907-486-3231. The toll-free number is 1-855-492-9202. Please turn off your radio or any listening device to prevent feedback.

And for those in the room who wish to speak under citizen comments, come to the podium and sign in. Turn on the microphone, make sure the green light is on before speaking, and speak directly into the mic. Please state your name for the record and address all remarks to the Assembly as a body and not to any member thereof. So if there is anybody in the audience who would like to comment, you can come on down while we wait for Wait for calls.

Okay. Seeing no calls and seeing no one in the audience who would like to speak, let's get into our first agenda item. Uh, we'll be looking at FY 2027 budget discussions for select general fund departments and select special revenue departments. Manager Williams. Thank you and welcome to tonight's budget adventure.

Our first general fund—. The word is, I believe, extravaganza. Oh, I'm sorry, extravaganza. That was a good word. Um, our first general fund department is Engineering and facilities.

Hi, I'm Amy, and I will be your Engineering Facilities Director tonight.

As we— so this is page 1 of your 21. We're going to try to keep you up to date on what page you are in the packet as we go through. You will see the Engineering Facilities salaries line is going to seem very low to you. When you look at the 2026 actual amount, I actually talked to an assembly member today to try to explain this. So I even, I have my speech prepared.

The, we haven't been paying an engineering facilities director for about 8 months. So you're gonna, a big chunk of that salary is missing. We have been paying some other employees in that department some additional salary to cover some of those additional duties, but the main job has not been getting paid out. So that's gonna look a little bit lower. Also, Some of that salary gets allocated to other funds.

It is not getting allocated to other funds, so it's affecting different budgets. So it, there'll be an impact, but more money in the hospital fund, the KFRC fund, and the landfill fund. So because of that engineering and facilities director job being, uh, empty. Also, we do not have an environmental specialist. And so that, uh, is also a salary that comes out of that number.

So that number's gonna look really low. And so when you look at the 2027 level, you'll see an increase. Um, we are looking to add another person to the projects office to assist with, um, construction management, um, and the handling of the additional hospital projects. Um, but in the long run, I think we'll save that fund way more than that position costs. Okay, that's the one I was gonna talk about the most.

Um, temporary help we took out. Um, we haven't used any in 2026, so you'll see $33,000 out of that budget. We still left overtime in, um, every time that, uh, an employee is here at night from engineering facilities to go over contracts or whatever, that is overtime if they've worked 8 hours that day. And so why we love to have them here, because they are mostly our subject matter experts. They are expensive at, um, after 5 o'clock.

Not saying it's not worth it in case they're listening. Um, Not a lot of big changes, um, in that first part. Uh, when you get down to office supplies, we have a lot of office supplies that we kind of stockpile, and we went and opened up the cabinet in Engineering Facilities, and there's just a lot of stuff in there. So we took some of that money out because I don't think that we have spent very much this year, and there is no need to have that number that high. Um, operating supplies is just not a category we use this year, so we took that out as well.

Printing and binding there's a $500 increase, and that is due to a certain member being added to the ARB, and that 11x17 paper is expensive. I didn't mention any names, I just said, um, but it does— where it gets taken out of one budget, it gets added to another depending on membership. That's all. Um, dues, books, and subscriptions took $1,000 out, as well as furniture. And fixtures, just not using those funds the way that they had been previously.

And if something happens and all of a sudden we need new furniture or something comes up, I would rather use a budget amendment later than just have money sit in there now. Same theory with machinery and equipment. Took some money out of food, business lunch meeting rooms. ENF helps out a lot with holidays. They are my main morale people, so I depend on them a little bit.

So we left some money in there. Um, advertising and hearings, um, that is for ARB meetings. We're required to put those in the paper. And then for jobs, which we seem to just have a lot that we need to advertise, so that money stayed the same. Uh, continuing education, you'll see that it went down $5,000, but not because we don't think that that's important.

So much of the training our folks do, like the procurement training that they did and the MOLOs and all the All the stuff that they do at the landfill is all online, so it's just the payment. It doesn't have travel. Um, but we want to make sure that we're continuing. We did new asbestos training this year. We want to keep those certifications up, and we're looking for some basic electrical stuff, not so they can be Steve-level electricians, but instead just to keep them safe.

Um, in recruiting and relocation, we're still trying to find an environmental specialist. I I actually did look at bringing someone out here from the great state of Wyoming. It was gonna cost us $6,000, and I just couldn't justify it because I didn't think it was going to end the way that we wanted it to. So that money is out. Again, I might pay for it personally if we can bring someone here that takes that job.

You'll see travel and per diem staying the same. [Speaker] That is for the— we do send people to Anchorage for some qualifications. Last year Patricia went up and got her park inspector, which costs us money. And Dave and Jenna in the past have gone up and gone to solid waste conferences. And so that money is there for those opportunities.

Rent, that $89,000, just over $65,000 of that is for the space that ENF has in the borough building. And just under $25,000 is for the maintenance building. Telephone, we just dropped a little bit because we weren't spending that much. I think people grab their cell phones every once in a while. And that is your start to general funds.

Are there any questions about engineering and facilities?

All right. Community development is next, and that's general fund 100-140. Chris is here. He's going to come up and walk you through the community development budget.

Thank you. Um, my understanding is starts on page 2 of 21 for the assembly. So, um, Community Development, if you go to that third page, you'll see at the end, uh, based on the actual approved budget for 2026, uh, our 2027 proposed budget is roughly just under $12,000 less than what it was in 2026. When you see that actual amount, I'll just point out that we didn't have a code enforcement officer for 6 months of this current fiscal year, so that takes into account that position being vacant. That position is now filled as of April 1st.

So in terms of our reductions, if you look on— that would be page 3 of '21. Under, uh, Kinding Education, we've reduced some of that primarily because a lot of the training that we've— or a good amount of the training for the new code enforcement officers handling is being handled this fiscal year. There will be some for next fiscal year, but they'll be reduced. And then also for planning staff, we are making an effort to purposely not go to any conferences outside of the state. There's a good chance that we may be creating new in-state conferences.

I'm on the board of the Alaska chapter of the American Planning Association, and our goal is hopefully to have a conference in December to kind of be kind of with AML at the same time. And so hopefully that will reduce travel costs and everything as well. So that might happen there, but for the most part, we're doing online. As Amy's mentioned, with ENF, we're, we're doing online courses primarily and continuing education that way. And our secretary is also doing the same for her work in terms of her helping the Commission in their meetings.

And then also, we reduced the travel per diem because we are.

Doing as much, uh, visits to the villages this current fiscal year as we did last year. We are finishing up some based on the work for the comprehensive plan, so we do have some money still in there, but it is reduced from what it was last fiscal year. And then for Commissioner, uh, travel and training, we're focusing on them to do more online or staff actually preparing training materials for them. And so we've reduced that, uh, budget amount as well. And so that's primarily what makes up that $11,976 difference from last fiscal year to this fiscal year.

Any questions for Director French?

Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Now we're going to go through a bunch really fast that are short, but don't get used to it because when we get to the special revenue funds, we'll slow down a little bit. Okay, so next fund, uh, is page 3 of your packet. It's our building official. We have a contract which is, uh, fiscal year 2503 with the city of Kodiak that is good through June 30th, 2029, that outlines Uh, the cost, uh, we budget, um, usually $180,000. As you can see, the last couple of years, in 2025, um, the cost was over $200,000.

Um, so far this year we're at $130,760.46, um, but the budget is staying the same, um, in accordance with that contract. We usually stay pretty close to that amount. Any questions on the building official? We do some funky trades, like they don't pay rent, uh, for their space, and you can see their offices have like grown out into the hallway with the filing cabinets. And then the city of Kodiak pays for their vehicles and the cost of vehicle maintenance and fuel.

So we kind of trade costs a little bit to make sure that Paul and Ted have what they need. Okay, next is Fund 100-160, that's our economic development fund. You can see the only thing that is in there consistently is our dues to the Chamber of Commerce so that we are a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and that's $600. You will see in 2023 there was a $10,000 investment with the Kodiak Economic Development Corporation, and then we haven't done anything since then. So I'm gonna put in my little plug here for the Kodiak Economic Development Corporation.

I would, um, maybe if we can get Melissa in so we can consider, um, the work that they're doing in mariculture. So creating an alternate revenue stream for Kodiak is pretty significant. The only true funding they have right now is from the city of Kodiak and then grants that they're working on. Um, if that's something that you guys would consider, this might be a very good year. It's never a good year to give more money to people.

But given the body of work that they're doing right now with Mariculture, the last board meeting that I attended, I was very impressed. I know that some people go to their workforce development stuff. There is something coming up at the end of the month that's going to deal with some of that. If we bring anything back before we finalize this budget, I think that's something that we should have a discussion about and see if that's if folks are interested in that. Other than that, this is the easiest one ever.

It's just $600.

Any discussion? Okay, moving on. All right, our next fund is on page 5 of your packet. It's Parks and Recs. That's Fund 100-172.

Um, we had a little bit of salaries in 2026 because of the work that we're doing, um, out at Sargent Creek. Um, also work that would be done for the Mill Bay Stairs project in 2027. We don't have any projects actually planned for that. We do keep $5,000 in there for temporary help. Um, we have used that in the past for our, um, temporary laborers to go out and do, uh, lawn mowing and maintenance out at our parks.

Parks and Rec has taken care of our land around the borough building, but not like Sergeant Creek Park or Otmoloi Park, so we still need to get people out there to take care of that stuff. We do have a more fully staffed maintenance staff, so I would expect that we use that less, but I feel very happy that that's there in the event that those— if anything happens and maintenance people are otherwise occupied. I think the grass out at Panameref Park was about 2 feet high, um, once, and I was like, oh, we probably should get out there. Yes, um, machinery and equipment, that is in there, um, for new lawn mowers, weed whackers, things of that. We might not need that.

I think we might do that this year. If that gets done, then we probably wouldn't need that next year, so we'll be able to take that $10,000 out. But I know that they are working on that right now. Um, that is the The only thing that is in there, you'll see that there was $150,000 in there in the 2026 budget that was supposed to be for Harlequin Park. If we want to keep that money there, we'll have to put it in a project, and then you will have to see it in a budget amendment if we're interested in keeping 2026 money towards that project.

Otherwise, that will go back to the, the general fund because they did not make that happen in this fiscal year. Uh, any questions on Parks and Rec? Mr. Whiteside. Thank you. I'm curious what the $3,000 for budgeted for continuing education for Parks and Rec would be used for.

Hmm, that's a great question, Mr. Whiteside. I don't know. I'll find out what that was intended for for 2026 and get back to you on that. I don't, I don't remember that from last year. I think, was it for the committee to—.

I mean, that makes sense that it would be, but I can't think of what that training would be. And so something big sticks out that it was about that. But, oh, I, um, that, that could possibly be how we funded Patricia's training for being a park inspector. Um, but I, I think that was done in 2025, and so I'm not sure why it's there in 2026. So it's probably not appropriate for 2027 too.

So thank you, I'll take a look at that.

Mr. Gardner, I just want to say, if I'm reading this right, then kudos to these guys for coming in so aggressively under budget consistently. This looks awesome.

Anyone else? Mr. Whiteside. Next line down, I could have coupled them and saved us some time here, but travel and per diem, $1,500 for Parks and Rec. That's that. I'm sure that was for Patricia's park.

That probably just got left in there. I understand the snow removal and sanding, so we'll— I'll take a look if there was something scheduled in '26 that didn't happen and we need it for '27, but I don't know what that is off the top of my head.

We will get that updated.

That's why we have Level 2 budgets.

Okay, okay. Our next budget is 100-175. That's our emergency preparedness budget. Uh, you can see in, um The last couple of years in 26— or sorry, in 2026 budget, there was $100,000 in there and only $16,885 has been spent. I talked to Dora about this earlier today because it didn't make sense to me.

I believe that is the, uh, contract that we have with the city of Kodiak for paying half of the salary for our emergency services director, and we just haven't been invoiced for it. I know that there was some confusion between, uh, when Rich Gonzalez was our emergency service director and when Ken Nelson took over. Um, so we, we did get one invoice, but I'm not sure where we're at. So that's something we flagged earlier today that we'll follow up on and see, um, where those invoices are and make sure that that, that's what's in. And it's Ken Folsom.

Sorry, I don't know where Nelson came from.

Other than that, we took some money out for continuing education and travel and per diem that was in the '26 budget that did not get used for anything. So moving into '27, that's not there, which is probably what we should have done for Parks and Rec too, but we'll get that one updated.

Mr. Williams. I'm just looking at the $5,000 for printing and binding that didn't— that was amended for '26 and not apparently used in '26. Am I reading that right?

Hello. Printing and binding. Yes, that is most likely for tsunami inundation maps or hazard mitigation plan We did print, but only like 15 copies. I don't know where that got charged to. So I can't speak to that.

I can ask— this is actually Director French's budget, so let me ask him what he had in mind for the printing and binding, if there's something that I'm unaware of. Thank you.

Any other questions on emergency prep? Okay. All right, moving on. Next budget is 100-186. That's our animal control budget.

Uh, we have a contract with the city of Kodiak for animal control services, uh, contract fiscal year 25-02. It actually expires at the end of June this year, so we are working on updating that contract with the city of Kodiak. I did reach out and ask what the the ask was for fiscal year '27, um, and that total was $152,200, which is that, uh, $4,730 less than the year before. Um, I want to point out that, um, this just isn't salaries. This is also a donation to the Humane— a donation, um, kind of to the Humane Society.

Like, half of that almost goes to the Humane Society. So, um, we're helping fund that, and we're helping fund for the community service animal control people of the city of Kodiak in accordance with that contract.

Mr. Gardner, and then Mr. Whiteside. I feel like I'm probably just reading this wrong. Um, under expense totals, um, why are we in the millions, and why do these numbers not add up to me? I think it's adding an ongoing total from all—. A running total.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. If that's how much it costs for animal control, we better do something different.

Thank you. Bears are expensive. Mr. Whiteside. Thank you. This question for, uh, Madam Manager, and this may already exist, I'm just not aware of it.

Is there any sort of— or is there any information on our website or the shelter's website that— or Humane Society's website that we can point the public to for what these funds contribute to, or how many activities or animal captures or rescues this led to. Um, it's a very high dollar amount. I know it goes to a very good cause. I'm an animal person, so I appreciate what it's going to, but I think the public is curious about what our contribution in the borough anyways what that results in. I would have to ask Chief Putney if they— I'm sure they keep those stats.

Um, so remember, with his lecture, but I can ask them how they track that and if they break it down by borough, city, or what that looks like. But we could— I'm not aware of that being something that we publish because I, I've never even seen it. So, um, but we can talk. I've been working with Chief Putney on getting these numbers together for this and working on that new contract, so I can ask him for any metrics that they keep. Great, thank you.

Mr. Woods, their system does have a way of tracking like specific animal complaints. However, if it's parceled in with another incident, it's going to get really hard to get an accurate number on. Um, for example, if there's a dog in a DUI car, that's probably not— they're not going to draw a second card and have a specific number for that, for that impounding. Um, that's what I can see those numbers being somewhat dubious. My understanding is this goes for paying for the animal control or the community service officer that does primarily those duties, but, um, also your patrol officers have a, have a habit of getting assigned to those, uh, so it's going to be somewhat difficult to even track through an individual like what each officer is doing.

Interesting. But yeah, I'd be interested in Seeing that too.

I will do my best. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it is part of this, you know, if we are committed to being more transparent in how our money is spent to the public, then we need to know, right? Yeah. We should know that data. If the data exists, we will find it.

Exactly. I think that just might be the cost of having those services covered, and so I— And the other option is to not have animal control services in the borough. And I think—. They tried that. So I think that would end poorly.

All right. Now that we've gone through all of those general funds, the next things on our list are special revenue funds. Our first fund is Fund 210, which is our Land Sales Resource Management Fund. It's on page 8 of your packet. And we'll start with revenues.

Um, you can see that we have $7,200 listed for revenues. Those are cell tower leases and any right-of-way permits that come in.

Um, gravel sales is one that is going up by $2,000 from last year. We don't have an actual amount yet because we don't get that until the end of the year.

Land sales, you will see that we have had money for land sales over the last few years, and I know that someone is saying, but we haven't sold any land. But you— that is one of those 10-10-10 deals where they put 10% down and paid over 10 years with 10% interest. That contract is ending at the end of this year. It will be paid off, and so you will see for fiscal '27, uh, that lower amount is because that contract is finally ending and they will finally have paid off that land. And that is the same reason you see that decrease in land sale interest.

Um, we expect, um, about $580 in land leases. That is from, um, Kisa out at Saloni Creek and miscellaneous driveway permits.

And then we have a use of fund balance, um, of $73,654, and that will be explained as soon as we flip and go into expenses. All right, expenses in this, uh, fund, um, the big changes are Contracted services, um, going from $25,000 to $5,000. Um, we use contracted service for grading, plowing, and sanding. A lot of that is in 2025 was for the Dark Lake area. Um, I don't know what we were planning for, snowpocalypse or something in the 2026 budget.

Uh, we haven't had to use it in that way, so we're bringing that back down to $5,000 for 2027. And then you'll see a big change in real property cleanup. Um, there's $50,000 in that fund that is for litter, that is for Dark Lake, uh, trees that fall down, illegal dump areas. Um, we have had to spend a significant amount of money, um, for third-party contractors or for just our own staff to keep Dark Lake cleaned up. We have had some people go out and help randomly, and thank you.

I don't know who they are, but I hear there's people always out there cleaning up, so we appreciate you. Um, rent— there is no rent, um, and there hasn't been since 2025 for this fund. And then you will see an increase of from $0 to $3,000 in maintenance and repairs, and that's dump pad grading and sign maintenance. We've put a lot of, um, kind of, uh, extra effort into no trespassing, no overnight, uh, camping, stuff like that on borough land, because we can't trespass people from borough land if it's not posted. So we did that over the winter.

We put them in 5-gallon buckets of cement because the ground was frozen. They were stolen or knocked over or destroyed. So when the ground thaws, we will go for some more permanent installation. On where people are camping and, and leaving cars and campers. And that is the end of that fund.

Uh, Ms. Roberts and then Mr. Ames. May I ask what surveys is for $30,000? That is going to be if you want to sell land, we need surveyors. Yep. Thank you.

Mr. Ames.

Gravel sales is under revenues, is $5,000. What is that from? That is from our lease with Brecken. They gave us a percentage of— they have a lease of our borough land that they're doing gravel from, so we get a percentage of their sales. So the only gravel pit we really lease out is the one out in the flats?

Yes. Okay.

Any other questions? Okay, moving on. Okay, uh, Builders and Grounds. Building Grounds is a big fund. Uh, I want to talk about it a little bit before— so this is Fund 220.

We're going to have.

Revenues, we'll walk through revenues, and then when we go through expenses, uh, the expense side of 220 is broken into, um, a bunch of different categories. One of them we just made in the last couple of weeks, which I'm kind of excited about. That sounds kind of nerdy, right? Sorry, but I am. And then we have them broken down by different buildings, and then we have them broken down by schools, and then all the individual schools.

So let's start with revenues, the building and grounds fund revenues. There is [Speaker] There is ARPA money you'll see in 2025. That one, it doesn't have anything to do with the 2027 budget, but I, it's so weird that it's there. That was ARPA money that we used when we did emergency lift station repairs at our, for our lift station downstairs. So we just were spending down money at that point and it worked out well.

And so that's that random line item.

Let's see, the main revenues come in from rent from the borough, City of Kodiak, the school district, the Egan Way Cottages. That's where YMCA and Red Cross are right now. You'll see there's no rent coming in for the borough building, the annex building where Red Cross used to be across the street that, that way. We are preparing to no longer own that building via destruction. Our first step is getting rid of that underground storage tank.

That's why that project is happening right now. And land sale fund, um, money that comes in, and we haven't had any land sales, or we haven't had any payments in 2026 yet for that. So that is where the, uh, most of the money comes in. Um, and then we have operating transfers in, in the past that we've used from facilities fund or capital projects. We don't have any of that in 2026 or 2027.

So when we get into expenses, this is the new account, that first one. Um, one, so we're in Fund 220. Um, when we do fund numbers, there's always so many numbers. Um, there are, um, 12. And so the 220-165 is new.

This is the one I was talking about. Um, we went back and put some expenditures into 2025 to better define what this fund is going to be used for. So general administration are going to be stuff that we use for buildings or grounds that are used across multiple facilities. So if we buy tools that are going to be used in all the buildings, traditionally everything got charged to the borough building, and so we wanted to stop doing that. So Dora and Sue spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks creating this fund and going back and populating 2025.

Which doesn't affect that budget, it just makes it more accurate. And then accurately putting in what we've done in 2026 into this new fund, and then the— for 2027, we just kind of use the average over those 2 years that we moved. So that will be something that probably has a lot of variability, but the idea is to not charge any one building for something that's getting used across multiple buildings. So that was a great idea that Dora had, and I'm excited that that is something that they can track with that much precision. As we go— Yes?

[Speaker:MICHAEL] Can you— I'm sure there are a lot of people listening in who didn't attend the Citizens Academy. Can you just go over two things? One, why the borough charges itself rent? And two, why does the borough charge the school district rent? [Speaker:JESSICA] We charge ourselves rent because this building costs money, and it needs to come from somewhere.

When we have an expenditure, it has to have money to cover the expenditure. And so our avenue of doing that is having the individual departments take their percentage of space that they use in the building. If you remember the last budget discussion we had, the clerk said we use less space, and because they use less space, their budget went down. But yet that space is still a part of the borough building. So you saw that $1,600 show up in another budget.

The square feet is what the square feet is. And so we pay money out of the general fund department budgets into this fund to cover the expenditures of this building, just like the City of Kodiak's lease money goes into, and that pays for the maintenance, roof repairs, utilities, trash, all, all the stuff comes out of there. The school district rent is only in spaces in the F wing right across the way where the offices are that aren't educational spaces. So in the F week wing is kindergarten, they're not paying rent, but the rent is from the IT finance superintendent's office. If it's a non-educational space, they are paying rent, and again, that helps pay for all of the above on their buildings as well.

Great, thank you. Mr. Johnson. Since we're talking about rent revenue, um, I'm not seeing any escalation in rent from last year. Do we not build that into our contracts? They are, um They are contracts that are good for 3 years, and then when they're over in 3 years, we look at the expenditures and then try to make the rent match them.

So we must not be at the end of any of those right now. The City of Kodiak, um, I'm trying to— I, I don't— it took me like 8 months to get them to sign that, like, before we got— so that one is still in effect. And then Red Cross and YMSA are brand new, um, and this— the school district rent has been steady for quite a while. Just seems like something we should consider, especially with the price of fuel. Uh, yeah.

Yes, Mr. Woods. And this is a relatively small amount, but I'm just curious, in our PERS on Behalf payment, why are we projecting a $5,000 increase? It's almost double from what it was the year previous.

Well, because, uh, per— well, per zone half is gonna go up, but not that much. I would have to ask Dora why she put that. That seems like a very specific number, so I'll ask why it doubled and find out. It was weird. It was like—.

Nope, it's a great question.

Yeah, and so with these questions, when I find out the answers, I will, um, create an email that kind of answers all of them. Um, and so I'll tell you what fund it is, what line item is, what the question is, what the answer is, and then make a recommended solution like, oh, we need to leave that because of this, this, and this, or we, we can take that out. And then next time we talk about budgets, we'll revisit that. And then when the assembly gives direction one way or the other, that will show up in the Level 2 budget when we update the budget for the next round. That sounds good.

But I'll— so the— and I don't want to just like, okay, Assemblymember Woods had this question, I'm gonna answer him. You'll get all the questions with all the answers together so everyone has the same information. Okay.

Okay, okay, let's keep going. Um, all right, so we went over my general administration fund, so now we're to the borough building.

Um, salaries, we have a full-time maintenance person that's just paid out of Buildings and grounds, that's Kyle's. Kyle is our building and grounds maintenance employee, so you'll see that go up to cover his salary.

And because of that, you'll see a lot of changes that go along with that.

Other salaries for our— depending on what the projects are, so if our temporary laborers are working on Buildings and Grounds project, everything gets coded to where the people are actually working. So if we have a maintenance issue, like let's say hypothetically, we have a water leak in the Annex Building and we run 162,000 gallons— I totally pulled that out of the air— water through a broken kitchen sink hose into that building. It took the maintenance supervisor, all of the maintenance staff people, and the temporary laborers to go suck the water out and dry that out and fix that problem. So that would be all of those days, all of that time, all of their salaries would get coded to buildings and grounds. So that's a— it's a variable amount, but we try to make sure that salaries are attached to the right fund.

Our contracted services for this, you'll see that going down $50,000. We don't we didn't use it in the way that we thought we were going to. For contracted services, we do building swipe cards, fuel line cleanings on the boiler, parking lot striping, stuff like that. And I don't think any of that needs done this year, but I will— I also don't think that should be zero. So I'm going to ask my own question on that and see if there's a more reasonable number that can go in there besides zero, because we, we do building swipe cards For the NOAA employees, for city employees.

For firefighters out at Bayside and Women's Bay, so there has to be some expense there. So I'll get that updated and let you know what that should be.

I think some of the other changes, the big ones, you'll see a big decrease in insurance, our insurance lines. That's one of the few spotlights of changing insurance companies. This year. Um, one of the things that maintenance is doing, I think I talked about this earlier tonight, right? That they have been going around and doing our self-evaluations and giving us insurance credit so we have cheaper property insurance.

ARPA was originally gonna go out and try to see every building that it was insuring until it realized how big Alaska was. Maybe, I don't know, uh, that was the plan and they said they were gonna do it all in 2026 and then they realized Whoa, like that's a lot. Um, not only did they have to visit but then have like people that could appraise visit all of those buildings. And so, um, one of the things they did is prevention credits, and I think that's going to save us like $40,000 because of the work that our maintenance staff has done. And Cody was able to do the Port Lion School when he was out there for the fire project, and we had to go out to— the school district had to go out to Zinke for something, so we were able to do all of these all over, and it worked out really, really good.

So we get to save some money, which is amazing. So we're still in Borough Building. I think there's a pretty significant change in heating fuel. You'll see that we have an increase, a very high amount, in electricity. We had a switch to an electric boiler.

We use the electric boiler boiler almost exclusively. And how lucky are we right now when you look at the price of diesel that we don't have to be completely reliant on that. Um, there is a, when KEA put that boiler in, they told us that if there is a huge draw on electricity, they could require us to go on the diesel, um, boiler. We do run the generator and make sure that those pumps are all working and we do maintenance and make sure that that system is all running, but we have not been asked to go on that. So that is looking— we're hoping to go all electric and save all that diesel money.

We took $10,000 out of maintenance repairs and $12,500 out of auto maintenance and repairs just because we're not using that money that way. We do have a lot of maintenance repairs that we're hoping to do. We have some cracked windows around the building, and we're still hoping to work on LED lighting on both sides of the building.

Uh, capital outlay, um, in the '26 budget for automotive, we have $50,000. We're not going to buy another car in 2027, and we don't have any machinery equipment needs over $5,000 that we're aware of. You will see $147,000 in the capital projects line. We are planning an entryway project to make our sidewalks our door and our entry ADA to better meet the needs of the community. It's something I don't really think about until I saw someone with a walker with wheels try to get in our building, and it was pretty bad.

And so this summer we're gonna attempt to sand or grind down some of the sidewalk that is too high and add cement to other places where it's too low and make patches going in the front door. The doors alone are crazy expensive. And if we make significant changes, we'll be required to put in a button on the outside to open the doors. So we are looking at how we're going to do that and make our building a little more friendly. Uh, Mr. Woods, uh, two questions here.

One, why did we zero out the vehicle fuel section? And two, regarding to electricity, With the increased draw from the new Coast Guard expansion and with our new reliance on electric— an electric boiler, are we budgeting for increased electricity costs as well, or just increased usage? I think that it was just increased, um, usage. We did have that 2025 amount of $98,000, so we want to try to make sure we cover that. And vehicle fuel I believe that we do not have a specific vehicle attached to the borough building, and if we go back to that, uh, wonderful fund for general administration, um, I think we're going to try to put fuel there.

So there is a specific maintenance truck that's attached to the KFRC that has its own fuel and does snow removal and stuff over there. Our maintenance vehicles here— I'm getting a text, it's probably Dora correcting me. Nope, okay. Um, we're gonna try to not attach to one building, but instead to, um, because a maintenance truck could go out to Dark Lake and pick up trash, or it could go out to Bell's Flats and pick up trash, and so we don't want that attached to a singular building.

She did text me and now I'm nervous. Okay, uh, Mr. Whiteside. Thank you. Back to the electricity, uh, line. Looking at the difference between 24 and 25 is 2025, then I assume when we switch to the electric boiler?

Yes. Okay. And then does that account, uh, let's see, when did Do we remember collectively when the 12.5% increase started with KEA? Just making sure we're not missing that. Yeah, it was recent, but '24.

It was right when the canneries, when they were going to sell Trident, and so it's been a couple years. Okay, so I just want— okay, so we're probably good then. Thank you. Mr. Woods, piggybacking kind of off that concern, it's just I'm aware KEA's got some pretty major changes happening, like looking as far as putting in new windmills up on top of the Pillar Mountain there. And with the increased draw, I guess all those new housing buildings out on what used to be Nimitz all run all-electric boilers.

So there's potential that our electricity costs could go up that I've been hearing about. And I, um, and I can change that if you want it changed. I— we do have budget amendments, right? And so as we're in a year in which we have a lot of competing demands, I don't want to add extra in unless we like really think that we know that we're going to need it, because I would hate to have $50,000 sitting there that we don't need and then it not going somewhere else. So opportunity cost-wise, but I will put whatever number you would like in there.

Do you want to see that changed?

I don't know at this point. I think it's a little too early to tell. I was just trying to figure out if we were projecting for that necessarily or not. Or, I mean, budget amendments like you say do exist. So just something to be aware of.

Mr. Ames.

I'm confident with this number for this year. I think any changes with KEA or anything else is going to probably not happen in this budget year unless something really extreme happens. And if that happens, well, we got to bite the bullet and deal. You but any modifications or changes that would increase costs are far enough down the road that I feel quite comfortable with this.

Okay, moving on.

Okay, then we enter into, uh, Fund 222-234. Now we're going to start into our school buildings. You'll see an insurance Property insurance in there for $3,500. That is for the administrative building. Um, when you flip the page to page 15, you'll see Northstar Elementary still listed under a school building until we take that out and name it and put it somewhere else.

Uh, you can see that there is nothing actually budgeted for fiscal year '26, but you can see the fiscal year '26 actual amounts in there. We don't expect any salaries yet, but we do have all of the support goods and services listed in there, what are— what we're expecting for '27. The fiscal year '27, it might be right at the tail end, so as we start the Um, we'll probably have to do some patching at Northstar. It is leaking. Um, I mean, it always has been leaking, but it is continuing to leak.

So I don't know if that will happen at the tail end of this year or the beginning of fiscal year '27, or so we might. But those salaries will probably be in a project instead of just this. And so I don't want you to think that there's no work happening at Northstar, because that's not going to be the case. I am positive if that lease goes through that we clogged toilets and broken sinks and all the things that come with having children in a.

But that's really hard to budget for right now. We don't have that lease in place. So I think that that's going to— I think fiscal year '27 is going to be a year of exploration. It'll be an extravaganza.

Okay. Next, 222.37 is the Chiniak School. You can see some salaries under personnel services there. That's all in relation to the painting project. And when you see that $92,000, if you're going to reflect back to how much that painting project costs, you're going to say, "That wasn't $92,000." But it was when you add up all of the things that go into that project with design services and all, all the things.

And so As we look at Port Lyons, you're going to see an even larger number because it's a larger school that we're going to have to pay the contractor per diem and travel and all of that stuff since it's not on the road system. So that is that project wrapped up there. We don't expect any other— we're not planning any other projects for Cheney High School in 2027 unless the state gives us a capital improvement project money for the water system, which would be amazing and isn't completely out of the question. Any questions on Chiniak? Okay, uh, then next is our page 17 is our maintenance building.

Uh, we don't have any money in, uh, personnel services in the '27 budget. We took $5,000 out for contracted services. You can see it was in there for '26 and we really didn't use it. And then we have money in for operating supplies. Thankfully, no printing and binding.

And there is property insurance associated with that. There is electricity and fuel for heating. Those do have diesel boilers over there, very ancient boilers. If you ever want to go on a fun tour, I'd like to show you the boilers that are in that building. They are from when this was a regional high school.

It's old. Um, and then we took money out for maintenance and repairs. Eventually we will have to do maintenance repairs and replace those boilers if we're going to continue to use that as a maintenance building, but it is not this fiscal year. Um, in 2026, um, there were plans to replace the roof. That is that $450,000.

We did not do that, so you'll see that coming out That's why it's negative $450 in that change mark. That project did not hit the top of our priority list when it came to roof projects with Peterson and getting some rural school work done, and now East is going to take the spotlight on roofs. Any questions on the maintenance building?

I don't see any. All right. The page 18 is 247. That's the Egan Way Annex Building. That's the building that's right behind you across the street that way.

Um, we did have some machinery and equipment costs. Um, luckily they did not charge us the right amount for water and sewer because the city does have a clause in which they will just pay you your regular amount if there is an emergency. So we were very thankful. So we don't see a big increase for that in 2026. Um, and there is nothing in there for 2027.

We are hoping to turn off all services and mothball that until it's ready to be torn down. And if— although our project manager did offer to live there, I said no. That's a good story about how expensive it is to buy a home here in Kodiak when he's like, that one over there is looking pretty good. So Um, and then the last one, um, in this, uh, extravaganza of 220 is the Egan Way Cottages, and that is our Red Cross and our YMCA afterschool care that's right across from the high school parking lot. You can see that we did not have anything budgeted in 2026 because we were not using those buildings.

And then you'll see just a little bit of, um, stuff coming in in 2026 on the price of those, um, what we put into it. Um, we're using numbers very similar to what we had in '26 to try to budget for 2027. Um, and everything looks like it's a change because we didn't budget anything for 2026 outside of a dead animal getting into a wall or a vent or something that we had a really hard time finding. And I apologize. Another hypothetical?

Totally. To the YMCA staff, I think that it's so dead that it doesn't stink anymore. Because we did not find it. Not for lack of trying. We crawled under the building and in the attic and looked in the vents and did all the things, air fresheners, all.

And it's definitely in their bathroom because when you open that door, whoo. So thank, thank you to them for their patience. Those buildings hadn't been used in a long time, and so there are a little bit of growing pains, but I'm really like, it's been great for YMCA to be that close to the schools, and it's great for Red Cross, and they have parking in a whole parking lot instead of trying to be over here with like 2 spaces and people having to walk in. So that's been really good for the borough, and they, their rent is covering the expense of those buildings, and so they have a space to be and it's not costing that fund any money.

Questions about buildings, building and grounds? Mr. Woods? Do we want to increase the fuel budget? Because $3,000 with the budget of the previous year's usage of $2,200 seems a little bit low to me.

Uh, we certainly can. Do you have a suggestion? I think if you were to say $4,500, you'd probably be closer.

Okay, you just go drive by any gas station and go—. Right, yeah. Okay, and so, uh, something like that, what we'll do if there's consensus on a change like that, that'll just show up in the Level 2 budget. So, um, that's easy. Seeing some nods.

No questions around that. Look, we're already at page 20.

Page 20 is LEPC. That's our Local Emergency Planning Committee. Um, in 2026, we put $21,000 into that budget, and, um, we use no $0 out of that budget. In 2027, we are continuing $0. Um, that money, um, well, we can look at expenses on the next page and you can see, um, what we had it budgeted for.

Um, contracted services, um, part of the comprehensive plan is emergency planning. Um, hazard mitigation was also we thought we might have to contract those things and we did not. Printing and binding for $1,000, that, um, I have no idea what they're going to print and bind, but it is out of the budget for 2027. And so with the addition of the emergency services director in that contract we have with the city, they are leading the local emergency planning committee and we haven't had to have any expenditures towards that. So that's been Nice.

Um, our previous code enforcement officer, James Dixon, offered administrative support and we kept files, and we have not been asked to do any of that. I don't think that that's been finalized yet, but we haven't played a role. I think that might come up more, um, if we're running an emergency operation center, that our code enforcement officer might help with some of that stuff. But right now, in our everyday operations, we haven't been asked to do any of that. And that was page 21.

Are there any questions about the Local Emergency Planning Committee? Mr. Gardner. Not about LEPC. Does anybody have anything on that?

I just want to go all the way back to page 1, and this is the only big question I have. What in the world happened between 2023 and 2026 or 2025. I mean, the actual spent— you, you know, we're in—. Are you talking about salaries? What's that?

Are you talking about salaries? I am talking about, you know, the general, um, personnel services totals and engineering facilities totals. Like, it just doubled in a couple of years, and I don't— I I was hoping you could just enlighten me if you know why. I started this job on May 1st, 2023, and engineering facilities is actually doing projects and cleaning up, uh, fuel oil spills and doing things that.

Hadn't done before. Awesome, that's a great answer. Thank you.

Any other questions or guidance? Okay. All right, so thank you, Amy. I—. This is like the— this was a lot, and I know you didn't have a lot of time to review it.

And so for those questions, again, we'll get you the answer to the questions, proposed solutions, and then the next time we talk about budget, we'll go through those and get assembly confirmation on how you want to proceed. Um, is that— does that work? Works for me. There hasn't been a lot of other changes or questions on some of the other budgets, so I just want to make sure that we have a plan. Okay.

Okay. All right, thank you everyone. Uh, and our next item is, uh, assembly review of the manager's and clerk's performance evaluation forms. I know it It kind of stinks that the evaluations come up like right at the same time as we are doing budgets, but such is the contract. So I will toss this over to DPO Whiteside, who the DPO for new assembly members is the one who usually runs the review processes because I believe it is the manager and the clerk work more for you than for the mayor, so that is why the DPO kind of takes Mr. Lueck takes the lead on this.

Thank you, Bo. [SPEAKING GERMAN] Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I'll be brief. I know we're getting tired here.

So the clerk sent out the draft evaluations. These were revised last year through several of our efforts, and so we didn't receive any feedback or input on the format or the process, so we're going to stick with what we have. What will be new this year is it was introduced last year, but we're implementing this year is the manager and clerk self-evaluation form. And so they will work on those in the coming week or two here, and I will pause to have— ask the clerk to distribute the evaluation forms to all of us until we receive their self-evals, because that can help inform our process for evaluating their performance. A couple quick reminders when thinking about evaluating performance for the manager and clerk.

Please think objectively. A great reminder from our fellow assembly member is, especially when it comes to the borough manager, is she does not have a strategic plan to follow. This is something we should absolutely put some effort into in the near future. So absent a strategic plan, that is the template for a borough manager, what they need to focus their efforts on other than things popping up, you know, from the, the unanticipated day-to-day duties. But as far as planning for their staffing, their departments, for their year, multiple years out, absent a strategic plan, it's simply following direction from us.

So please take that into account, that our manager has been forming— performing her duties based on what she feels is the best interest of our community. And the borough and our funds and following our direction. So please think about direction specific to the majority or consensus or affirmative voting, not, uh, to any personal ideas that maybe, or votes that didn't go our way. All right, so please be objective when thinking about performance. I will let folks know once I get the self-evals back and these are out to you all We should have a pretty decent amount of time, but once they arrive, if you can get those knocked out, we will give you some deadlines to work with and then I will compile everything and we will revisit everything back, but you will have plenty of notice.

Can I take a question from Mr. Johnson? Are you ready for questions? Please. Okay. Thank you.

I apologize for the lateness of this, both in time and in the process. Could I suggest we add a fourth question to the additional reflections? Big believer in two-way feedback. You know, I would like to see us add, what can the mayor and assembly better do to help you— what can the mayor and assembly do to help you better perform in your role?

This is a strategic plan. I absolutely agree. I think it is a great idea. You know, this— I review— we chatted about this a little bit earlier in the week. And it frustrates me when these exercises are more like, I want the gold star on my fridge.

How do we improve processes? How do we improve our performance? How do we identify areas for professional growth? It's certainly nice to hear what you're doing well, but it's equally, if not more important, to hear how you can improve. But that does go both ways.

Just as we have said a couple times over is, absent a strategic plan, the manager and clerk are reliant on us to provide direction. So great suggestion. Do we have—. I have a kind of follow-up on that. So, Dave, so question number 3, it's a two-parter, and the second part is how can the borough support your goals?

Are you looking forward— it's like to separate that one out and build it out? That is staff.

Okay, you— and gotcha. Okay, borough assembly elected officials do better. So is it, um, instead of revising and sending it back out, is it okay to give— if it's okay with Mr. Weisheit, verbal kind of instruction that when it says how can the borough support, we are actually looking for borough assembly elected official support. If I may, how would you like to have that worded, Madam Manager, Madam Clerk? Do you really want us to give you that answer before you rate us?

Absolutely. Or— I think we generally do. Do we? Okay. Choose your adventure.

And then I think that is a good note to formalize it later. Yeah, thank you for that, Dave. Do we want to just—. I have one really quick. Mr. Whiteside, we talked about this also a couple of days ago.

We have 3 new Borough Assembly Members, and maybe you don't feel complete confidence or knowledgeable about maybe some of these things that you'll be evaluating the Clerk and the Manager on. I think we came to a consensus that if you don't feel like you have enough information, it's okay to to leave that one blank and say that you just haven't— you just don't have it yet. And I think that's fair. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER MILLER] Yeah. Just please let us know that that's why you didn't address that field.

But I guess I'm still not quite clear on the additional question. I do think it's a great idea to have the Manager and Clerk decide what that language should look like. Is everyone comfortable with them just populating that question and answer on their own evals.

So you really do get to choose your own adventure. Listen to ways in which Dave sucks. I think it's a great suggestion. It's question number 5. Yeah, I think that's great, but are you both clear on the, I guess, the general purpose of the question?

Yes, I, and I'll tell you what I think, but I would guess if you had a brand new manager sitting here and I had, they had to give you your self-eval before you filled out their eval, you're not going to get a very frank answer just as far as timeline goes, right? So if I, if I was a new manager and I'm like, man, the assembly is just not what I thought they're going to be, I would be afraid to tell you. That is not me, and I am not afraid to tell you, but I just like timeline-wise for future, like that's probably not the best order. Maybe like all the other questions on self-evaluation, great, and then when you're in executive session and you get an opportunity for dialogue, that might be a better time for that question-answer to go in for the future. [Speaker:DR_BREMER] Yeah, that's a good point.

Maybe we have a separate mini, you know, not to drown ourselves in administrative burden, but I think that is a valuable exercise to maybe even create a third small, not necessarily eval, but maybe feedback document that you all can let us know how we're doing or how we can better support you. So, I guess that said, do we want to just table that for now until we can produce that? Great idea. I think we will look into getting that going for next time around. Appreciate the suggestion.

It is fantastic. That is all I have. Anyone else? Okay. Manager's comments.

Oh, I wanted to thank Sima, who— there was a landfill fire on Monday morning, and I woke up at 6:22 to a landfill employee who was out there early, just randomly and got through the gate and was driving down the hill and like it was aglow. And so he called me and then he's like, I'm calling you and then I'm calling the fire department. I'm like, okay, next time let's reverse that order, but thank you. And so I came in and Seema came in and Jared Conrad came in on his day off and Tom Slagle was out there with a front loader picking stuff apart and Bayside was out there and the Kodiak City Fire Department was out there and Monday morning was like 30-knot winds and it was cold. And that team of people sat out there and were amazing.

And I wanted to point out Sima because Sima has AO duties, but Sima also volunteers for Bayside. And so when the alarms go off, she gets the notice. And so as soon as I got it, I texted her and I was like, hey, when your alarms go off, it's the landfill. The landfill's on fire, but everyone's okay. And when I got there, I mean, I have to drive from the Flats, but when I got there, she was there with wet hair standing out in the cold.

And I just like, not every department director shows up at every meeting. And so I, she does and she just keeps showing up. And so they got a Citizens Academy certificate too because Dora and Sima went to all of the sessions. And I just like, it's amazing to have the support of staff at that level and watch them get involved in the community. And she's outstanding.

So I just wanted to mention her. Thank you, and thank you, Seema. Um, NOVA, any comments? Okay, no comments from me. Any comments from any Assemblymember?

Just raise your hand. Okay, um, we are done for the night, it looks like. Then, um, do take note, under the supplemental materials, um, Manager Williams has included, uh, their Level 1 budget, all of it, with some framing, um, that's in there too. So, uh, enjoy your week off next week. We'll see you on the 30th.

Happy birthday, Mr. Johnson.