April 13, 2026 CBJ Assembly Lands, Housing & Economic Development Committee Meeting

Call this April 13th meeting of the Assembly Lands, Housing and Economic Development Committee to order. It is 5:01. Mr. Steineger, would you like to do the land acknowledgment, please? We would like to acknowledge that City and Borough of Juneau is on Tlingit land and wish to honor the indigenous people of this land. For more than 10,000 years, Alaska Native people have been and continue to be integral to the well-being of our community.

We're grateful to be in this place, a part of this community, and to honor the culture, traditions, and resilience of the Tlingit people. Gunalchéesh.

Thank you for that.

I will note the roll for the record. We have All members of the committee present. We have our Parks and Rec liaison. Is there anyone else online, Mr. Blythorne? No, Madam Chair.

Okay, thank you. I'll note that, um, Assemblymember Kelly is here digitally. Thank you.

That brings us to approval of the agenda. Are there any requested changes to the agenda? Seeing none, that is approved. Moving on to approval of minutes, we have our March 16th ones in there. We all looked them over.

Seeing— are there any requests to changes to those? Seeing none, that is accepted as presented, which brings us to our agenda topics for today. Our first agenda topic is the Juneau Gun Club request to continue to lease CBJ property. Mr. Blythorn. Thank you, Madam Chair.

So the Juneau Gun Club has leased property from the City and Borough of Juneau since 1977, and they had a lease that expired in 2002. And so they had a 25-year lease, which is set to expire next year. So they've begun the process by reaching out to me to try to extend that lease. And since it's at the end of its lifespan, this would be, uh, basically they're looking for a new lease here, but similar terms and conditions. And so, um, this is something that has been ongoing for many times, and they provide lots of service to the community regarding training and teaching and education and those types of things.

And so, um, starting on page 10 of your packet, there's a memo with the existing lease agreement, the extension from the early 2000s, a little map that shows some of their area as well. And staff are requesting that the Lands, Housing and Economic Development Committee pass a motion of support to renew the lease of 21.5 acres of CBJ land in the Montana Creek area to the Juneau Gun Club. And I'm glad to answer any questions or comments. Thank you, Mr. Blidorn. Questions from the committee?

Seeing none. Mr. Kelly, do you have any questions? No, thank you. Great. Uh, if no one else has questions, then I will ask Mr. Blythorne.

The, um, this is great, and it's great service that they provide. The entity type that is The rest of the year they lease from the city. We set this up with them. And then is it volunteer run? Is that correct?

They are nonprofit and they do have volunteers. Yes. Okay, thanks. All right, if there are no questions or comments, then I will look for a motion. Miss Hall.

First I'll make a comment, then I can make motion. Um, I'm in the neighborhood and, and they are good neighbors. I appreciate the fact that our kids have the opportunity to you know, firearms training and what have you. And yeah, so what I'd really love to see is collaboration with the ski club, Nordic Ski Club, for a biathlon. But that can be down the road.

So with that, I would move that we, the Lands, Housing and Economic Development Committee, move to support the renewal of the lease of 21.5 acres of CBJ land in the Montana Creek area to the Juneau Club Gun Club. And would this go to the full assembly, Mr. Blythorn? Uh, that's correct. It would be, um, if you go through the packet, you'll see in the, in the '70s and early 2000s, we would do something like this by resolution. Uh, we've updated our code since then, so this will be moving forward as, uh, an ordinance.

Okay, so move this to the full assembly. Thank you. Great. We've heard the motion with clarification. Any objections?

Seeing none, that is so moved. And you got me excited by the concept of a biathlon, Miss Hall. After watching the Winter Olympics, I'm right there with you. Uh, that brings us to our second agenda topic. Um, we have an ordinance in our packet, and I just want to say before we get into this item Um, do, do we have an ordinance amending Chapter 69.40, Short-Term Residential Rental Registration Program, uh, also establishing limits and establishing a registration fee?

We have the bulk of the ordinance is the same, and, uh, Attorney Wright will walk us through it, but this one that was on the dais is the updated one that we want to refer to when we're going through this. So thank you for, uh, joining us, Ms. Wright. Madam Chair, I just want to call attention that it is a red folder item, and the links on the website have been updated to reflect that as well. Okay, thank you, Mr. Bladorn.

Um, Attorney Wright, I will turn this over to you. To walk through. And I, I guess I'll also— sorry, I say that and then I'm going to interrupt. So, and our— we looked at this last time, we gave staff direction to bring back this ordinance. So I think as we are listening to the walkthrough and as you have questions, please ask those now, and then we'll talk more about kind of what our goal is to be in committee.

So, Attorney Wright. Thank you for that. So, uh, the Law Department was asked to put together an ordinance on short-term rentals, and the focus was on two things. Um, first, limiting the short-term rentals to one per person versus a large conglomerate or rental agency or major operator. The other was to look at some of the fees and some of the annual registrations.

So last time I was before you all. I think it was early March. You had a memo in your file from me, as well as a copy of HB 184, which was a statewide attempt at regulating, um, short-term rentals. It did not, um, pass, but there were some good sets of feedback from local community members there to flag for you. So I'll walk through this ordinance.

Um, The first, we updated definitions, and you'll see that we've gotten rid of firm, corporation, or other designated legal entity. The goal here was again to limit this to persons, individuals, operators that are people living in our community, not large-scale firms that buy up tons of properties and then, you know, rent them out as short-term rentals. So that definition is modified. Then throughout, we've made that shift from operator to a person, again trying to reflect the individualness of that. On page 2, subsection D, we have put in place an annual registration.

You'll see that I've left it blank for you to have a discussion of what that would look like, what would be reasonable, and what your decision would be on that policy call. So again, um, in E, we're moving it to an applicant, one person. In H, here is where you would limit to 1 or 2 or however many short-term rental properties you would allow a person to operate at a time under this chapter. The initial indication was that you were going to limit it to 1. But I've left it blank for you to have that discussion.

The other thing that I think Mr. Kelly, Assemblymember Kelly, brought up was a request to kind of have some of the registration fees— anything that's beyond administrative costs would go to the affordable housing program. So that's been added in. You certainly can direct where Fees and registrations go through the budget process. You don't need to do this, but this gives that clear designation of where you intend that money to be. I'll, I'll take a sidetrack here.

I did one of the tasks that you had asked was to look at what administrative costs there might be. I did, I was able to speak with Deputy City Manager Robert Barr today. The intent would be to hire a, um, local vendor to administer this program because there's already people that track short-term rentals. There's already those, um, entities available to do that. Cost is about $30,000 to $40,000 annually to do that versus having someone in finance or, um, one of the other departments track and enforce.

That conversation can be had much later. You can decide, and, and, and he is not here.

Here today to answer any of the questions that you might have about that. But I tell you that because if you're looking at registration fees and if you're looking at what potential costs are, I wanted you to have that $30,000 to $40,000 range in your head. And I think right now— don't quote me— but I think we, at the last count, there were about 250 to 300 short-term rentals. Registered in Juneau. So that's kind of your, your number there.

So the penalties are the same that you've already have in code. Again, this is just changing to a person versus operator. The big section I think is on page 3. So from a legal perspective, you need to decide an effective date and a time frame of when this is going to come in play. It's a bit of a balance because typically with finance issues, you want to have them come into play on January 1st of a year.

So that's why I put January 1st, 2027. That also gives someone— many people— 6 months to set up their short-term rentals. It's totally possible that you could see an uptick in short-term rentals in anticipation of this because I am recommending a grandfathering clause. For any current short-term rentals that are within Juneau. As they would, as they pass on, they're non-transferable.

As they pass on, you know, they can't restart, but unless they meet the person category. But for example, let's say I have 5 short-term rentals, you now limit me to 1, I would be grandfathered in with 5 And as they fall off, then I would become subject to the, the ordinance itself and the new rules. From a legal perspective, it's much safer to offer that grandfathering to community members. It gives them notice and time. They're already relying on that money coming in.

They've been fully operating within the law, so this change could have a significant effect. So I would recommend a grandfathering. Clause be present in here. You do not have to. There's a risk with that.

There's nothing requiring grandfathering, but it's a good idea. So that is the ordinance itself, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, thank you, Attorney Wright.

With just that, I guess I'll— before we jump into questions, I'll just reset context for us. So We have had all of the materials that the Short-Term Rental Task Force received. We received all of the work that had been done previously, not exhaustively all the work that had been done previously, but we had that fat packet that had those materials. So we have those to refer back to more conceptually about the shoulds and the numbers if we have questions about those. The task force, we, we looked at those recommendations from the task force, and then with this committee, the goal would be that now we have an ordinance, and this singular ordinance is doing the multiple things at once.

And so I, I think I would say my goal for us in this committee is to do some work on this to where we have some of those policy discussions. And we tighten up or add or remove things as we want to see them as amendments. So it's possible we come up with some things that we'd like to see changed, and then the ultimate goal would be to then move this on to the CAL. But I'm just resetting the scene and kind of where the trajectory is. But all that to say, let's take the time to do good work in this committee and make sure we get questions asked and have policy discussions.

So with that, I will say, who has questions?

Mr. Kelly. Thank you. And this is just a little question for clarification to you, Madam Chair. So is it your intention that at this point, like, we're just now being exposed to the ordinance, that any amendments are basically meant to be drafted at a subsequent meeting and considered at that time, or was it your intention to move this from committee today?

I think if you have amendments to this ordinance, let's, let's, let's work on those amendments today. I will not make a— other than to say we're trying to move this within the cycle, and let's, you know, we know how long it takes to schedule things at future, but let's make sure we do the work in here. So Yes, let's make amendments today, or changes you want to see. Let's talk about it.

Mr. Saniger. Um, I have a question for Ms. Wright, just kind of a clarifying question. As I look at the definition of operator, was changed to be specifically the owner of the property that the short-term rental is, is coming from. And then kind of later we're striking the word operator and replacing it with person, or I think there's kind of applicants, another word used. And I just want to make sure that, that I'm clearing this where you're using person or applicant later in the ordinance, that's also referring to the owner of the property.

So, and I guess kind of add to that in a situation where there might be one person managing properties owned by others, you know, not owned by themselves, but owned by others. How would that apply and work? Sure, it's a good question. So I think I would say this ordinance is in base draft form, so that it's a policy question about what you want to do. So if you want, you know, Mr. Blythorn is allowed to have one, I'm allowed to have one, and, and that's it.

But you— but we could hire a property management company to handle it, we can write that in that, that, that you're not trying to legislate property management companies can't exist. There's, there's many property management companies that handle individual rentals that aren't short-term rentals as well. So the goal here was not to limit a property management company from coming in. I believe the goal was just to say I could have one, Mr. Blidorn could have one, and that's it. Follow up.

Go ahead. So in that suit, so if you own one, Mr. Blythorne owns one, I have a property management company that's managing your two properties. The two of you would have to register with the CBJ sales tax office and then provide that information to me, who would then ensure that it's on the short-term rental platform or what have you. And I, as a property manager, wouldn't be the one responsible for ensuring that your sales tax compliance is accurate and and things of that nature. Is that right?

That's right. And, and I think that it's the second part of your question is we are the owners of the property itself, and, and so we as the owners of the property can have one short-term rental, and then we can ask someone to manage those separately.

Yes, so on, on that same discussion, and so it says operator means a person who is an owner. So right off the get-go, that's not necessarily true because an operator can be that property management, you know, someone that's operating it but doesn't necessarily own it. So we've got two separate things there. Yep, I can tighten that up. I see, I see how you're reading it.

Yeah.

Um, sorry, you're good, you're satisfied. Okay, um, I will jump in. Um, Ms. Wright, the— you just, as written, you said the— it's, you know, I can have one, Mr. Blythorne can have one. There is nothing as written right now that says anything about the one that I have being the one that I live in, correct? I can— if I own 2 homes right now, I might not want to Airbnb the one I live in.

So if I own 2 homes, as this is written, I have to choose which of those homes to register. Is that an accurate read? That's an accurate read. Um, there, there is legislation in other communities that require it short-term rentals to be owner-occupied. Nothing in here requires owner-occupied.

In that scenario, it could be either one of those homes that has a short-term rental. Great. Thanks for clarifying that. Mr. Steineger. Um, still on the definition chapter, um, in here it says, you know, anyone furnishes, offers for rent, or otherwise makes available in the city and borough rooms in a hotel, motel, or residence.

So if we implemented a limit of 1, does that also limit ownership of hotels? Or I might just be getting— I'm probably getting real confused. No, it doesn't. So hotel, motels are covered in a different section of the code. They, they aren't in this section of the code.

This language though.

So, um, so there could be, there could, there could in theory. I don't know that there's any in Juneau. This language is kind of larger Alaskan language that was taken when we started to regulate short-term rentals. I don't know that there's any in Juneau that fall under that hotel motel concept, and I would say if we're limiting it to one or, and/or an owner-occupied, that language should probably go away because it wouldn't, that wouldn't exist anymore.

So I see you have a question. Hello. Could you give an example of outside of Juneau where it actually exists, what that language would actually be? Is that like somebody who's operating a hotel but then put some of the rooms on a short-term rental platform? And what's the distinction?

Yeah, so I can't give you it. I can't give you a specific example right now. I know we, we put it in place when we first did this language. I would have to double-check with Deputy City Manager Barr to know if he had any examples, um, because 99% of multi-dwelling buildings are going to be covered under our hotel bed tax, which is a separate code definition, which is full hotel. I think that the, the max this would cover is, you know, you might have a triplex scenario.

There are a few buildings within Juneau that have 4 or 5 apartments, and if you're operating, you know, a majority of those apartments as short-term rentals, Ridgeview may qualify for that scenario, but I can find out if there's any actual buildings within Juneau.

Okay, great. Looking to others. If you guys are going to say— I'm just gonna— no, that's good. I—. Then they're good questions, they're good follow-ups.

So I'm just looking to see if Mr. Kelly or Ms. Hall have Go ahead, Ms. Off. Sure. So we're talking— how many did you say are currently registered attorney, right? So we have about 250 to 300. And is that just at this moment in time, or, you know, does it bump up in the summer months?

I believe that is fairly consistent. Um, since we have started requiring registration. Okay, thank you.

Sorry, Ms. Wright, I was distracted for a second. The—.

You, you said that number, you, you said a range, that's not how many we have? 250 To 300 currently. Um, so we don't have the number for how many are registered with Juneau? We don't have that because we don't have it. I don't have the current number.

I can tell you it's between—. Yeah, it's between 250 and 300. Okay, thank you. Yep, and that stayed consistent. Okay, perfect.

Thank you for that. Um, I will jump in, and also, I— right now, if you want to ask, I'm asking out of order, but just so you know, I appreciate that you're starting at the definition section. My question, Attorney Wray, was about the— what you said. As of right now, there is nothing in here about grandfathering in or phasing in, and you noted that that brings some legal risk.

Grandfathering where someone is locked in with what they have now, that would be different than doing a effective date with by this date, kind of someone has to phase something out. Is that— that would be a different mechanism, as I understand it, as I have seen it in other examples. So could you speak to that and how that carries for that legal risk? Sure. So grandfathering is actually in here.

It's on page 3.

69.4004(A), so it says a person who is compliant, so they have to be someone who's compliant with the registration requirements as of whatever effective date shall be exempted from the limitation of 1, and that would phase out. So you're right, there's multiple ways to do it. You can build in a grandfathering clause that then we would pull everyone who has more than one at that point in time, and we would say, okay, as long as you're still, you know, you've got the annual registration, and as long as you're still not adding, you can't add anymore, you're fine. As you drop them off, let's say they decide to sell one of the houses, you know, they can't go back to that number. So So that's a typical grandfathering there.

You could also say that this, um, portion— this ordinance in part or in total, right? Because you can have parts that say registration is going to start being $100 versus there's no registration fee right now. So maybe you want the registration fee to start immediately, but the limitation on one per person is phasing in over 2 or 3 years. And that gives people time to adjust their ownership of certain things. Either way, those grandfathering concepts are good and useful and have been used.

In general, the reason why we recommend grandfathering is because you are changing a property right that somebody has, these are— and the way that they utilize their property, and there are assumptions that people might be making for their own income and ability to operate within, you know, to live in Juneau, it gives them time to adjust to changes in income, whether it be they sell their property, you know, or they shift to a different type of, you know, process. But it recognizes the property interest they have within the city. And gives them time to adjust. Does that, does that make sense? Okay.

Just making sure I make—. Yeah, no, that, that makes sense. And Mr. Brooks, I will just say, uh, as we see the mayor is here, if you have questions, feel free to join the party. But I've invited you many times. Um, yep, follow-up question, Mayor.

Does the same hold true if the person is in compliance, i.e., they haven't registered? Do we have to grandfather them in? No, so, so the way that it's been written in, and if let's say you went with a date instead of just a general grandfathering, if they're not in compliance, they are not grandfathered in. They have to be registered and we have to know who they are.

And a follow-up to that, we do— it's a policy decision, correct? It introduces legal risk. You are advising us it introduces some legal risk. That's what I'm advising. This is 100% a policy decision.

Okay. Great, thanks. Mr. Kelly, thank you. And I think I already know the answer to this, but I just want to be absolutely sure that I'm understanding it right. Um, so in speaking of the grandfathering clause, it specifically uses the number 1 here, but I think that's a number we haven't decided.

So is that— if we do end up changing Um, basically 6940-020-H, we would also need to make a simultaneous amendment to update that number as well. That's correct, you would. Um, and I'll, I'll also just flag too, so when I first was asked to write this ordinance, there were— there's a little bit of a question of, you know, limiting, limiting. How do you limit short-term rentals? So for example, a husband and wife, my husband and I, you know, are both in the same home.

Maybe we have one short-term rental. It's in our home and it's under his name. Am I allowed to have one as well? And the answer is yes. Under, under this, if we were going to say one each, I was not able to find an example where we could limit to like, you know, a husband and wife or partners, like that goes way too deep.

So I just want to flag that when we're doing this, the per person was as far as I could get any limitation. We can't go any narrower than that and legally enforce it. So.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? Ms. Ahl.

Um, uh, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, and I'm not sure who to direct this question to, but when did we start collecting the hotel bed tax, and what is that currently?

Yeah, the hotel bed tax—. I mean, for short-term rentals, for short-term rentals. So short-term rental, the short-term rental registration was about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago. That's, that's been pretty recent. Hotel stuff has been very, very long time.

Follow-up? Go ahead. Yeah, and the follow-up,.

And that is now, as of say this fall, being collected through the rental platform that, you know, Airbnb or VBro, for instance? That's right. So we did shift to— so there's no registration fee, right? But yes, we have that connection with the platform because there was follow-up legislation. So not quite a year's worth of data yet.

That's right. Okay, thank you. All right, other questions? Mr. Seniger. Um, so earlier you spoke to, you know, different buildings with multiple units within them, and you have a kind of that hotel motel question that I had asked.

At what point, without this ordinance, but at what point In size of a building, if I'm renting out a bunch of short-term rentals in a large apartment building, kind of at what point do I roll over and just be considered a hotel under the law? Are there a lot more distinctions and different licensing type that, that make that distinction, or is it a number of units being rented on a nightly basis?

Where does that changeover happen?

That's right.

Um, so hotel does have a— so hotels themselves do have a definition. Um, this is— it's a long definition, but it's under 2010.01.0 in case you want to write that down. 2010.01.0. So it's any building or structure kept, used, maintained, or held out to the public to be an inn, hotel, lodging house, sleeping accommodations with or without meals, with 5 or more rooms that are used for the accommodation of such guests.

Follow-up? I guess one of your examples, it sounds like potentially we might have a building that has kind of crossed over into that definition. Is that— would that then no longer— if we pass this ordinance and limit it to 1, would that building then no longer kind of be limited under this ordinance? Because now it's seen as a hotel under our code. So, um, and I want to be careful about making any assumptions about— I said Bridgeview, but I don't know much about their inner workings, so that's not really Completely fair.

So if we took the Bergman, which has 20 potential spaces there, right? Bergman was a hotel motel. Let's say that they offered, you know, there were 20 apartments in there and 5 or more are being used for accommodations and being held out to the public as a lodging house where you can sleep. They, they would potentially shift over to that hotel, motel concept for those, for those 5 lodgings. So there are buildings in town that could, that are big enough to switch over and where we would go to them and say, we don't think that you're really an apartment complex with short-term rentals.

We think you're more like a hotel motel. And then there are a ton more registration requirements, insurance requirements, all of those things. There are a few buildings in Juneau that probably do switch over.

Mr. Kelly.

Thank you. And as a follow-up to that, you mentioned there would be a few more requirements. Would one of those be zoning? So if one of those buildings decided we have 5 or more and we're— or, or I guess if it was imposed on them, either way, if the distinction was made that these are no longer short-term rentals, they are hotels. Is there any zoning— are there any zoning issues that might conflict with that?

Um, thank you. So the answer, the short answer is yes, um, that there are zoning requirements. However, many large Buildings already are in a mixed-use or a multi-dwelling zoning, and so I couldn't tell you for sure exactly where zoning issues might crop up. But yes, they're subject to zoning just like any other building.

Mr. Steineger, thank you. That's a good lead into my kind of next piece that I wanted to ask you questions about, and that's on page 2. Under D, where we talk about the annual registration fee, um, could that fee be charged differently based on the zone in which a short-term rental is operating? Like, could we charge a different amount in B-18 versus mixed-use, you know, That kind of thing. A really good question.

So I think I would have to look a little bit more carefully at that with your— in general, you can have different fees in different areas because of zoning. They're responding to different neighborhood requirements and how different neighborhoods should look and what's allowed to be there. My hesitation in giving you a The full answer is anytime we look at fees or registrations or, or anything, we're, we're keeping an eye on that kind of equal protection. Are we treating everyone the same? Is there a reason to shift and have it be different in certain areas or other or not?

So I think a qualified yes, we could if you have a— if, and we would need to, we would need to look at the zoning. And have a reason for why you were doing it and if they're going to be different.

Great. Yep.

Yep, please go ahead. Yeah, I would hope for me to give more of what's going on inside my head. I'm thinking about, you know, in terms of, you know, what policy objectives we're trying to do here. You know, we're trying to preserve longer-term rental housing is, I think, one of the goals of the assembly is availability of housing, long-term rentals for residents. And so kind of in my mind, it's, is there a public purpose to charging a higher fee or charging a fee only if that short-term rental is, you know, in a zone that we have zoned just for housing use?

Like, I'm trying to distinguish, I guess, between, you know, things that are operating as if it's a hotel and mixed use versus somebody taking a family home out of neighborhood, and that, you know, that might be something I want to investigate. I've not totally convinced myself that's a good idea, but it's something I want to kind of put out there if it's even allowable and to talk through the policy implications. Appreciate that context. Thank you. Are there any other elements?

I'll Go ahead. Um, so, uh, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, so the purpose of collecting the registration fee, is that to track what's, you know, track how many we have? And, or, um, and is that information now available on, uh, you know, using the, the rental platform, you know, the VBRO? Is that information already collected, so is having a registration duplicative?

So, um, the annual registration was— so initially the assembly required the annual registration to get a better sense of how many short-term rentals we actually had in Juneau. That was information gathering, uh, piece. That's why there was no registration fee associated with it. It was more to understand and, and maybe track a little bit what was happening. Most communities shift to requiring a fee when they start putting in limitations, and thus enforcement is required.

So that fee is purely meant to cover any administrative costs of enforcement. It's not supposed to, um, you know, um, fill the city coffers or anything like that, right? Ms. Hall, I'll add for context that registration fees can be used for many things. They can be used to be a detractant.

Some communities have different fees as the number of registration goes up, so your first registration is X, your second registration is Y in a community where there was not that. But I think you're going to find a lot of those answers, like I said, in the previous work that was done and in that first packet we had. So I would refer back to that. Um, Mayor, good. Um, you kind of said it, but I'm just making sure it's the attorneys in agreement with that.

I'm pretty sure it is, but if we didn't limit them to one person, can we escalate the fees? So your first one is blank, your second one is blank, your third one would be even higher fee. You can, you can have escalating fees. Absolutely. Great.

Or Mr. Kelly.

Go ahead. Thank you. And to follow up on the Mayor's question, that had occurred to me actually. It was suggested to me by a constituent who visited me during my office hours, but then I was also kind of thinking about how grandfathering might work in that circumstance, because if somebody has multiple units, um, they now— is there any way to sort of grandfather them into, uh, Um, I guess not having to pay an escalating penalty for having multiple units because we're effectively changing the rules on them.

Um, thank you, Mr. Kelly. Yes, we can create a grandfathering to do that for anyone who's currently in business and has a short-term rental. I will tell you that, um, Cities, the city raises fees all the time, and so if you're not going to limit them to one, my advice changes. I don't think that grandfathering becomes as much of an issue. You're not limiting their ability to have short-term rentals.

So I don't know in that scenario that you need to grandfather, but you absolutely can. We can always grandfather.

Any other questions about the ordinance as currently written?

Seeing none, I will say that I want to leave, um, because of the nature of a couple of our staff reports, I want to leave maybe 5-10 minutes for staff reports. But we have time now if people want to start to share what's in their head, whether they have amendments, conceptual or not, or based on the answers to those questions, if there are things you like about this ordinance or don't like about that, we can start to move that to committee discussion and work. Mr. Kelly, go ahead. Thank you. There, I think I would like to keep this in committee just to kind of hash out a lot of the ideas that were worked out today.

I think the attorney already knows that we probably want to work on the definition for operator, because I also see— because my understanding from talking with constituents is that there is an owner who might own, you know, who might own a unit, but then there is an operator. I actually had an operator, I think I actually see him sitting in the second row there. Who operates quite a few residences in Juneau. And so I want to make sure that we're absolutely clear that, like, where we're talking about a person and where we're talking about an operator, I want to make sure that's abundantly clear in the definitions and in the text of the ordinance.

I am— I guess I'll leave to somebody else to talk about fees because I'm not sure where I stand on that yet. Um, actually, I think I'll let somebody else talk while I figure out the rest of my thinking.

Thank you for kicking us off, Mr. Kelly. It's a good start.

Uh, some of the other committee members were enjoying you getting your thoughts out because they're trying to get their thoughts in order. Ms. Hall, go ahead. I'll give Neil a few more minutes here. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, you know, speaking to Rainforest data, I gave Melanie a call and, and she, you know, we've got 14,000 housing units in town and a generous number would be 400 short-term rental units.

So I don't see this market, this very needed opportunity to house folks coming to our community, as being the problem with our long-term rental situation. I'd like to highlight an example of one of my conversations today where, you know, due to the lack of housing, you know, you build workforce housing. And that's, you know, heavily used during the tourism season, but then it sits idle. And so the opportunity for someone to then offer their workforce housing as short-term rentals during the off-season versus getting a tenant in there and then having to move the tenant along, you know, it doesn't solve the problem for long-term year-round rental units. But penalizing a model of using workforce housing and then short-term rentaling it, I think, is a great solution.

I thought, huh, wonder they're thinking about doing that for the legislative housing we have. You know, it generates additional revenue for the city through the bed tax and provides, you know, the ability to flex up when we have big events happening here in Juneau, such as a swim— regional swim meet that was here this last weekend. You know, there's always a need, and we do have a hotel bed shortage. Um, so anyway, those are a few reasons that I'm not really gung-ho on this at all. You know, I think it's great to track it, and if a simple registration helps that, but if that is also easily available data through the the rental platform that's already collected, you know, we don't need to duplicate efforts.

But if it isn't and we just have a registration, you know, I think that's fair. But, you know, knowing that we— if we're going to enforce limits and having to pay someone $30,000 a year to do that, you know, it just all becomes very convoluted and complicated, and I don't know that it's solving any, any housing issues that we have. Thank you. Okay, thank you for that. Mr. Steinecker, go ahead.

Thank you, and thank you for that, Miss Hall. I, I do— when I've been trying to look through some of the old data and try and figure out kind of some of the problem statement, it, it's hard to see in the data where you know, this is a significant problem. I know it's definitely something that we've heard from residents, and we've heard the frustrations of trying to find housing in town. So I know that is a true problem, but how much short-term rentals are actually contributing to it is really hard to figure out from the data. I kind of already made my comment about trying to think of sort of the different ways that short-term rentals are used, you know, whether it's a large building that's effectively operating as a hotel, and it sounds like we do have ordinance on the books that already kind of cares for that.

It just might be something that we need to keep an eye on as we see, you know, maybe apartment buildings, you know, shift over to short-term rental and make sure that, you know, if you have more than however many units that is, that, that you're complying with the ordinance as written. I am interested in thinking more about you know, whether we can treat some kind of registration fee sort of as a way that's a variance from using properties that are zoned for neighborhood long-term housing for short-term rentals, and if that's, you know, something we can use to sort of, as I sort of suggest, put into affordable housing programs, into housing programs generally, to try to kind of mitigate some of that stock that that leaves.

I don't know that I have a feeling of enough information to point to enough of a problem to put a hard cap on the number, especially knowing that we have a lot of operators that have quite a few, and, and as a result, the kind of the difficulty of working through grandfathering is going to get really complex because I also don't want to kind of create this sort of haves and have-nots where we have a bunch of operators that were around before and they have a ton of units and are able to operate in a much different economic climate than new entrants. You know, I don't know that that necessarily creates a level playing field, but I am interested in further conversation on fees or, you know, kind of some way to create that distinction between housing units that otherwise would be long-term rentals. Also, definitely, as I've talked to people, I've heard a lot of the same thing about, you know, you might have legislative housing or tourism worker housing, and those windows don't actually always mesh up perfectly. And so you can't necessarily replace a legislative worker with a tourist worker because sessions go long and the tourism season starts early and all those things. And short-term rentals really helps helps fill that gap for some of these long-term rentals that we know we need in town.

So I want to make sure that we're not kind of screwing up a sector of the housing market as we work through it, but make sure we're addressing some of the concerns we hear from residents about finding long-term housing. Okay, I will be brief. It's—. I think.

This was a good first session to work through it. I would say before the next meeting, dig into— obviously you may have no interest in taking this further, but those of us who are interested in taking it further, dig into any questions you need to ask about short-term rentals as a whole. Review those previous materials if you need to have conversations with staff. On history or anything else, or Melanie or anyone else who would be useful. Um, and there are other members of the task force.

We have, uh, one in, um, in the audience tonight. So have those conversations before the next meeting. Our next meeting is May 4th. So in the meantime, I'm going to ask you, do your homework, get any amendments ready, chat with staff about them so that The next one, we can hopefully end up with something that we're either moving to Cal or not. Um, and then as somebody who's been involved in it the entire time, or a lot of it at the time, and who was on the Short-Term Rental Task Force, I will say short-term rentals are not the heart— are not, um, I think I hear sometimes in town where people say, this is not our housing problem, so don't do anything about it.

It is not our housing problem. There's no one thing is so, and it ain't, they are needed. There's no question about that. It's just, we're not trying to very simple, like, hammer over the head, fix a problem, but can we tweak something that so that it serves our community better? Uh, and I would argue that, yes, we could.

And I would also argue that the finding of the task force was to tell us to come up with a number. I'll tell you all, just so you know, I'm gonna be bringing it next time. Um, we didn't have a lot in here about, um, owner-occupied, but that was something that the task force wanted to see that we could— that's one way we can preserve that and make sure it's clear. Owner-occupied, you can always do whatever you want with the house you're living in. And then the recommendation is, if it's not owner-occupied, consider putting a number.

They didn't say what number, but that— I just want to respect the work of the people who, because we had a lot of diligent community members who put in a lot of time on that. So, uh, we will look at this topic again, uh, May 4th, and thank you all for the good discussion. And I will go now to Mr. Blythorne for staff reports. Thank you, Madam Chair. First staff report is just a U.S. Coast Guard housing in Juneau, Alaska update.

So in, uh, March, on March 10th, the U.S. Coast Guard held a forum to talk about their need for housing in Juneau. Which was very well attended by local contractors and other people in Juneau who are interested in that. And I just wanted to share the slides with you on this agenda and in this packet that they provided to the, the people who are attending that meeting and to make sure that the committee and the assembly is aware of this need and the work that's going on to try to accommodate the new Coast Guard housing that's going to be needed for the stores. And so there's a number of issues that the Coast Guard's looking at. My memo includes kind of their, their process, their steps that they're involved with.

They're on step 2 right now, internal feasibility stage. They've compiled all the RFI responses. After this meeting, I was told by Coast Guard personnel that they met with 9 entities separately, individually, to talk about their property, their projects, their questions, their concerns. And then I know that the U.S. Coast Guard is running it up their flagpole, as they said to me, and coming back with further questions before they begin some type of RFP phase. So I just wanted to remind everybody that the Assembly has looked at this a number of times.

There has been a lot of interest from the Assembly to try to collaborate and help make this happen, and I want to just provide information so that way you guys stay informed on the topic. So with that, I'll answer any questions. Any questions on that one?

Seeing none. Let's go to the next. Mr. Kelly. Oh, sorry, Mr. Kelly, go ahead. Didn't see your hand.

Sorry, I just had one quick question. So are you— you kind of mentioned the different stages and we're on stage 2. Do we have any associated timeline for those stages? And would we anticipate being able to meet the need before the Doris is actually stationed? Through the Chair, great questions.

That was just the information that was provided to me by the Coast Guard. They didn't elaborate on their schedule. I'd say that I've spoken with a couple of local contractors and people who attended that meeting, and there's still a few issues with the Coast Guard's plan that need to be worked out. So I think that everybody is really interested in working on this and trying to create a solution here. I know JEDC has come up with some ideas as well.

And it's just of the community's interest to work this out. So hopefully we can be a good partner as this works its way out. Thank you.

Mr. Ryder. Great. Second staff report was just the CARES lease. This is for the Sobering Center. I just wanted to bring this committee's attention to this topic because I have been working on it as staff, and that's going to be signed in the next few days.

So that's going to be worked out here soon. And I just wanted to make sure you're aware that it's happening. It's something that the Assembly has been interested in working on over the past 10 or so years, and it's something that will continue into the future with the fire department. And then the 3rd staff report that I had for a verbal update is just, you know, Animal Rescue. Last year, this committee heard an application from Juno Animal Rescue to lease a piece of property over by the food bank.

And as of this week, that lease has been signed by the city manager. So, uh, congratulations to the Assembly for leasing property to the Genoa Animal Rescue so they can continue to provide the services that they provide and also work towards a future facility that they're going to be fundraising for on that property. Great. Thank you for your work on that. We will go to our liaison for liaison report, our comment and question.

So for the PRAC, we had a very productive, very short meeting where we discussed Trail Mix's 2026 work plan and the various people that they have going. Marine Park has, if you haven't noticed, started construction. Homestead Park is finished. The Augustus Brown Totem screen is being refurbished, and we had a wonderful DIPAC field trip. Awesome.

Any questions for our PRAC liaison? Seeing none. Anything else for the committee, Mr. Blythorne? No, Madam Chair, that's all I have for this evening. Okay, our next meeting date will be May 4th, and we are adjourned.