Kodiak Island Borough - WS 12/30/2021

They're a charming bunch, aren't they?

How are you? Oh no, it's fine. I found it. I'm like, you know what, I bet it's up there on the website, and it was. Thank you.

You're welcome.

No, no, it's like— Okay, I got 2 minutes to go before we start.

My right hearing aid does keep cutting out because it gets too far in my ear. That's smart because that's hot side.

First thing up will be citizens' comments. If— are we taking call-ins today? We are. Okay, so if you're going to call in, it's 486-3231, toll-free 1-855-492-9202. You are limited to 3 minutes per speaker.

If you want your comments to be part of the record, the work session is an unofficial meeting. So you should come back at the regular meeting, which will be next Thursday here at 6:30, to make your comments if you want to be part of the regular, uh, of the actual, um, record. Please keep your comments— address them to the assembly as a whole, don't single anybody out, and please keep it civil. Thank you.

Oh, we had enough of a delay. We're good. Okay, then we will close citizens' comments and go to our agenda. First up on the agenda is the discussion of process for 2023 fiscal year budget, uh, and with that we have Dora here, I believe, and you have a presentation in front of you. This is just general information.

This is not going to get into the, uh, meat of the budget. Give us all some information, new members, what kind of budgets we run and all the rest of that. Dora? So I actually have two items on here, and I would like to do my second item first if I could. Because I think there's going to be more discussion about the budgeting process with the manager, and I want that to happen after this first.

Yeah, please, if that's acceptable to everybody. Okay, thank you very much.

So I don't have— didn't have any direction from any particular assembly member and about this, so I'm just going to do a brief overview.

Um, the maximum allowable property tax revenues is in KIBC Code 3.25030, and I've highlighted the pertinent parts for my discussion this evening. The total amount of real and personal taxes that can be levied or imposed area-wide basis during the fiscal year shouldn't exceed the total amount approved by the budget— by the assembly for the prior year. So what that means is what you approved to collect for last year is the cap. So the adjustments that can happen to that are for new construction, property improvements, services approved by voting voters on ballot issues, new judgments, and any emergency expenses, which, you know, thankfully we haven't had. Those are exemptions that are allowed to increase that cap amount.

So the other item in here is the principal and interest on bonds. This initiative was borrowed, copied from a borough that their debt service payments were included in their general fund. So their general fund and their debt service were mixed together. So their property tax revenues went to pay off debt service, bond and principal interest payments from their general fund. Ours is separated.

So I'm— will be coming to you next month with an ordinance changing this so that our maximum allowable tax revenue calculation does not include debt service. The state does not allow limitations on debt service for payment of bond and principal.

Separate fund that, that accounts for the income and outcome, outgoings of the money. It doesn't need to be in our ordinance when it doesn't— it is included in our general fund. Oh, that'll become important on the next couple of slides. So the next slide has the actual formula, and then there's the descriptions of the formula. The basically the cap less principal and interest payments for bonds, which because they have the revenue for the bonds in their general fund, it doesn't specifically say the revenue for the general— for the bonds, it's implied in the property, real personal property tax revenues, comes to add— sorry, so take the total revenues less the bond principal and payments.

You add in a consumer pricing index for Anchorage since we don't have one for specifically for Kodiak, and that CPI will bump up the cap. And then exclude the exclusions that we discussed earlier. And that equals the new revenue for the fiscal year. So in calculating, calculating the adjustment, you take the prior year's total. For last year, the actual revenues we collected, levied, were less than what the cap allowed.

And that $134,000 is an additional amount that we were added to our total to collect for FY22. So that's what the Note 1 adjustment is. The next slide, the next slide shows the calculation. So you have what we levied less the adjustments equals the tax, the cap we could levy. Then you go down and add the taxable the tax collected on the new improvements, and the new improvements value is $10.9 million, comes to what we could use or what we could levy for FY22, which is tax year '21, of $13.59 million.

So I'm not sure what questions you have for me. Well, the first question is, I thought we changed this to apply only to real property, not personal property. No, the last change we made excluded the service areas from the calculation, so now it's just the general fund revenue. And they also excluded the excise tax and the other revenues that were included in that cap.

I thought we made a decision too that we were going to be because it was really meant— they wanted to limit the amount that we could assess properties, which is illegal in the state. So they just limited the amount of taxes. James, do you have something to add on that? I think we discussed that, but nobody brought up an amendment for it at the time. There was a lot of discussion on it, but we never had a vote on that part of it.

Scott? Um, do we have an idea of what the inflation rate is going to be? No, I don't think they come out with that till February. Okay, because the— in the news it looks like it's going to be substantial.

And we also don't have an idea what new construction and that is going to do. No, I tell you, the problem I have with this is we have property values going up drastically, and we are by law to assess at 100%, which is impossible. And I know— I don't— the assessor's not in right now, but I know from having been in that position, it's almost impossible to keep up with the market when it's going the way it is right now. And you do the best you can, but what happens if you fall too far behind the state cuts the amount of money that they give you for your schools. It's all in that formula that they have.

And so I, I have a feeling that we could end up in a pretty strange place one of these days with this tax cap. I understand why it was out there, and I understand why the citizens who put it forth and voted for it wanted it there. I'm just— it is our duty to run this borough to some, some line of efficiency and to make the budget. And I don't think that this assembly or the past assemblies has been frivolous with money to the extent that maybe we shouldn't look at doing away with this or greatly getting in there and changing it. Because I can see us getting to a point if our property values go way up We're going to have a hard time trying to figure out what we have to do by the time budget comes around to meet the tax cap, lower the mill rate, do this, do that, and all these other things.

It's not that I want to collect a whole bunch more money. I think we set our mill rate based on our needs, and I think that, I think that this measure is probably a little bit too much. I think this Assembly, for sure this Assembly has been very conservative in spending money. And past assemblies have not been any more frivolous. So I think that maybe we ought to look at that.

If somebody in the assembly wants to delve into that, or I'll delve into it and bring it forth as a future note. I know it won't be popular, but I think it's something that we are elected to budget for the borough and run the borough efficiently. And the last 2 years especially, we've been cutting things like R&R, and we have buildings falling apart. We have to, we have to take it into our hands, and sooner or later the, the people out there have to believe that we're looking out for their best interests. Sometimes it's save a penny— what's it, a penny-wise dollar-foolish?

I think we could get in that position really quickly. Anybody have any comments to that? Anybody want to stick their neck out?

I did just want to say one other thing. We do get occasionally phone calls from taxpayers saying, we have a cap and I'm paying more than I did the prior year. And I just wanted to address that. If you have $15,000— if $15,000 is your cap limit and that's what the borough levies across 1,000 people, if the next year 900 of those people are taxable because an additional 100 are now have some kind of exemption like senior exemption or disabled exemption, then you're still levying that $15,000 over a smaller group of people. So of course those smaller group of people are now going to pay more than they did the prior year just because it's a smaller group of people.

So just because there's a cap doesn't necessarily mean that each individual property owner's taxes aren't going to change.

Well, the other point is, is that we have our severance tax tied to the mill rate. And if all of a sudden this market goes crazy and the assessor goes out there and actually raises everybody's assessment, 20% or whatever crazy inflation rate that's been going on out there in the real estate market, and we cut our mill rate, we're also cutting our mill rate also applies to severance tax. And I, I have a feeling that you're going to get yourselves in kind of a, a weird position. And I just think that everybody on the assembly needs to think about it. It's not a nice thing to think about because anybody on the you meet out and the public's gonna say, what do you mean you're gonna do away with tax cap?

You just wanna tax us out of existence. No, that's not the case, but we have to run the government. Personal opinion. Anybody else wanna line, jump in? Go ahead.

If not, I'll stick my neck out there. I don't care. I don't see the newspaper every night, so I'm good. Scott. Yeah, I'm chuckling because you brought it up before too.

Decouple the severance tax from the mill rate. You did. Yeah. And it failed twice before. So I still think it should be decoupled.

That would be— that would be one way of keeping us out of that scenario if things go crazy with the assessed values. Any other comments? Scott? I don't think we've done a very good job of explaining where the increased costs are coming from. I have some connections with the school district, and I think Jeff Smith mentioned this the other day.

He started 5 years ago in the role that he had with special ed, and the number of type 1, whatever they're called, uh, special ed kids was 55. And this year, 5 years later, it's 106. And we don't get anywhere near enough money from the state to cover that, but, uh, it's causing tremendous problems for the school district.

And for each of the local principals as well, because some of them need one aide all to themselves. Others need, uh, an aide for 3 kids or something. But, uh, it's a tremendous expense for the school district, and it's something that's new. It's related to the opioid crisis and the meth crisis, as nobody has labeled that one. But we haven't done a good job in explaining to the citizens where these new costs come from.

They expect us to run the government off of whatever inflationary rises there are, and we've had a number of them, particularly in assessments over the past 10 years or so, that have helped us out in terms of finances. But this tax cap is going to cause a problem, and we need to explain to people in the citizenry what the increased costs really are. Another area is, uh, IT. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff going on there, and we need to protect ourselves from it, and that's expensive.

Any other comments?

Anything you need from us further on that other than an ordinance? Making some changes. Yes, sir.

Okay, let's go forward then with your budget. Okay.

Unlike individuals and most companies, government budgets are very different. The general definition of a budget is a spending plan based on estimated income and expenses. And although the budget our government does do that, we have the added requirement of the fact that it's legally binding. Most companies, if they exceed their budget, it's not a big deal. For government, it is a big deal.

So budget documents and the budget process isn't the same for government as it is for other companies. So I just wanted to put that out there. Government accounting is based on fund accounting, and fund accounting is a system that uses separate self-balancing funds, and it accounts for legal use instead of profitability.

Funds are broken down into 3 levels of budgetary control. There's line item control, which we use for capital projects, and I'm not going to talk about capital projects tonight, and by department, which we use for the general fund, and by fund, which we use for special revenue funds, debt service funds, and enterprise funds.

So of those 5 types of funds, we use general funds, special revenue, debt service, enterprise, and as I mentioned before Capital projects are, are budgeted for by project, so they're not included in our annual budget or our operating budget. And we do have 33 different funds that we legally account for in the borough.

The next slide is just a list of our funds and generally who's responsible for that fund. And the ones marked by GF— thank you— the ones marked by GF, we budget for by department. The EF below that, enterprise funds, those are budgeted by fund, which means we don't necessarily care about the dollars exceeding or not exceeding on a line item basis. It's the the fund as a total. So if we budget for that fund that we're only going to spend $50,000, then technically you should be seeing a budget amendment of some kind coming before you if we want to spend $50,010 for that fund.

Same thing for the departments by line item or by department. The general fund is one entire fund, but we don't budget that by the bottom line. We budget that by department. Meaning the clerks, finance, IT, assessing, all of them have their own individual budgets by department. And then the special revenue funds, they also, like the enterprise funds, are based on a bottom-line fund level, not departments within the fund.

Questions so far?

Would you just give a quick rundown on, for example, what the enterprise funds are that we have, just So for anybody who's new to this, yep, the enterprise fund includes our landfill, our hospital, long-term care, research center, the research core departments, and the E911 services fund. And enterprise funds are funds that should be generating, sustaining themselves with user charges or user services. So any governmental activities or non— those, those are voluntarily paid service fees and charges, whereas governments are paid with involuntary fees and charges like property taxes. Those are considered involuntary. So if most of the money you're occurring— the borough building is a good example.

Most of what pays for that building is is derived from involuntary revenue sources. So it wouldn't qualify as an enterprise fund, whereas the apartments, those are all— the revenue for that's generated from user fees or service fees, rental income, and that's not an involuntary revenue. How about special revenue funds? Special revenue funds have their own legal restrictions for where the revenue comes from or what their expenses can be spent on. School district is one of those.

They're a special revenue fund. So is the service areas. So the service areas collect revenues from their property owners, and they expect those revenues to, to be used to pay expenses for just that service area.

So I sent out an email requesting information on what you all wanted to have in this presentation because I really didn't have very many parameters for what it was supposed to entail. And one of the responses I got back is an explanation of how personnel is, is budgeted for. And personnel costs, both for salary and the benefits, is the largest expense other than for like project expenses that the borough has on an annual basis.

All employees are, or have been designated, a home department. No matter where they work, they have one home department. For the clerks, it's their home department is the clerk's office. Finance, it's the finance department. So any, any of the personnel or department directors that manage departments have— they don't have any discretion on what their staffing costs are.

Their base salary, step increases, union bonuses, COLAs, longevity pay, all of that is predetermined. They can't determine that on, on their own, nor can they determine which employees are in their home department unless there's reductions in staff or somebody's permanently moved to another department. Likewise, their expenses for per- FICA, workers' comp, health insurance, life, disability. Those, those are all fixed costs that department directors don't have any control of when they're formulating their budget. I will hand each department director a list.

Aafit. So this is completely foreign to me, and hearing you describe it is My mind is just muddled. My question is, how do you budget for, um, when you have staff positions that aren't filled? Do you budget for them in case you find somebody, or do you— how does that work? I mean, because I know in our for-profit organization, we hire somebody and it's pretty easy to put the money in there, but I don't understand how it is done here because I know there are some open positions.

And so what— how do you do that?

That is usually dictated at the beginning of the budget season on a couple slides. I'm going to postpone your question for another couple slides. I will say, one, I have a booklet if I didn't already give you that's That's my bad. That explains the differences between regular company type budgeting and accounting and governmental. So it is very different.

The whole premise of a profit, the— and I'm going to deviate just for a second here. Government is meant to cover expenses for 12 months. Companies, for-profit companies, they have a long-term look for years to come. But because revenues for governments are primarily involuntary, they have a very short-term economic look on current resources, and current being 12 months or less. Enterprise funds our business-type funds, they have a different kind of accounting.

They have accrual accounting. All of our other governmental funds have modified accrual accounting. So those enterprise funds for the landfill, for the hospital, for those that we mentioned before, you will have things in there, considerations like depreciation, like long-term debt liabilities, that you won't find in the governmental budget because the governmental budget's focused on 12 months. So you'll find the interest payment, those debts, but you won't find the principal payments for them. So somewhere in that CAFR, I could probably pull the page, but there's a reconciliation sheet that kind of reconciles the two to make them look like one.

But really, unless you're really into that, I wouldn't recommend that as a starting place to learn about it. I, I, I have not I'm not a numbers guy, I'll tell you that right now. But as you continue on, I will learn. I can learn. Generally, I've found, especially in these budget things, I can learn by listening to you describe how it's done and by seeing it on this.

But if I have any other questions, I certainly will come to you and ask. Please do. I really appreciate questions, and especially if I know there's questions that you're asking that lots of other people would like to know. And so I love it when you guys email me questions and say, this is what I'm going to ask, and then I have an answer ready, especially if you're like talking budgets and you want to know what the amount of cash is in a project or whatever the question could be. Technical.

If you email me that ahead of time, you ask here, I can give you the answer and it furthers the conversation rather than having to say, "I'm sorry, I can't pull that out of the top of my head, so I'm just gonna have to get back to you later." I would much rather give you an answer. So I love questions, feel free to ask, and if you're asking them, I bet you're not the only one.

Any more on personnel? Scott Smiley. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So can I answer that? I think on another slide. Okay.

So the other big budget consideration other than staffing is the maximum allowable property tax revenues, and we briefly touched on that earlier. Here again is the code section you can find it in, and for those of you, there's the Alaska Code statute regarding no limitations on the taxes to pay bonds. Just threw it in there for reference.

I threw this together. This is the traditional budget timeline that I've worked with for the last 5 years.

With a new manager and a different assembly and different goals and some of the other challenges, I'm not suggesting that we stay tied to this. However, I did want to put it in here.

We start— staff starts budgeting in December, moves between staff and the manager through January. Service areas are involved. We're putting together a letter and sending service areas their information so that they can start holding their public meetings in February and March. January, sometimes as early as January, we come to the assembly with information. Most the time it's, um, you know, early February.

You hold meetings, sometimes it's only night meetings, sometimes it's on weekends through, through March all the way through June. There's a couple of key deadlines I did want to point out. The service area budgets are due to the clerks in the finance department by March 31st. The manager's budget is due to the assembly by April 1st. School district funding requests are due to the Assembly by April 30th, and you do have a code-related legal deadline of adopting a budget by June 10th.

If you don't adopt a budget by June 10th for whatever reason, then the budget is considered the manager's budget that, that the manager submits to you on April 1st. So I did want to point that out too.

And my last slide before I turn it over to Roxanne. The 2023 assembly topics that I would like to see some discussion or direction on. These are the same, same topics, we mostly the same topics we ask for every year. They're large dollar value, large directional type indications and helpful for the manager to put together a budget that's acceptable, or at least can generate some positive conversations. These topics are nonprofit funding, as in how much, Kodiak Island School District funding, again, how much.

That's 90% of our budget, so that's, that's an important number. Facilities fund, well, what what you want to spend the 85% of earnings income, which granted isn't going to be a lot this next year, but it is there.

Direction for school debt, which was last year, or renewal and replacement projects, which has been in the past. Sometimes that's good direction for staff to know. Tourism development— there's a part of the budget amendment coming up that's going to transfer hopefully money from the general fund into that special revenue fund, because right now with, with revenues from that fund not coming in We don't have any balance to pay the traditional payment to Discover Kodiak or any of the other tourism-related activities you might want to fund. So there's— if that's, you know, something you want to do, then knowing that sooner so we can get that in the budget's better to know. And then debt service state reimbursement percentage, and sadly we don't hear from the state until after our budget's passed.

Passed on what their reimbursement portion is going to be, and then there's years like this year where they've determined an amount, but I'm pretty sure we're going to get more than that. So some, some direction of how you want that to look to staff would, would be great before the last minute. And personnel costs. Budgeting for personnel cost has varied over the years. Some years we've been told to include vacant positions in our budgeting, and, and other years, like last year, we were told not to.

I think the last 2 years we've been told not to budget for vacant positions, that if those positions were filled, we could come back to the assembly with a budget ordinance to include the, the money that we needed for those positions. So does that answer your personnel question? Okay.

Andora, I sat right there with the governor when he said that he was going to pay us 70%. Now surely he wouldn't go back on that.

How many years have we been making that assumption and end up having to scramble? Well, this year it's an election year. And I have a feeling that if he says it and puts it in the budget, I don't think the legislature will take it out. So that's going to help us in a grand way if we actually get that this year. The problem is I wouldn't count on it next year.

So when we look at our budget, we should look how we're going to sustain it over the years. And I suspect he, he can say that for this year, part— in part because of the large refunding that happened. Our municipality saved $400,000 this year, and we're not the largest. So of the savings, so they— I've already turned in my expectations for the FY23 bond payment reimbursement needs to the state back October of last year. So they, they are already planning FY23 based on those numbers.

This year's percentage to us was based on numbers that, that we provided them way before the refunding. And if we were saving that much for the refunding, other municipalities are saving an equal, if not more, amount. So if they put the amount 2 years prior to the refunding in the budget and the refunding happened and there's that much savings, then I suspect that we're going to be getting some more reimbursement from them. If that makes sense. Any other questions from the assembly?

Scott Smiley. Um, in some of the school district school board meetings, they've talked about advancing their process a little so that the timing will be a little earlier than what's suggested by statute, and we should figure out when we're going to have the joint meeting with them about budget.

Yeah, sooner than later would be better if they have a— if they'll have an idea. But the other thing that the governor said to me was, uh, you need to go back to the superintendent and ask him about holdover funds because we did away with the limit. There is no limit on holdover funds. That would be funds, I think, that they've been looking to spend on, like when they redid the gym and offered to help with the siding and stuff like that. So if there's no limit and they have a probability of more holdover funds, their ask could possibly go down.

I haven't talked to Larry about that yet. I was told directly by the governor I should, so I will. Thank you for letting me change up the order, and it's Roxanne now. Thank you. Good evening.

Excuse me, Roxanne. Dora, I know how hard this was for you, and you did a great job. Thank you.

Good evening. I come to you today with great respect for the Kodiak Island Borough. Come to you with respect for my tribal ancestors, my tribal elders, and my tribal leaders. And I am— it's a great honor to serve as your Kodiak Island Borough Manager. I'm so happy to be here, and I thank you for having me.

I also, as a matter of protocol, I have to thank the Alutiiq people and the Alaska Natives for having me on the land that they come from. So regarding this budget that we have coming up, I just had a couple of quick thoughts for you. So since this is my first budget here, I have so many faculties that I can apply throughout this process that we're about to go through. I'm very happy to be getting here right at the start. This is really going to help me with understanding the departments and working with the staff, and then also understanding your perspectives.

The humble ask that I have is that I be given a little wiggle room as we go through this so we can work to develop a budget that will be a good first start for all of you. I know that some of you are probably anxious at providing your thoughts, but I hope you can consider the line-by-line sorts of ways that we will develop this, as then you will go forward and do your look at it. I know it's tempting to go line-by-line as an assembly, but I just ask for consideration for all the work that the staff will do in bringing this forward to you. But I really look forward to the opportunity to help with this and understand your perspectives as we go forward. And I'd be happy to answer any questions, or if there are any more for Dora, we'd be happy to help.

Thank you, Roxanne. I personally don't like going line by line by the assembly. I don't think it's their business. I don't mind looking at department by department to see where the money is being spent and why. The determination has to be made by the assembly, I believe.

On the total budget, how much we're going to budget. Your job is to disperse that among the department heads. If we cut your budget by 20%, you have to decide how you're going to do it. We don't go to each department, say you're going to cut 20%. You might want to cut a department 50%.

Uh, so that's my personal point of view. Of course, there's people on the assembly disagree with me, but I'm hard of hearing when I take my hearing aids off. That's, that's my hope on how we'll proceed. Thank you, Mayor. I agree with you, line item by line item.

I've done it with assemblies in the past when I was on staff, and it was painful to see them, see people arguing over a $1,000 or $2,000 line item in a budget when they, when you were trying to cut $500,000. It's just a waste of time. That's your job. Thank you. My opinion, again.

And by the way, Roxanne, uh, welcome to the Kodiak Island Borough officially. Um, I was going to wait until the regular meeting to do that when we would be on record and all that, but have you met everybody on the assembly? Close enough, I'll get there. Okay, otherwise I was going to do the old high school thing about making everybody introduce themselves. I don't think we'll go that route.

So that, moving down, brings us— we have an ordinance coming up that we put up. We have to bring to the public hearing. That's the ordinance on adding a statement of land acknowledgement. We talked about it in the work sessions. And we talked about it a little bit in the regular meeting, and there was a number of things that we were going to look into.

For one thing, what version, you know, there was a longer version, a short version, and there was comments made we should have a shorter version, but not the version that the borough school district uses. And I think Jared Griffin was going to look into that. And, uh, because he said he wanted to be eloquent and it wasn't eloquent, the borough version, a borough school district version. And then the suggestion was made by James that it should be read by somebody from a Native group or Native organization rather than a member of the assembly for a number of reasons. Joe has been doing it and we don't have a problem with Joe doing it because he can pronounce a lot of the Aleutic words without hesitating.

It might be difficult for me or somebody else, but we all thought it would be a good idea, I think, at our last meeting that we look into somebody from a Native corporation, just as James said, just as we have someone come and do the invocation, someone come and do the land acknowledgement. And Joe, I think you were going to look— talk to some members of CANNA and other organizations. Have you come back with anything on that? I did. I talked to a number of people.

The consensus seems to be that although it is a good idea, I thought it was in the beginning as well, but the concern was that after the novelty wore off, after the first couple of meetings, it will be harder to find somebody from the Native community to keep coming in to make the statement. The suggestion— I read my, uh, the land acknowledgement that I was reading to everyone that I talked to was okay with that one rather than the short one. But I think what they would— the consensus was that it should be somebody either from an assembly member or the mayor that says it. Reads it, mostly because they think that it will be too hard to find somebody to keep coming in. It would not probably be the same person each time, and it may be a different land acknowledgement each time.

So I think that if we— what we decided was that it would be good to have one statement read by one of the Assembly members or the mayor?

Well, you know, I think it'd be a good thing if somebody from one of the Native organizations or just a Native would come in and volunteer to do it for a lot of reasons. The first reason I think is it'd get them involved in the government, and we've had a lot of talk over the years about the government not being responsive enough to the smaller communities, mostly Native communities, and I think that would help bring them in and maybe would spark some desire for them to serve on the Assembly. I think that would be positive. James.

So, I have some connections as well, and I made some calls last week. To quite a few people in the Native community, and they're appreciative that we're bringing this forward. They, they think it's about time, and they, they appreciate that we're doing this, first of all. Second of all, the consensus— and when I say consensus, every single one of them said they didn't care what was read, just that we're acknowledging something.

The second part of that is they would rather somebody from the Native community, whether it be from one of the associations or from the museum, come over and present a statement to the assembly in the order that we have it, which is right after the Pledge of Allegiance.

Sorry.

Basically, they would prefer that that happen, and it's just like you just said. They want the community to get involved in the borough meetings. They've been striving to bring people to the meetings or get people to the meetings, and they think that this is going to be an opportunity for them to come.

If we leave it kind of open is what was a couple of suggestions, not all the suggestions, but kind of leave it open, an open call, if you will, One of the statements was that maybe we'll have a few people show up and then one person can read it after they decide, or after we decide, or after they contact the clerk's office that they want to come in and read a statement.

What was also said, if that was to happen, if we left it an open call and it wasn't arranged previous with clerk, that you might get 10 people in here and then 9 of them would be upset that they're leaving without making a statement, right? And so basically it would be— somebody would— basically the first person to call the clerk's office would be getting that time slot.

And that's what most of them had preferred. That I spoke to, one of the things was, is that they didn't want to make it a statement that we specifically had.

They don't think that it— if somebody's coming in from the outside should read a statement that we've put together. Now, if we can't get somebody for a regular meeting, say, you know, next, next week we can't find somebody, then somebody from the assembly or the mayor would, would read it, um, the statement that we decide on tonight. But it— once we decide on the statement, the person that comes in to do a statement is not reading that statement. They're doing their own acknowledgement, um, is kind of where it went. And And I don't know how we would do that in an ordinance to state that it would be a reading from the assembly of this versus if somebody from one of the community came in and gave a land acknowledgment.

The other issue of that is there's really only about 26 people that live in town. That would be willing or able to come in and make some sort of acknowledgement unless they came in from one of those smaller communities.

That was the big thing. There's not a lot of people in town that, one, have the— not the guts, but the desire to get up in front of a bunch of people.

The other part of that is whichever way we go, they hope that if somebody does— if we do decide that an assembly member want— is going to read it, or the mayor is going to read it, that if somebody does show up and wants to make a statement, that we let them make that statement instead of the assembly or the mayor. Does that make sense? That makes sense, actually. I like that idea. That gives us a backup.

And as far as the— if you look at the ordinance, it doesn't say who's going to read it. It's like the invocation. So all we have to do is agree it's going to be in there and then put the word out. If we're going to read it and it's going to be somebody in the assembly because nobody shows up, or the mayor, I could always designate Joe because he speaks language, or I could do it myself. If I was going to do it myself, I'd do the shorter version since it would not help anything, just because I'd be more comfortable with that.

But if Joe wants to do long version, if somebody wants to come in and do a longer version, I'm fine with that too. That's a good idea. I like that. Go ahead. And then Megan, if you have a hand up.

Just one follow-up.

One of the things that was said after I read both statements to each of the people that I spoke to was, some of the words are a little hard for anybody to say, and Joe said it before that they're even hard for him. And maybe that's something that we want to look at, is some sort of training, or maybe taking those specifically out. I don't know, simplifying it a little bit. A little. Megan, you wanted to add something before we go back to Joe?

Jumped out of your seat. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate that. As the chairperson for a local tribe, I hope that it's okay that I speak on behalf of some of the Aleutic people. The Aleutic people are— tend to be shy people.

They are not likely to call the clerk and ask to come and speak at your meeting. I believe that they would be honored by an invitation to join and say a prayer or a land acknowledgement.

However, I don't know how that would fit into your ordinance of such. So thank you for allowing me to comment. Again, the ordinance is simple. It's going to be— if Major Dave Davis doesn't show up, since he's basically the only one that volunteers to do the invocation, on a couple of occasions only, we had an assembly member say, I'll lead. I'll lead us in prayer.

And that was when Dennis Simmons was on the assembly. So I could see it if someone doesn't show up, I could see inviting someone, or I can see someone doesn't show up, myself or somebody on the assembly read it. Joe, you had your hand up. Ah, yes. I did get a few calls after Assemblymember Turner talked with some people, and after I gave them what I said to you just now, they said, "I wish I would have talked to you before I talked to him," because it makes sense to— the idea is great, by the way, of having somebody come in here to do it, but the concerns that have been expressed already about having a hard time finding somebody to come in there.

Like, there are very few. I'm one of the few people, Native persons, that— I'm terrified right now while I'm speaking, but I'm able to do it.

There are not as many people as I'd like that would want to come in to make the statement unless they have something that is before the assembly then generally they're not going to show up. They're listening right now, I can tell you, they can hear us, but many of them don't want to put themselves out and speak in front of a— even if it's a small group like this. You know, we have our meetings all the time and it's hard to get them to talk in those when it's all Natives. So I would like to have somebody come in to do it, yes, But, uh, so maybe that's what we would do is invite somebody to do it. But, um, as a fallback, I would be willing to continue reading it or else have you as the mayor do it.

Um, as far as the pronunciation, you know, I do it fine when I'm home practicing before I get here, but then when I get here, I stumble on the words each and every time. So if there was somebody that could speak better than me the Aleutic language, then it would be great. But I don't know where I am now.

I can see both ways, so I think that whichever way we choose, that will be acceptable.

So, um, I think that the clerk's office would be more than happy to reach out and invite or request someone to come, and we're happy to do that. Just like we called Major Dave every week and remind to ask him if he will come. So if Joe was maybe able to work with me, or someone's able to work with me, give me a list of those people that would maybe be interested in that I could reach out to each week and say, would you be available would you be able to come? I'm happy to add that to our list of duties. OK. Terry?

Yeah, I think I see it a little differently. And a land acknowledgment is important because people— and I'm going to go ahead and just say white people— white Americans of my generation, we were not formally taught thoroughly and within an appropriate truthful context the, the painful and complex history of colonization and its effect on Indigenous people and their cultures. And I think that's important that we as a body recognize that gap in our education and how, and recognizing that gap as a governing body in our policies. And that's why I think the land acknowledgement statement should, the we that Joe has written, I think, I feel that that we, that pronoun represents the body and represents the staff. We are speaking for ourselves.

We are speaking that, we are saying that we have this, this gap, and we are reorienting ourselves to acknowledging those gaps in our policies and reconciling and reckoning with those gaps. And so I think placing a land acknowledgment that we have agreed to— and Jill's language is great— that we collectively affirm as a body. As a prelude to our business each week, that ought to put us in that frame of mind that we allow ourselves to inform our decision-making. My concern, and I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, my concern is that if the land acknowledgement is delegated outside of the body, then I don't know if that puts us in the right frame of mind, I am concerned that it might be perceived as tokenism or performative for performative's sake. We have a history in this country of treating Native Americans as tokens and as performances, and so I think, again, we still need to tread carefully, make sure that we avoid that perception if we do decide to invite speakers from the Native community in.

I kind of think, even though I acknowledge Elise's generosity there, I think it might create some unnecessary work for staff to try to book speakers twice a month. I've experienced booking radio shows, lecture panels, discussion leaders, my wife at the Arts Council, constantly booking. It's a whole lot more work than it sounds. Any contingency plans, reminders, being introduced to more speakers. If there's a regular rotation, then that might just put additional work on the staff to develop and maintain the rotation, especially when there are cancellations.

So, and the invitation should be authentic, right? Not necessarily rote or routine. Who decides who's going to be invited or not? Who will feel neglected or offended if they are not part of, if they are not invited or part of that invitation scheme whenever we come. So as a practical thing, and I'm gonna defer to the principle of Occam's razor here, the simplest solution is the best solution.

We take what we have, we keep it in the body. We keep it within our body here. I think that's the simplest and I think the more appropriate thing. You know, a land acknowledgement should harness that we are an institution. It should harness our institutional voice.

That way we take it seriously. That way we integrate it into our policies and practices and procedures. It should be a statement that we own, that we acknowledge the land and its history and I would argue that it might be inappropriate. It's not the right word, but I don't know, for someone outside of the body to acknowledge it for us seems weird. It doesn't sit right with me.

We should be the ones acknowledging the history and the gaps and that. So yeah.

Thank you. I'm very much in favor of the statement of land acknowledgement, and I agree with what James is saying. I do not agree with Jared. We are one assembly today that next year will change, and the year after will change again. Every year is changing, and to obligate future assemblies, we are not allowed to do that.

On financial issues and that, and on this statement. The only thing that I'm in favor of obligating future assemblies to is the Pledge of Allegiance. I like the idea, and, and I grew up here, and I grew up with the natives in the school here, and, and yes, they're not always outspoken, but I sure know some that are very outspoken, and It's encouraging. I enjoyed what James said in talking with him, and I know some of the people myself that, you know, are very much in favor of it, and always has been, is Tom Panamuroff is one of them, with Konyé. And, you know, it encourages people to come to the meetings.

It's not the same statement If we're going to make it a statement, to me it's the simplest statement, and that's the one that the school district uses. So I'm in favor with that being the fallback position.

But I very much feel that we encourage the Native organizations in Kodiak. And there's the tribal and the corporations and the museum. So I just think we got plenty of opportunity there. We only do it at the regular meetings. We don't do it at the special meeting and we don't do it at the work sessions.

So I think we're trying to make it too complicated, Jerry.

Just for the record, by putting it in the ordinance, it is— we are binding future assemblies that they will have a land statement. How they do it, they can change any time because it's the same thing with the invocation. At some point, somebody on the assembly could decide they want to do the invocation. Not that I foresee that happening, but— Scott Smiley. Well, I agree with both of them, with Jared and with Scott.

I like the shorter version. The longer version, I think, is fine except there's a bunch of duplications in there that should be cleaned up. At least that's my old editorial self, but I also agree that this is a statement from the Assembly, and it's the government of Kodiak Island Borough making this statement. I worry when other groups get in and make statements that may not be the best. And, uh, so that's where I stand.

I think that Assemblymember Griffin has made a point, a good point. It should be the governing body that is making the acknowledgment that we are doing our business on our land. I'm saying our now as my people's land. I also like having somebody come in from one of the Native groups to do it as well, but I think that it makes more sense to have it from this body, like he said. I know that there are some words that are repetitive in the statement that I read, but in our— that is one of the ways that we manifest our ancestors.

When we keep bringing their names up and mentioning them in our statement, that brings them here to us to help us to make our decisions. That's our belief. That's how we do our business. That's why it's repetitive.

I brought up the fact one time that different groups are always trying to fix the Native peoples, and by fixing them with their words, by fixing the in this case, the land acknowledgement. I think it should be our— the one that I'm reading comes from my heart. It is— I got the deal off of the Ellucetic Museum site and I made it into my own. And that could happen whoever reads it, I think. But I think that it should be read by us.

Assemblymember Arndt brought up Tom Panamera. He is one of the ones that called me after he talked with Mr. Turner and said that, "I wish I would have talked to you before I talked to him," because then he was— he wouldn't have said what he— he wouldn't have told Assemblymember Turner what he did. He thinks I changed his mind about having somebody come in to read it from an outside group, and that should be one of us. Um, so there are good arguments both ways, but I think that I would much rather that one of us do it. Um, the wording I think could be changed.

I, I really believe that the way that I have it written, at least when I read it, I could feel the ancestors coming to me when I do it. I know it freaks people out when you talk like that, but that's just the way it is, and I will not apologize for that because we've been apologizing for too long. I think that we— I like the— that I'd much rather that we do it, and I would— I do, as I said before, like the longer version I've been trying to get people to call in to talk about this from the villages and other natives in Kodiak, but as has been said, they're very shy, I guess. Even too much to do this. They're not too shy to talk to you when you are there with them and to give your opinions then, but it's harder to call in or show up to make their opinions known.

So I think either way will be good, but my preference is for one of us to do it. Okay, so here we are, and next week we're going to put this up for, for a public hearing, and so we will hear— have a chance to hear from the public. Introduction. Introduction. Oh, is it just up for introduction?

Right, we post both. I thought we introduced this. But we postponed. Oh, right, right. So we will have it up for introduction and we can have a discussion on it then.

And then the following meeting, the 13th, 20th, 20th, 27th, we will, uh, we will have a hearing, right?

16Th, the 6th plus, plus, uh, 14th. Yeah, 27th would be a work session. It'll be a public hearing, so we'll also have the work session on the 13th to further discuss this. I think right now we, we have a, a full consensus that we will put it into the ordinance. I think the discussion is, should we read it or should we have someone come in to read it?

And, uh, I think I'm being swayed to that it should be read by the a member of the Assembly or the Borough Mayor. And in that case, we will have to work on the wording a little bit. I'm sorry, Joe, but I, uh, we practice. That's right, that's right. But I won't be the Borough Mayor for more than another year here, so we'll have to, you have to train a whole new one.

Um, so next week we're going to introduce it And then we'll have another work session and we'll bring it up then. So I want everybody to think about it, think about the words. Jared, I'm sure you said you were going to take the school district's one and make it more eloquent. Um, who reads it on school district? Larry reads it.

Yeah, that's another good reason, I think, because he's reading it for the body. Um, and I don't have a problem reading it as the mayor or designating Joe while he's on the assembly because he can say the words better than I can, but I am— I have no problem reading it either. So anyway, next week it'll be up. We've had a little discussion on it. We'll have another work session to discuss it one more time, and then we'll have a public meeting, and hopefully we'll have some public input on that in the public meeting.

In the meantime, If any public's out there that wishes to have some input, please contact the clerk's office. You can send emails. Emails are best, but if you contact her, she can give you the emails and you can contact us with your opinions on how this should be read and what should be read. With that, with any— no other comments, we'll move on. To another thing that's, I think, going to be fairly short after reading the lawyer's opinion, uh, discussion on all-purpose vehicle use on roadways.

As you all know, the state of Alaska has now said that all-purpose vehicles can be used on roadways under, with speed limits under 45 miles an hour. They have to have a license, they have to have a licensed driver, They have to be street legal in that they have a tail light and headlight, and they have to observe all of the rules of the road. The city of Kodiak is seriously considering, if they already haven't moved in that direction, of opting out. The city of Kodiak has their own police department, and if we want to opt out because we don't want to have ATVs and all that on the road, which we already do, by the way, The question is going to be who's going to enforce it. The state troopers aren't.

They are— they hardly enforce the ATV rule now because it's so impossible for them to track down somebody on a dirt bike or an ATV when they go off in the country to outrun the police. They all think they're running moonshine or something, I don't know what. So I thought I'd put this on here, and then when I put it— after I put it on here, we also got that note from the borough attorney, which I think you all read, which states basically it's a moot point. We don't have any way to enforce it if we want to change.

So I'll open it up for any discussion, anybody else wants to discuss it, otherwise it'll die in the wind. Joe.

We—. I live on Salif. We already have a number of four-wheelers riding up and down that road, kids mostly. It's dangerous. One of them is going to die soon, I can almost guarantee you.

But I was the transportation director in Uzinki for 8 years. We have dirt roads over there. We have the main way of traveling there is by four-wheeler. I tried to get those roads paved to lessen the dust and to make maintenance easier. One of the biggest concerns was that the tires on the four-wheelers stick to asphalt, so if you turn too fast you can flip over real easily.

So we never did that here, and that's one of the concerns that I have here. I see those kids riding, and it's not only kids, adults as well. They don't obey the rules, and I'm afraid that if that happens, they're going to make a turn too much. And we've already had a couple of deaths, at least one that I remember just recently in Uzinki. Recently being in the last 4 years.

From a four-wheeler turning over. I think that this may happen here. So I don't like the idea of that law changing, and it frightens me.

Anybody else?

We have had some deaths here. I know there's one down here by Mill Bay Beach. A few years back, a few years in my time. It might be a decade, I don't know. But the fact is we do not have any way to police it if we decide we're going to opt out.

Who's going to chase them down? Who's going to make sure they have licenses? Who's going to make sure that— it's already a problem that is hardly policed The city, on the other hand, if you live on the city side of Salif, then they're going to opt out and they'll have city police officers. But of course, once they get off the city property, I don't know what the extent that the city police can track them down after that point. I don't see us putting anything on an agenda to vote on this because I don't see there's any way we can enforce it.

Unless somebody here really insists that they want to have a vote. Scott Smiley. I had to take a kid on a four-wheeler, or fell off a four-wheeler, into the hospital. It was no fun at all. But I agree, I don't see how we can enforce this.

I mean, if there's a change in stuff, then maybe yes. But I remember at one point there were two kids on four-wheelers that cut across the lawn at North Star School and just tore it all to hell, and there was nothing you could do about it. They had them on camera. They knew exactly who they were. Couldn't do anything.

Well, actually you could, but it's a bigger problem than the— Yes, James. You're gonna have to forgive my ignorance on this one for just a second. If we opt out of this The troopers have to enforce the rules as they stand, where ATVs would not be allowed on the, on the roadways. But if we just don't do anything, then they would be allowed. But if we, if we pass an ordinance, if we I think what happens, you have to make a regulation to opt out, and now it becomes your statute.

State troopers aren't going to enforce your statute. They'll enforce their statute where they'll track them down, make sure they have license plates and all that kind of stuff, but they're not going to enforce your statute. No, because the state of Alaska says it's legal.

Amy, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So in the packet, it literally has the question, what if my borough, municipality, or city opts out? And the answer is, if it opts out, then they may not be used on roadways within their jurisdiction. So it seems to me if we don't opt out, that's saying yes, they're legal under the provisions that the state has made. If we do not want an increase in that traffic, which I live in the Flats and I like it, but you know, that's just me.

Like, that's our way of life out there. How else do we get to the little store? But according to what— how I understand it, I am in agreeance with James that if we don't opt out, we are saying it's legal.

Roxanne, can we get a clarification from the borough attorney? That if we opt out of the state rules, do we have to enforce it or will they enforce it for us? I think I know the answer, but it will clear it up for—.

One thing also working in our favor is that you have to go to the DMV to get the license plates, and we all know that that's going to be hard, so it should be a very slow rollout. Whatever, I only waited for 4 hours at the DMV. But no, I'd be happy to get that clarification. Communication with the attorney and provide that at your next meeting in my manager's report. Yeah, the attorney basically said that we'd have to enforce it, but let's make them pointedly look at that.

All right, Joe. I also know that of a number of people that are excited that is happening because the statement was made that I'm going to save gas because I'm riding to work on my four-wheeler now. So, um, I think it's complicated.

Well, again, I think the city is going to opt out, so you won't be able to drive through the city, although I don't know that they've had the public hearing yet. So any other comments on this? We're going to do some double checking here to make sure what you think is either true or not true so we can go ahead with making a decision.

That brings us to the Consolidation Committee discussion, and I know that, uh, both Mr. Turner and Mr. Griffin have some comments they wish to make on this. Also, I should tell you that it is on the agenda for the January 5th meeting with the city, but it— what's on the agenda is the makeup of the resolution setting up the committee and the makeup of committee and the work, workload that the committee has put before itself. We're not going to sit there and point fingers at each other. Personally, I think we got to either fix this committee or move on. So Megan, you want to go first with the staff report?

And then we'll let James and Jared. Thank you. In the discussion section of the agenda statement, I just shared some history regarding the makeup of the committee and the participation.

And then at the bottom, I made some suggestions for recommendations. The city Government reps have never appreciated the situation they've been in to participate on this committee, and it's been difficult trying to get their input. Currently, the city reps are not participating. We've also lost We've also got 3 seats open right now, and so we are having a struggle with getting— obtaining a quorum. All members have to be present.

So anyway, I just want to let you know that I did put together the discussion item, and I'm sure that James and Jared could do a much better job than I'm doing as far as having the discussion.

Scott, did you have any questions about the discussion item or the material that's included? I—. We were looking at different agendas.

So, Jared, you're the chair. Why don't you take a stab at this, and then James, you can tune in anytime you want. Oh, thanks. And yeah, um, thank you, Megan, for— I think that's a, it's a fine summary that, um, that, that you put together. We've, um, we've got a really long, you know, task list, and we've been, we've been stuck on our, uh, task list, our workflow, for a while.

Um, inactivity by the city representatives that slowed us down. How we've been able to interpret, reconcile budget information from the city side.

City reps have brought up numerous concerns about the process, but I think we all understand this is the direction we've been going.

Given by the Assembly and the Mayor. So that's the work plan that we're gonna go with. And I think we're still, we talked about it last week and we're still pretty confident in the plan. And our process is basically, we're looking at the consolidation elements, petition requirements, researching them, putting them together, informing the public of progress. We're getting to that.

And then, right, we hand it off to talk to the Assembly and the Mayor. We review, determine if you want to move forward, consider, or consult, you know, legal and budgetary expertise on what we've put together, the Lands and Boundary Commission. Assembly decides, after all that feedback and discussion, how to proceed, put charter committee together, public vote, things like that. City's also— they initially had concerns about the group's mandate, but I think this is how We're moving forward with how the Assembly and the mayor have interpreted the mandate. So there have been some questions about, you know, expertise and experience on the committee.

I think, you know, lack of, you know, city involvement and even involvement from the borough manager's office over the past 18 months has kind of hindered. So there have been some requests from members to— for the borough to invest in some professional resources and consultation on this. As Megan mentioned, our own lack of quorum, our dwindling committee roster, we're at the point where we have just enough for a quorum. So the uncertainty of what we think we can accomplish, the workload, interest, our ambition, you know, it's all factoring in. Plus, we no longer have a voting member.

On the committee who I believe lives in the city limits. So I think we're missing that perspective, and the committee needs that perspective. And then that's also wanting to get a handle on how the public thinks about what we've thought about so far— name, borough powers, mostly. COVID has certainly impacted our ability to get a survey out that we can rely on.

You know, making sure that we have reliable responses. So we have one written, but we're still talking about process. So yeah, Megan has our options there. We can— what we decided to do, we're still working. And what we're going to start doing soon is we're just going to start filling— if the assembly wants us to continue, we're going to start filling out the petition with what we already have.

The information we already have and have talked about, and that's going to give us a more tangible idea of where we're at, what we need, where our gaps are, what resources we need. We're pretty confident we can fill in quite a bit of the petition, but there's still several significant items, um, that are going to need Assembly oversight and direction, especially via some kind of legal opinion. We want to make sure that the reasons are articulated clearly. And so we'll be working on that and hopefully have something to report back at a February work session. Again, some of the issues— lack of city involvement and representation kind of inhibits that progress on several items on the budget and code reconciliation and developing a transition plan.

You know, if there's no— there doesn't seem to be any public political pressure from city residents on the city council to pursue consolidation. As far as I know, we haven't received any interest from city residents in serving, so I think that that's working against it. And then yes, we can, we can put the group and the project on hold. With the numerous vacancies and absences, the disruptions from the pandemic slowed the work down. I think the previous consolidation attempt decades ago had cooperation from both the borough and the city, and that work was done in about 6 months, and we're into year 3 now.

So, so, I mean, we can sit and see if the— some of the major goals of the consolidation project, if they're accomplished by work on the Cooperative Relations Committee, you know, looking for more efficient services and cost savings that way. We can put the project on hold and wait for the city study on annexation, see if there are any, you know, continued warrants for pursuing consolidation.

So yeah, that's a whole lot of what Jared's been thinking about for the past— since becoming chair, past couple weeks. But so James, I'm sure James has more, more to add. I don't want to put James on the spot, but I'm sure James does.

Well, I don't know. I think you covered a lot. I'll try and fill in some blanks and probably repeat some stuff. So basically, we were on track up until— I'll use Dora's statement— 18 months ago. Okay?

18 Months ago, we were at basically agenda item number 46 on our task list.

And then we had some delays that happened, lack of quorum, COVID. We stopped meetings for a little bit, and then the— a couple of people kind of just disappeared and didn't show up to meetings, so we had lack of quorum. Then we were able to get some people back to the table. There were different people, um, and then we started back at number 1, item number 1, and we went all the way back through to 46, which is where we were September of this year, October of this year. Um, so we were at number 46, and then we had lack of quorum in October, lack of quorum in November, and then we met in December.

So, or what, we had a quorum in October, didn't we?

I'll restate that. We had a quorum in October, then we didn't have one in November, and then we had our meeting in December. And I thought that we should bring it to the assembly's attention this week because we're going into a new year and we probably should make a decision soon on whether or not we want to just continue with this or whether we want to put it on hold for a little while, mainly because we don't have city representation showing up to the meetings except for the assistant city manager, which she has been a wealth of knowledge, I will give her that.

But she does state quite often that we just don't have the experience on the board, and, and the board was never supposed to be about experience. It was supposed to be about participation, really, and, and helping guide us through this. Um, the, the second part is we need somebody from the city because now that Jared has moved up, um, and, and now that, uh, we have our city representative that was appointed, um, is now resigned, we've got a lot of gaps. And so if we don't have every single person showing up, then we will have lack of quorum every single meeting And this last meeting, Dorinda is one of our village representatives, and her internet is very, very spotty. And so when, when she logs on, sometimes she will get kicked off, and that puts us in a lack of quorum situation.

And it's It's nothing that— there's nothing that she can do until we get something done with the internet over there. But she shows up every single meeting, whether she is on the phone or whether she's on the internet, she gets kicked off almost every single time. And so it's coming to a point where we need to decide, do we want to just put it on hold until we find more representatives? Or so that we don't fall into a lack of quorum every single meeting, or do we want to continue on and if the meeting isn't a quorum then we just pick it up the next, you know, the next time that we're able. Where we're at is we're discussing two items are the biggest items that we're discussing.

Number one, we're discussing the three-year budget because we have to come up In the committee, we have to come up with a 3-year budget to present to you guys, first of all. And then we have to come up with a code. So basically what we look at every day, that blue book sitting next to Elise, plus the city's ordinance codes combined somehow, some way. And so We have two different groups. One group is working on budget and one group is working on the code, and both of them have been combined by one person on the.

On the committee, and now each of those two groups are just going through those to see where they want to make changes before they bring it back to the committee. We expected to have that done by this time this year. That has not happened because of lack of quorum. Uh, it hasn't happened because of whatever reason, uh, going back over things a dozen times over the last 18 months. Um, not to say that there wasn't a lot of good input when we had, um, everybody there.

There was a lot of good input and it was very informative, whatever we got out of it. But now they're not there and, and that's unfortunate. And, and I wish that somebody would start showing up on a regular basis.

It's— it's unfortunate at this point because most of the people that are not showing up are the ones that were not in favor of consolidation. And that is usually how things work well, is you get that banter back and forth of what's going to work and what's not going to work. And then we can come to the assembly and say, yes, this is going to work because we have both sides of the issues spoken about, not just one-sided coming to you and saying, yes, it's going to work. We have two sides, but now we don't have those two sides to banter back and forth. So we're going to come to you one-sided and either tell you that it's not going to work or it's going to work.

And at this point, I don't think it's fair to the public to continue on until we get enough people. And we have to have people that are opposed to consolidation on that committee.

Okay, I have some thoughts on this. I'll bring them up here shortly. But, uh, Scott Smiley. Well, I was on the assembly when we set this thing up, and it was set up primarily by two people on the assembly, one of whom really hated the city. And the other one only partially hated the city.

So if you're looking at why there's no city involvement, it's because those people were excoriated by some of the people on the committee previously, and it all had to do with a banya, I believe, or at least a large part of it. In addition to that, once it started off, there was a meeting with somebody from the Boundary Commission and she was terrific and explained a whole lot of stuff. And it was pretty clear that this was a lot more complicated than just combining some governments. This really— you really had to go through stuff. So the initial setup was, I believe, 72 meetings, and you would come up— the output from the 72 meetings was a petition to the Boundary Commission.

Kitchen already wrapped up, tied with a bow, and ready to go. And that never happened. And it's not even close. And I think 3 years is enough time. My view, we should kill this before it turns into a Frankenstein.

It might already be a Frankenstein. Um, here's my thoughts, then I'll come back to you, Scott. It was, it was a vote of the people. Okay, so my first thing is, you want to drop it? It's a vote of the people.

Let's get the people to say drop it, you know, number one. I'll come back to you after, Scott. The other thing is, we set up a resolution to set this committee up. We could also go back and rescind that resolution and redo that resolution. You say that the city, and I've heard this from the city, that They felt they were railroaded and, uh, didn't really get to participate in how this was going to be set up.

Well, we're going to have a meeting with the city on the 5th. We're going to talk about that, and that's what we should be talking about, the structure. We're not going to be talking about who's not there and who's there because that's not going to get us anywhere. And so I think that we'll wait for that meeting on the 5th with the city to see if it's salvageable. Now you're right, there are against it, but you're also right, you don't want everybody for it because you're going to end up with something that is totally undoable, unusable, and Frankenstein-ish.

Um, so my thoughts are that we wait till the 5th before we say we're going to disband this. We talk with the city, we pull out that resolution. I've got it here, I'll have the clerk send it to everybody. Look at how it was set up, and then we'll sit down with the city and say, how you want to set this up? The other thing is we could use some expertise from someone who's done this before.

And, uh, I think we tried to get somebody, but I don't know that, that, that why that never went forward. Uh, you know, put out an RFP, get somebody out here who says, you know what, I can help you put those regulations together and do it in a way that makes sense. I can help you put those budgets together and come up with a 3-year budget. Not because I don't think you guys can do it, but because I think that it would be good to have eyes from the outside on some of this. And so those are things I think about.

But I do—. I'm really hesitant to say, ah, to hell with it, we're just going to walk away from it. We got a vote from the people. The vote from the people says, yeah, we put it on the ballot. Whether we should have or not doesn't matter.

We put it on the ballot. Vote from people say, yeah, we want you to look at it. So let's look at it and let's come back and say, you know what, it's not doable at all, it's very doable, or man, it will be a bigger mess than you want to deal with. Scott Arndt, and then back to you, James. Thank you.

Um, I'd like to go back 5 years, not 3 years to when the committee was, but 5 years. So been over 5 years that it was voted on. There. And the maker, the supporter of the initiative, Kyle Crowe, said in a same regular assembly meetings and multiple work sessions, it's only going to take 30 to 50 hours to figure out if it's worth continuing.

We're long past that. There is— I'm not seeing anybody come to our meetings So the last time we had a report from the committee was 2 years ago, roughly. It was in the school district conference room. We had a work session there, and, and there was many things that I disagreed with. One of them, very vehemently, was that Service District 1 would be under the purview of the state troopers, and that's an atrocity.

That won't happen because I call it the Girdwood syndrome. Girdwood is part of the Municipality of Anchorage. And the next thing, they had trooper protection and they were offered the police protection from Anchorage. But that didn't happen because they had— it wasn't costing them anything. Now they pay very dearly because the troopers pulled out.

And that's exactly what will happen here. Sir, that's not correct in what the committee has discussed. I'm sorry to interrupt. Well, I'm going to interrupt you on it too, because that was what was brought up at the work session on there. I have the floor, Megan.

Now what happens is that when we are continuing to go through and drag this out, and then I see in here mail out postcards to property owners, possibly do a SurveyMonkey, and that the problem is the public doesn't have anything to base their opinion on because they haven't heard anything in 5 years on this. So you'd have to do a tremendous amount of advertising to get what is supposedly at the committee level right now out to the public to make an informed decision on it. But what I'm looking at is nobody's come forward in 3 years I've been on the assembly. I'm not seeing any pressure that we need to do this, we need to do this. It was by certain assembly members like Mr. Smiley said.

That's where this was coming from on there. And I'm of the mind, you know, I like to keep it simple. As far as I'm concerned, both governments are totally screwed up in so many different ways, and you want to make one very big screwed up government? Makes absolutely no sense to me. So we need to both get our houses in order.

Which is both the city and the borough, before we look at combining. But we both got to be at the table to do that. You can't have one body trying to shove it down the throats of the other. So I'm in favor of disbanding at this time because I feel that the ballot initiative, look into, was— it was looked into for the last 5 years. I'm done looking into it.

Thank you.

So there's a couple true statements in your, in your comments. One of those things, which is what.

Megan brought up is that Service District 1 would not have police, city police. They would have troopers. But that was just one option that was explored, and that's what we talked to the assembly about, is there was multiple options to explore in whether or not we wanted to have policing for Service District 1, whether we wanted to have it for Woman's Bay, whether we wanted to go go all the way out to SAG Shack. And what was decided was at, at that time was that we were only going to do Service District 1 if we got the information from the city on how much that cost was, and we still have not seen those numbers. So we haven't finalized that decision in the committee because we don't have those final numbers on what it's going to cost Police Service District 1.

Originally they were saying another million bucks, but we've gone through 3 years or 2 years since, since that was said. So that's, that's point number 1. Point number 2 is if the committee comes back and after a vote says that it is not going to work formally presents a, this is not going to work, then the Borough Assembly can vote to disband. But until then, we can't. We can only postpone the group until we have a solid quorum, which is what you were saying, Mayor Roberts, was we can't because it was a vote of the people.

But until the committee comes back with a vote saying yay or nay, then the exploration is not done. So there's two points that were said just recently, so I wanted to make sure that those were clear. One, we can disband it once the committee comes back and says it's not going to work. We can disband it if the committee says it will work. We just voted down, but we can't do that until the committee comes back.

What we can do is put the committee on a postponement until we have enough members.

The other thing is the SurveyMonkey has questions and answers to what you just made a statement on, is that the community doesn't know these things, and those things are in that SurveyMonkey. Do you think that we should name it this, that, or the other? Do you think that we should continue with consolidation? Yes or no? Do you think yada yada yada?

A number of questions are in that survey to find out what the community thinks, and it gives them informed information of what the community— what the consolidation committee is looking at. Deciding on. And this is going to help them, help the consolidation committee decide on these things in the future whenever we do finalize the draft of whatever it is that we turn into the— I can't think right— the petition. Thank you.

Amy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Okay, so first of all, I think it's safe to say that the city of Kodiak isn't jumping up and down in joy about the idea of consolidation. And I think that they've gone back and forth with their participation because they're battling that. And so, as James pointed out, I am going to immediately be in favor of postponing just because I think our side— our information is immediately one-sided.

If we go back to that resolution from fiscal year 2019, it was the 7th one that we did. The actual advisory question that was on the ballot in 2016 reads, "Should the Kodiak Island Borough pursue the idea of consolidating the Kodiak Island Borough and city government into a single unit of government?" It does not say, "Should we file the petition?" It does not give us like a parameter of how far we have to go out. It literally asks the people, "Should we pursue it?" It's been 5 years. I think we've pursued it. So I feel— I don't feel like we have to wait all the way until we get that yay or nay.

But I also respect the amount of work that you guys have put into that. I don't want to pull the rug out of any— under anyone's feet, because I know a lot of time and a lot of effort has gone into it. Personally, when I think of consolidation, I think of how long our meetings are and how much work I do to come to this meeting to run the borough. And I try to imagine adding the city stuff into that. And it scares me.

And I think that unless you are a retired human living in Kodiak, you cannot be on whatever that governing board is going to be. Because working a full-time job and then trying to run the entire government, that should scare you. Hey, no, don't. Maybe I shouldn't say that. Please run, people.

Please, please, please run. But the reality of that is that if you're doing this job properly and you're going in and you're doing your homework before you come in, I have concerns on how much time that would take. And if we're going to get anyone who— not that retired people are bad, that is not what I'm saying. But I think we need a mix of people. I think we need people who are still running the businesses, the nonprofits, and have some of those experiences that are new and now, and retired people.

And I think you're going to rule out younger people who are still in the position of life when they're working by doing something like this. So that's my initial concern. I don't know enough about it. I can't say whether it's right or whether it's wrong, but there is merit. And I think what Scott Arndt said about taking two things that are functioning maybe not in their most best way and putting them into one, I think there's some issues with that too.

And then I also, when I think about doing a survey and I think I've done a lot of surveys. I've actually been trained in surveys. I can tell you all about Kirkpatrick's levels of surveys until you guys are sick of it. If we don't get a statistically significant amount of people from Kodiak to answer that, the information really isn't useful. And I can poll my membership inside of tourism all day long and ask them stuff that I know they care about and still get like 13%.

It's depressing. And so making decisions based off that is going to be very hard. I think until we have the city's participation— I'm summarizing now— we should postpone because we don't want to turn in one-sided, and we don't want to shove a petition to the Boundary Commission at the city immediately. It's like, well, no. I mean, at the end of the day, they have to agree.

It can't be a hostile takeover, right? Okay, so if we can't even get them to come to the meeting, I think we're all spinning our wheels. And I think this is— I'm very happy to see this on the joint work session on January 5th, and I encourage— I know you guys will be there, but I want people who are against it and for it to both speak up, because that's where we're truly going to find out if we should go forward. I don't think we have to go to the yay or nay. I don't think that that's what the ballot asked, and I don't think that's what the resolution states.

But I know that if we can't get the city to show up, then we're just all wasting our time. So sorry, that was really long, but definitely postpone until we can figure out the both sides of the information. Well, on January 5th, we will have the city at the table and we will be discussing this at some level. And I— hopefully we will come up with some answers from that, maybe some solutions how to get the city involved if we want to move forward.

As far as the meetings, if you have a bigger government, I don't think it's going to be that much difference, quite frankly. Most, most work that is actually done that is necessary to the running of a municipality is done by a staff, because we don't— we have that kind of— unless you want to be elected as counselors and you all get paid to be part of running the government. So what we would be doing is setting, setting the staff in the right direction so they don't sail off into the sunset on us. And I think that it would be definitely more involved. I mean, if you have a government now, we deal with school district and look at how much time we spend arguing the school district budget.

Imagine if you throw in On top of that, oh, you got harbors out here. Oh, you got a police department, you have a fire department, you have all these other things. Most of our services are provided by service districts, which makes it a lot easier on us. So there is something to be said about that. But what I would say is we're going to meet on the 5th.

Hopefully you'll all be there. I think hopefully the city council will all be there. They can, they can You can also, by the way, come in on Zoom because it will be a work session and we allow work sessions to be Zoomed. And I know the city allows their members to Zoom, uh, at this time. So if you're there, we will make, we will make some discussion with the city.

We'll try to keep the discussion at the basic level.

I don't think we need to get into the weeds on this, and I think we need to find out from the city what they would— what they were willing to go forward with if we want to get this committee to continue on. Otherwise, you're right, we should postpone it indefinitely.

And, uh, I'm going to rely heavily on the two members that are on the committee, Jared and James for their input on whether— what's the final thing that happens with this committee. And hopefully January 5th we'll have some discussion and we will have a way forward, or we'll have a way to end, one of the two. So with that, I notice everybody's getting up and taking breaks. So we have one more thing on discussion item.

We'll take a break now, and we'll come back before we do that in packet review.

It's, uh, let's set this back in motion here. Uh, we have the last item to discuss is the reconsideration of Resolution Number FY 2020-31. That was on the Fisheries Work Group, which we failed on a 6-1 vote, I believe. And it was, uh, came out of the joint meeting, our last joint meeting with the city, and the city passed their resolution. And what they did was to change two things that were recommended by the Committee.

One was to do away with the expert expertise because it was an unneeded expense in the opinion of the committee. And the other was to change the meetings so that it was a minimum of 2 a year, give them flexibility to set up their own meetings when there was times when there weren't fisheries going on and stuff. And I was kind of surprised to find out we failed it. I'm— just goes to show you, as you get older, Your short-term memory really goes to hell. So, um,.

We're trying to get that fisheries going again, a group going again, so that they can go ahead and start having meetings. And I think we need to pass this resolution first, but I'm going to open it up to the assembly because my, my rust on this one is astounding. Scott. Sorry, the point about not hiring the expertise of special person. Kodiak is endowed with people with a lot of knowledge about fisheries, particularly commercial fisheries, and the amount of knowledge that's around dwarfs the amount that any other person would bring in.

And there are any number of people that could serve that capacity, but also you can just call them up and ask them to come and testify before the committee And we did that quite often with Mike Litzau and with several others that we had come and talk to us. So I think that part is fine, not having an expert. The other part, 2 meetings a year, we had it at least once a month. And I think you probably want to keep it more or less on that kind of a schedule. There's ways to make it viable for people.

Even in fishing months. Sometimes you can't do it during salmon's intense parts, but the rest of them you can usually squeak it through. Then I think that it's valuable to have it moving because the kinds of issues that come up are off the wall and crazy right away. I mean, there was a bunch last year from Chignik trying to shut us off from red south of Deep Bay or whatever it's called, and then by the Cook Inlet people as well. And you have to mobilize and do something about that, try to find a way to moderate that.

So I think it's good to have them more frequently than twice a year. I think the way it reads is a minimum of 2 a year, and the idea was to be flexible for the committee chairs.

The version that the city passed, off top of your head, does it say a minimum of 2 a year? Yeah, that did meet at least twice, and like Mr. Smiley was saying, it was to kind of work around the fishing season because of the people being gone. So would you like to make it at least more than twice, at least 6 times or something? I'd just make it a committee. And have just let the committee do it?

Yeah. So just say a minimum of 2? Yeah, if you wanted. I'd rather have more than that, but I would— because that's the way it reads. The way it reads right now is a minimum of 2 a year if we're going to copy their language.

Okay. James? I think one of the reasons why it failed, if I remember correctly, um, is The discussion was 2 was not enough.

It should be more quarterly, 4 times a year or more. Even, yeah, in some cases more, but a minimum of 4 was what the point was. But we didn't want to pass it until we had a city work session to discuss because they've already put down at least 2. So we would be different than theirs is, and that's why we didn't pass it, is because we didn't want to be different and nobody could agree on just 2.

Well, what's the flavor? What's the flavor now? Could we do it on 2, or do you want to go back to the city on the 5th and say Would you guys consider changing yours to a minimum of 4 or 6 or whatever?

I think it should be a discussion item on the 5th.

Can someone show me in where— what the city passed where it gives their frequency? Because I'm not seeing it. It's on number 2, organization. So I mean, at least it's in the second, um, line. So ours can't be different than what they passed?

Does it have to be their same language?

It doesn't have to be, it's just— they have to join work group, right? Well, I, I think that it's changed at least twice a year because there are some times where we don't need this group to meet, but at least twice a year ensures that the group keeps going for times that we do need it. It's one of those groups that like it would be very hard for like the clerk to schedule, right? Because they would have to be the city members and then whatever experts we're bringing in from the outside, plus the borough members. So that gives flexibilities to the co-chairs and setting the agenda and the time.

I, I'm not upset by the, um, at least twice each calendar year. I did vote against it because I remember the assembly member who spoke very strongly about needing the language to change, but I'm more happy with the group in existence. With any language, uh, than not existing.

Scott, how many, how many times have they met in 2021 and in 2022? I think maybe in that packet I put in the— so with COVID what happened is everything kind of fell off the radar. And so it has been a while since they met. I can't tell you exactly because I don't have it in front of me, um, but it's been a while. And that was more because of COVID hit and there was more pressing matters for everyone to attend to.

Thank you. Um, part of what I was getting at is, uh, They haven't met much in the last 2 years, so a minimum of 2. They can always meet more. What I was looking at. Thank you.

Scott, who are the chairs now? So John Whidden and Terry Haynes. We haven't designated ours as of yet. It is in the resolution that the co-chairs set the agenda. Yeah, so there's no— it's kind of been a stumbling block to, to try to get back together and set an agenda.

What I would say when I spoke with John Whitten, what I saw from clerking in the past was that it is an unusual group and they do come together when there's an issue to be discussed. So having it in there that they meet at least twice a year. I don't— from my point of view as a staff, what I've seen, I don't think that that's unreasonable because the rhythm that I've seen in this group is that they discuss, do we need to come together in 2 months? And Mr. Smiley was on there, he was a chair when I was staffing, so you'll know better than the frequency of the meetings, but from what I saw, the rhythm of it was when they felt that they needed to come together.

So I, I guess my point is, is that as a clerk in Havtaki and worked with the other clerk, the better that we mirror each other, especially on a joint committee, the better.

Follow up, Scott, and then Joe, and then James. Well, we met pretty frequently because there were a lot of fires that we had to put out, and John and I would discuss it. Over text or over the phone or something like that, and it worked just fine that way. I think that the COVID thing has put a big kibosh in having those kinds of meetings as frequently as we had at the time. And John is no spring chicken and neither am I, so kind of look out for those COVID bugs everywhere.

So, but I think leaving the language is fine. I just would press that that's not the amount we want. I think including a statement, or as needed, or something like that would be good in it, but that's not there right now. And I think it is important to be parallel with the city because it's a joint committee.

Joe? Oh, I'm now on that committee, so I, I don't mind the language. I think that if there are issues that come up that we need to meet more, we will. I can see now that with the possible gas exploration going to happen in Cook Inlet, there are going to be issues that we're talking about. I watched a documentary about how the oil companies have ruined, I think it was Nova Scotia or somewhere around there, and it's concerning to me when I saw that about what they might do to us up here.

I testified before the Board of Fish when they had the Cook Inlet and Chignik attacking us then, and that's what I call it, is an attack. They did not do their homework, and I think that we can make some We can do some good if we do, when we meet, and I think that it's gonna probably be more than once, twice a year, but I think it should be.

Left up to the board to decide because things come up.

James.

So I think it's, I think the wording is fine at this point. I think that we need to move on and get something going. We need to get the work group meeting because we do have a Board of Fish meeting coming up in March and they need to start discussing these things and the sooner the better. Getting, getting the next meeting done. So if we wait until the 5th, then we've got to wait till the next meeting to pass it, and then, then we can start having meetings and yada yada yada.

I think it's easy enough to just pass it. That's it, this next Thursday? Yep. Okay, any other comments? Okay, and we'll move on from that and get into packet review.

Oops, wait a minute. Got to go, got to go here.

Hmm?

Oh, damn, Scott. I'm sorry, we do have manager's comments. Great. I just would love to provide some very quick updates. So Mark Hickey, our lobbyist, contacted me and he conveyed that he was willing to reduce his cost for his services annually from $45,000 to $40,000.

So I'll be doing a contract amendment and then I will do an update at your future assembly meeting to let you know that that contract has been amended, and I hope that's okay with everyone. And then also I've just been busy getting to know the staff, setting up meetings with various community leaders and stakeholders. I am prioritizing ideas from departments, and my number one priority at this point is the budget, but also I want to prioritize improving communications with the Assembly, with the staff, and the community members. I've been asked if I could improve relations with the villages, and I look forward to attempting to do that, or at least people letting people know that I'm here and available if they have any concerns. I'll be happy to help with the clarification from the attorney about all-purpose vehicles on roadways and what that means if we take no action, or what opting out means.

I'm completing necessary trainings. And lastly, I'll just say I think landed land acknowledgments are cool, so I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. James, you had your hand up, and then Scott Smiley. Yeah, is that contract for the next fiscal year, or is it just for until, uh, June? For 2022.

2020. Thank you. Scott Smiley. Um, if you're interested in the villages, uh, Cornelius at Canna— I've forgotten his first name. Tyler, because I'm getting old too, like you.

Uh, he's flying into those villages fairly frequently. Great. And you can try to team up with him and fly to the, uh, all around and everything. I would be honored. Thank you.

Okay, okay. Can we go on to that? Yes, thank you.

Uh, you weren't here. She—. Roxanne wasn't here tonight. I tried to just blow over the comments from the assembly. During the meeting.

Ah, not that I didn't want to hear what they had to say. All right, the first thing is up is going to be the ordinance on the land acknowledgement. That's going to be the introduction. I stand corrected. It makes it a lot better.

It means we've got another work session to talk about it some more. Uh, then we have contracts, and the first one is Northstar Siding window upgrades.

Do we have a staff report? Need to work on our communication, apparently.

So this is for the FY 2022-26 North Star Elementary School Siding and Window Upgrade. This is the continuation, this is Part B, let's say. We have done the gym in the past. This is funded, we— staff has gone and gotten approval from Alaska Department of Education and Early Development for $875,000. We put the bid out, we have 3 3 proposers.

The low bid was Wolverine Supply at $778,000. Wolverine, I will remind you, is also the company that did the gym over there, so they're familiar with the facility. We believe that they did a more than adequate job on that facility, and we're recommending that you approve— authorize the manager to approve this contract and enter into it. And I'm here for any questions. Thank you.

Questions from the assembly? Scott? Excuse me, I'm not sure, Dave, if you can answer whether it would take DORA, but the fiscal impact down at the bottom of the COVID sheet was Kodiak Island Borough School District has provided $502,000 in funding to complete Phase 1 and partially fund Phase 2. How much money of that is going towards Phase 2 is one of my questions. I believe if you go back further, there's a budget.

So the total would be right now is budgeted $1,369,506. Cannot tell you exactly what the proportion is from the remainder of the first. I would have had to pull that folder. Okay, but this is the residual of the $1.5 that the school district had sent across, isn't it? No.

Oh no, no, this is the $10. I'm sorry, it's the $10 that we had voted on here a number of years ago. Yeah, so that's where the $875 comes from, right? But the $502 was some money, and I just couldn't remember, Dave, you know, how much was—. Happy to get that answer for tomorrow, or actually next week, Monday would probably be better.

Yeah, okay, thank you. You bet. Any other questions?

Okay, Miles will stand up there, Dave, because the next one's contract FY 2022-28, the upgrade to the CRW— excuse me, upgrade to the saltwater disinfection system.

So we identified throughout this past year that the, the system that's required to what some would determine to be sterilize the effluent coming from KFRC, primarily the salt water that goes through the aquariums and also the research, that that ozonation system that was originally put in the building was never truly a functional system. So for 25 years, or whatever the age of that building is, that system has not properly done the decontamination. So this decontamination is required for two permits for leaseholders that are in the building. You have NOAA And you have Alaska Department of Fish and Game, excuse me, for captive animal research. And basically they were not complying with their permit because we were not providing what the lease requires.

So what's interesting, and, and I did this specifically after having input from a couple of times we broached this in the assembly meeting, is that I've actually included two proposals in this packet. One of them is to study the— so you have one proposal for $124,000 and change, and one is for $114,000. And the $10,000 difference is that if you truly want to determine if it would be better to use UV versus ozonation or just ozonation. So I'm giving you that option, and we can change it if we discuss it tonight. UV will be more expensive initially to opt to put in, was our engineer's first thought.

It will likely increase your electrical, but it would not require continuous procurement of chemical, whereas right now we're using chlorine to comply with the permits that are issued by Fish and Game. So we have a system now that's temporary. We would like to include the chlorination as a secondary system for whatever the primary system is. We've also had the consultant come up that is the Ozonation expert, and ozonation has become the decontamination for wastewater of choice since the marijuana industry has gone as crazy as it has.

He hasn't had, because everyone is interested in decontaminating their water and recycling it because water costs money in the real world. So there's two options here. We don't normally give you these options, but I figured that this way the assembly can decide.

Thank you. Dave, the only difference I'm seeing between the two proposals is, um, the disinfection alternative analysis. So this is where they're going to compare, correct, and come back to us, and we— which way we go. Yes, and we actually have— they're going to come back to us. We're going to look at installation, initial installation cost.

What I asked for is initial and also long-term maintenance and how much to run the system. Because I think those are the two pertinent things that apparently weren't paid attention to when they built the system.

Yeah, what I'm seeing is the fee for that is, the estimate anyway, is $9,580 for that task. And I tend to agree with you that I think it's worth that investment to get all the options.

On the first item, let me just get the dates, if you would, Mr. Arndt, please. On the December 13th fee proposal V2, which is the third page, that is total estimated fee is $115,000, $114,920, which is on about the fourth or fifth page. On the second estimate, it's $124,500. So you have a difference—.

$9,580, Right? Okay, just so we know where it's coming from, that's all I'm trying to do. Yeah, I'm just— that's why I was just pointing out the only difference between the two proposals is that. And the reason I gave you the two is because Mr. Smiley and I had a conversation, and I thought, you know, might be better to just throw it out there and see if it sticks. Thank you.

Scott Smiley. Well, as you know, I'm a fan of UV, but the reason I'm a fan of UV is you don't have to do anything. You just have to look. If it's purple, it's working. And I think that the fact that they got along for 25 years without testing their effluent, somebody's going to be aware of that.

They're going to be looking. I think it's going to be DNR, but I'm not sure. Actually, I think it'll probably be ADEC, and we've already started preliminary conversations, and I would like to continue the conversation. So that's the other thing that's in these proposals is the application process through getting our APDES permit, which is what's probably required. ADEC's initial conversation with them where they were actually thrilled to death that we called them.

I'm not surprised. It's probably the first time. Yeah, they fell over probably. You know, it scares me when you mention ADEC because I've nothing but bad memories, and it reminds me of the story of those little patio homes on Mylark that are actually zero lot lines. The water comes off of Mylar and runs down into that lake.

And someone said, oh, you should get a permit. And so one of the developers said, oh, I'll just apply for this permit. The guy says, it's just a rubber stamp. I'll apply for this permit. It was with the federal government, DEC. And the other partner said, don't you dare.

Well, he did. And when he was done, there were 10 agencies demanding all this information on water that's been running off that road into that lake for the last 60 years at least. And they finally walked away from the permit. No one ever followed up. But what scares me with being the borough, they'll follow up if we try to walk away when they hit us with all these regulations.

But I know, I know you're doing the right thing.

No, actually, what I was going to say was we've actually went online and pulled permits for other facilities that are similar to this. Some have discharge permits and some do not. So I think what'll end up happening is we are required by our lease to do this decontamination however we choose. The problem is, is it a closed UV system? Is it an open UV system?

There's a whole lot of intricacies that are— someone way smarter than me needs to figure it out.

Any other comments? Any other comments before we move on? Okay. Excuse me, Mr. Mayor. Yes.

Can I have like a, we want to go for the higher price or the lower price one kind of consensus? I have a feeling that this assembly would rather you go for the higher price. Okay, well, I see like a whole bunch of us had said. It's better to have the visual. Thank you very much.

Okay, so moving on from that, uh, we go to change order number 15, amending contract number 2019-10 for construction fees for the Main Elementary School roof replacement.

You're up again. So we're requesting $64,560. This is coming out of the borough, it will come out of the borough, it's the EF budget. This was money that I'm taking money that was initially budgeted this current fiscal year for repair of some concrete stairs over at the middle school. Why I'm doing this is because number one, you should never water blast, an aging cedar shingle roof.

Once you put a roof on your house, stay off your roof. This roof at Maine Elementary ended up full of moss. There are other methods of cleaning moss. If the moss was the problem, it should have been cleaned 15 years ago, not last year. The roof was water blasted.

And it shows the degradation. I believe at this point, this is not the time of the year to try to affect a repair on a roof that's not leaking. So consequently, let's be smart. Let's get this thing designed. We already have had an engineer go inside this roof, which the paperwork is in here.

It's determined to be sound. We know there are a few areas that are soft. We will bring the architect up so that we're sure we get this correct. And please, we're going to go to architectural asphalt shingles, no more wooden shingles. And if we decide once we have this out that we don't have the money or don't want to spend the money, we can look at phasing this repair or replacement.

But the budget's going to dictate it. Right now, I just really would like to have a bid package that I can put out on the street.

Comments from the assembly? Scott Smiley. I was just looking on the web for the prices of roofing, and steel roofing is between $40 and $70 a square, as opposed to $35-ish for the architectural asphalt shingles. Why aren't we going with steel?

Why aren't we, or why are we? Why aren't we? Well, number one, steel and saltwater don't normally get along. Yeah. If you look at— go to East Elementary, or meet me at East Elementary on Monday, and we'll look at that roof.

And that's why I would not recommend steel. Okay. Because that's the next roof we're going to talk about. I thought there were ways to deal with that. It depends how it's manufactured.

It depends if you're having to shear and have exposed steel at the ends. I have a metal roof on my house and everything that's cut and covered by flashing, you can't see the rust. But after 17 years, all of my fasteners are starting to rust. So my recommendation is the asphalt shingles.

And you can get a— help me, Mr. Art— 30-year warranty? 50-Year warranty on Malarkey architectural shingles. Yes, thank you. Yeah, the, um, as he said on the metal, basically almost all the major brands, their warranty is actually null and void from day one on the installation if you're within— usually it's 2 to 5 miles of saltwater. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So it isn't just East Elementary that's deteriorating.

We have the deterioration taking place on the middle school metal roof there.

Wherever we've had that metal roof installed. And the prices that you're quoting are for the cheap stuff. You will not get the good stuff for that kind of price on there. So, but the, it needs to be a minimum 50-year shingle, asphalt shingle. We've gone to installing those on Willans Bay Fire Station, We also did it, we took the metal off of here also and put it on Bayside Fire Station.

And those cedar shingles were supposed to be a 40-year, but they're not supposed to be pressure washed. And so that created the problem.

So my suggestion is very much so, 50-year asphalt should go on there.

Then, Dave, I noticed in the, in the packet there was a Kingdom Detailing. Is that the company that did the pressure washing? That's correct. And then they provided— that is a repair cost, and that company is no longer in Kodiak, Alaska. They never were a contractor.

I, I— you would have to talk to the school district, sir. Yeah, I understand that, but they were not a contractor. So that was a problem with what was done there. So anyway, the— looking at this, the $64,560 includes the construction services too on there. I noticed on one of your— which page was it?

Oh, it was one of the pages where it had Oh, 62 talks about description of the change order, um, on there. It doesn't speak to the construction administration. I thought you might want to put it in there. Talks to the design but not the construction administration as part of the change order, just so it's clear. Thank you.

Well, the other thing I would say is that could potentially be variable depending on where we end up with the bid package, so we'll have to look at that. But primarily, we need to get the bid package done. But I will verify this with the architect. Yeah, I'm just saying it's included in their quote here, so should be mentioned. Thank you.

Any other comments?

Okay, Dave, I guess you'll get home earlier than me tonight.

Oh, oh, okay.

That brings us to ordinance for introduction, um, a budget amendment.

Good evening again.

This is the first budget amendment for the year. There are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6— sorry, there are 7 items on here that I would consider housekeeping. Accepting the grant award and applying it to a project. Although you accepted the Sultry Crow grant award, we didn't specifically state that it was to go to this project, so this is just a housekeeping to correct that. There's the next— I think 5 of these have to do with capital projects that are completed, and we had extra funds in the project itself, and we're returning those funds either to the fund that contributed the money, such as Fire Protection Area 1, or— what's another one— Renewal and Replacement.

So it's just returning the funds to the originator after the project's been completed. One of them, there's the camel project in here. This is a new project. We're asking for money to be contributed to the project to keep our camel project going. And the other one that's new would be the approval to accept the pass-through grant from the State of Alaska Division of Public Health in the amount of $513,946.72 and put it into the Community Health Fund COVID-19 project, and that's the one Megan has been speaking to you about.

The others on here, the Solid Waste Collection and Disposal Fund for the landfill closure Stage 3 and the aeration project and the ozonator funding and the building and grounds fund boiler repair project and the mechanical abatement mechanical upgrade project Dave can speak to you about if you have questions on those. Any questions from the assembly? Scott?

Thank you, Dora. One of the questions I had was on the closeout of the 3 electric boilers, one in the middle school, the high school, and the Fisheries Research Center building. KEA was paying for the cost of the installation of those boilers. I was trying to figure out what the— what the money was from.

So I actually believe that we paid for that and billed Kay if I'm not mistaken. So I, I don't have your answer, but I can get it for you exactly.

We paid for some of them. That was it. Yeah. Okay. They didn't pay— they paid for—.

We paid for KFRC. They paid outright for the middle school. I think it was a combination on the high school. We paid outright on KFRC. Okay.

I was just curious. It wasn't clear to me. That's the dispersion. Okay. Thank you for that.

On those boiler projects that KEA paid for, we expended the funds and they reimbursed us directly for the expended funds. So there was, there was never any extra. Okay, okay, thank you. Any other questions?

Guys, oh, I'm sorry, Dora, I got another one for you. Um, I got a note here on the, um, the $20,000, transfer $20,000 to fund $415,000 for the emergency borough building boiler repair project, but it shows we're short $27,000 in that account. I was just wondering why. Probably because they were printed at two different times and we've accrued more costs. I can look into that and, and always bump the number up if you'd like to.

Yeah, I just was It's not like you to short yourself.

Thank you. Any other questions?

So we have, under other items, we have a number of boards and commissions that have open seats, and we were— I was going to do it 2 weeks ago, but I was sick and I didn't— I really didn't have everything cemented in my head. I have now gone over it again and I will bring forward appointments for Planning and Zoning, 2 seats for the city, one's a 1-year, one's a 3-year, a seat for the borough, which I believe is a 3-year.

We don't have anybody applying for any of the open seats in Parks and Rec. We have one person applying for an open— reapplying for a seat on the BOE. There will be one other open seat as far as I know. Planning and Zoning. Who was the— oh, the Solid Waste Advisory Board.

We are going to reapply two people. 2 People who have reapplied to Doug Hogan for the construction, and Williams from Walmart for the retail. And we have one other seat open, and I have to talk with Dave yet. We have a couple of applications, but I would like to talk with the department heads before I go ahead and stick somebody in there.

So with that, I will bring that all forward to you next week, and you can vote on it. We'll vote on them individually so that you can say yea or nay. I am going to follow the recommendations of the city on their 2 seats on the Planning and Zoning. I'll tell you that right now. There was some discussion with CIMA to swap them, but I don't see doing that.

I think we'll just go ahead with their recommendation. So with that, We have one other thing on our agenda for next week, and that's, uh,.

Planning and Zoning.

Well, we have the reconsideration of the fisheries thing, but we're gonna— we already talked about that. The Planning and Zoning case on removing split zoning on a tract of land from industrial and business and converting it to all business. Staff report.

When I left work today, the intention was that this would move forward The applicant would prefer to have stipulations on his— on the application. That'll have to be resolved in the future, but they do not wish to have it delayed, and that's the way staff is continuing. There are some questions. What's out there is questions on the drainage that the city would like to see a drainage plan that was not put together prior to the city Public Works Department director's retirement. So that's what the outline thing, the plat note that will be on there.

Yeah. This is going to be a clarification. A rezone is an ordinance change. We can't do it as other items on the agenda, and it has to be introduced for a public hearing. So this is not the procedure for rezones.

So this needs to come off of here and go on— basically, there's an advertising process, and you're not— I don't think you're going to make it right now on there to get it on the meeting next week on there because this was It needs to be an ordinance for introduction. All rezones are done that way. And so— No, you're right. You're absolutely right. Look into it if you meet the deadlines.

Otherwise, it's going to have to be postponed. I'll talk to them in the morning. OK. I'll speak to them on Monday, actually.

Okay, um, with that we go back to comments of the assembly. See, I didn't forget this time.

And, uh, you guys keep moving the seating around here, so I like to start from one side and go this way, then that side and go this way. And, uh, every time I turn around, I used to sit over there and have 3 people and now I don't. It's musical chairs. You're confusing me. I mean, take me serious when I say I'm old.

I am going to start then with Joe.

First, I'd like to welcome you, Roxanne, to Kodiak. I'm excited to see how this is going to turn out. It's going to be fun. I'm thank the staff for all of the stuff that we've got. I got a whole bunch of budget stuff that I'm trying to retain, so that's exciting.

It's still icy out there, so I think we should all be careful. But my main point is to welcome you to Kodiak. Thank you, Joe. Amy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Just I think that we need to do a better job with some of the education of people who do tune into our meetings. When we talk about consolidation, it's a really big topic. There's a lot of work that's gone into it by mostly volunteers in the community, and I don't want to belittle the efforts that they've put in it when I say nasty things like, I think we should postpone. So as my education piece, Um, if you go to the borough's website, on the home page for the Kodiak Island Borough, if you click on the government tab in the top left-hand corner, you're going to be able to, um, get a list on the left-hand side of the page. All the topics are listed in a green box, and in that green box there is a tab that is called the question of consolidation, and you're going to be able to find the work plan, the petition, information about the Boundary Commission.

All the things that you need so when you do get that survey at your house, you have some information that can help you answer those questions. Contact an assembly member, contact the new borough manager— welcome, Roxanne— contact the mayor, ask questions so that when you guys get that survey, you are— it's informed, because that's the kind of input we really need, and that will help this process move forward. Thanks.

Thank you, Amy. Scott Ern. No further comments other than welcome, Roxanne. Enjoy. Enjoy.

Jared. Welcome, Roxanne, and happy New Year.

Mr. Smiley. I attended the SWAB meeting yesterday. Nick Szabo retired. It was his last meeting. He really deserves a big hand for the leadership he's posed on SWAB committee.

He said his favorite thing was the banning of the plastic bags. I think his favorite thing was the arguments about bears and dumpster carts or whatever. He certainly got happy about those sorts of things. At any rate, it was a good meeting. One of the SWAB members, Ms. Pruitt, had on Facebook today a photograph of a deer carcass that had been pretty thoroughly stripped, lying on the ground next to a dumpster on Salif.

You can't think of a better way to bait bears into a dumpster area than to leave half-fleshed deer carcasses lying there. We need to do better than that. We need to watch them. I don't know what the, what the great alternative to our situation is or how to improve it, but I do think we should talk with the city about clustering dumpsters. And they don't want to have them in the city, but I, I think we need to look at clustering because then you can chain them and chain link around them.

And put gravel down and try to keep it in better shape than we're doing already. And I think it's going to be a bigger problem rather than a smaller problem. At any rate, it's really interesting to sit in on the SWAB meetings, and if you have some free time on 5:15 that— on a Wednesday night, it's a good thing to do.

James.

Welcome. Other than that, I've spoke too much tonight. That brings us to the mayor's comments. I hope you all have a very happy and safe New Year's.

Roxanne, once again, welcome, and don't let these guys get you down— girls, guys, people. They mean well. And, uh, I really have no other comments than to say I hope everybody has a safe and sane new year, and I hope 2022 shows some improvement nationally, locally, statewide, for all of our good. Thank you. And may your puppy hide from the fireworks.

Yeah. Oh, and by the way, Scott, how do you know a bear didn't drag that carcass there and leave it because he couldn't get it into the closed—.