i'd like to call to order this meeting of the anchorage assembly and begin with a roll call madam clerk mr birch mr birch is excused for the moment mr flynn ms johnston mr tromley mr starr here mr hall here mr zosander here ms greg jackson honored to be here mr honeman yeah mr trainee and ms drummond here and i'm sure we have a quorum very good mr hall will you lead us on a pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice we have some minutes second is there a discussion madam chair go ahead mr mint um i believe there's an error on page 12. um near the bottom under dennis wheeler municipal attorney it says jerry wheeler director of planning i'm sure that meant to be jerry weaver right above the number 14 d i'm assuming there's going to be no objection to that one and there appears to be none anything else mr owen that's all thank you all right um is there objection to approval of these minutes noting that correction seeing no objection those minutes are approved unanimously mr mayor do you have anything to tell us yes thank you madam chair um just a couple things uh yesterday i had the distinct privilege and honor of representing the city along with representatives from acvb and our anchorage economic development corporation on the inaugural jet blue flight from long beach california to anchorage which is pretty exciting as we have another opportunity for folks to come visit alaska but also another opportunity for alaskans to get out of our state at a reasonable cost for uh for trips to southern california so it was a great celebration and uh honored to represent the city at that last week we didn't meet last week but we did receive an honor we were named for the fifth straight year a tree city usa on arbor day we planted a couple trees out at beige middle school and so for five years running because of our commitment to um our urban forest and the care that we take in making sure that uh we take care of our arboreal forests that we are again a tree city so we're we're pleased about that and also last week we um or at least right after our last meeting we officially opened the afd training center and uh several assembly members i think miss great jackson and mr honeman were able to attend that as well and so it's a great facility for making sure that our new firefighters are well trained and existing firefighters get continuous training and the 32 new recruits that made the cut out of 700 some applicants were in attendance and they're going to be a great addition to the to the fire department thank you ms gray jackson thank you madam chair i just have one quick question of the mayor um what's the status of the efficiency study thank you madam chair he um we received responses to the rfp i think the seven firms were respondents we're in the process right now of narrowing that down and um awarding so you'll hear an announcement of the award here shortly thank you mr mayor thank you madam chair thank you i would like to uh the clerk reminds me that you wanted to make some kind of announcement on the park foundation's mayor no hi beth we'll get to you sometime tonight all right at this point then um i wanted to announce that this body is having a joint meeting it's quarterly one of those quarterly joint meetings with the anchorage school board will be meeting friday on june 3rd at 10 a.m at the school district headquarters and if anyone has any items to put on the agenda for that meeting if they could let our clerk know adam cheryl i'll be out of town okay thank you as well okay thank you madam chair it's just a question when the item comes up on the agenda is when we'll call upon beth nordland of the parks foundation to make an announcement and a presentation okay i i think the confusion is that i don't see it on the agenda all right well could you check and if you um want to interject something we'll certainly allow that later on mr mayor i'm also wanted to announce for the benefit of the public that some of the issues on the agenda tonight are in a little bit of a flux if you are here tonight and interested in the reorganization um being proposed for awwu and mlnp there is a new version of that ordinance that's available on the counter there beside our guard and there's also a new version that was just introduced is going to be introduced tonight so my assumption on that is we'll go ahead and you can testify but there will not be a vote on that matter this evening i also want to announce that item 14 sits on the agenda sure i'm sorry madam chair on that topic go ahead mr flynn well the version being introduced tonight is we'll call the halfway measure of what ms johnson and i have proposed that we will have the hopefully finish the public hearing on tonight if we choose to pass the at that time then there's no need to deliberate on the version being introduced tonight so my my intent and i believe miss johnston's was to proceed on that one and we'll see where we get all right then at this point we'll have to see what the assembly decides i'll leave it that way i also wanted to announce that 14c personnel rules will be delayed there will not be a vote on that this evening principally because the administration wants to take out the section on standby pay and do further research there are still three versions of the id on alcohol check and all of them potentially any or could cut any one of the three could come forward later on this evening and if you're here here for the renaming of hillcrest circle or hillcrest place that item will be pulled and a new version of that will appear on our agenda sometime in the future i think i got everything uh mr birch i uh uh arrived during the mayors of uh report and i just wanted the clerk to make a note of that to my attendance thank you we have you here and would you like to make any committee report mr burch i'd be happy to um i serve as a liaison to the anchorage convention and visitors bureau and was uh uh pleased to participate in one of their board meetings and had an opportunity to uh kind of get a really good overview of the uh the coming summer and i think they're they're really uh ramping up as everyone knows they've got the first to ship has has actually arrived here at the port um i'm also serving with the anchorage economic development corporation along with mr hall and attended their one of their quarterly board meetings that was a well-attended occasion and it's uh as the mayor had indicated with the arrival of jet blue another carrier into the anchorage market that's that certainly bodes well also with the acda anchorage community and development authority i'm ex-officio on that and there was a committee meeting a board meeting here probably two weeks ago when there's some discussion regarding a potential for a an office building and that might be used to house city city assets uh and resource personnel as well as uh state legislature uh there are some concerns voiced by that it was not approved by the board i think there's up for reconsideration but it's uh i think at this point it's uh uh it's still in in consideration but i think the the uh component that involved the city is is out of it so uh seeing lastly the chamber of commerce uh met last week in the military appreciation week is coming up thank you thank you mr flynn no report ms johnson well first of all um i have to say that i have another grandson congratulations i can't say i did all the work myself but indirectly we got back from norway just in time to catch him so that was good um and um at some point i'd be glad to share with anybody what we learned in in norway it was a very interesting trip and there are a lot of similarities besides just the mountains and the snow um in fact where my daughter lives is about a hundred miles north of uh the arctic circle and the weather there and their form of spring is about the same as anchorage because of the gulf current they have no ports that are frozen all their fjords are ice free during the winter so it's pretty amazing other than that cheryl fresca and i have took part today and will again tomorrow uh with the school board as far as it's it's a leadership training for reform and in education i can't quite remember the full ackermann of what it is but it's been very interesting and and we'll be doing it again tomorrow and also tomorrow i'll be part of the energy task force um retreat in the afternoon thank you thank you mr trombley anything no mr star no report mr hall i would just like to thank all of my colleagues on the assembly as well as the administration that joined sandy and myself at our wedding a week ago saturday it was an incredible event and your participation only made it that much more memorable so thank you all it was a pleasure mr hall miss gray jackson thank you madam chair the audit committee will meet on june 10th between 11 and 12 noon in the assembly conference room and the purpose of this meeting is to it's an exit conference with the independent auditors to talk about their findings i am also going to schedule an ad hoc audit committee the one that i talked about previously to deal with the police and fire medical trust and i'm not sure when that's going to be but i do want to say that the police and for our medical trust board they are currently discussing and evaluating the most efficient way to handle the trust and i also want to make one more comment uh mr train and i had the honor of attending home depot on tudor road their first annual kids and business day it was really really great there were some businesses who set up booth there were a lot of kids out there the swat team was there and uh fire station uh four and 12 were there for a while and it was a really wonderful first annual event the sun was shining and folks had a really really great time and my colleague and i had an opportunity to meet lots of our constituents thank you madam chair thank you mr honeman yes the public safety committee met this month a rather light schedule we've had some pretty heavy topics the last few months so we uh we were really quick meeting chief hall and i and uh i believe that was it and anyway we went through some of the updates on the fire department of course glad to be at the public the event under grand opening of the fire training center and to meet some of the new recruits the fire department has an academy going on likewise concerned about the status of the apd's academy which is slated for october um i understand and chief i'd say just going in that the numbers are fairly light as far as applicants so i'm just urging the audience anybody that i just want to make a public pitch please if you're interested in a law enforcement career anchorage pd is a really good department and i'm hopeful that the administration the employee relations city manager will bring all the forces to bear i know that this body passed uh appropriated some monies to be able to recruit i know this i'm a little stymied by um the delays but we've we're making progress and really hopefully we'll have an academy and lastly we'll have an ad hoc committee meeting tomorrow on taxi cab transportation availability taxi cab taxi uh transportation availability on evenings and weekends to do with the off the road program it's simply a working strategy meeting with several players at the planning and zoning conference room so it is publicly noticed and there will be some some folks there i'm sure there's some brainstorming coming up the next meeting in june is going to be on june 15th since there's five weeks in june on wednesdays um june 15th and that will deal with the obesity task force hopefully health department will come in and discuss that and i think one more thing if i may madam chair in light of april's and mays events down in the lower 48 with tornadoes and emergencies and disasters i just take this moment to pause alaska is not immune from disasters we have the wildfire possibilities in the summertime we certainly have earthquake possibilities at any time any kind of disaster could strike i would just urge you to take a few moments out of your life your busy schedules and seek and learn as much as you can to be prepared emergency watch is available to you for our neighborhoods just a reminder joplin missouri my heart goes out to those folks thank you madam chair miss johnson has a question for you i think yes oh okay mr trainee thank you madam chair just on friday i asked dennis ritter take a look into the issue we said to the voters which is the widows and widowers of tax exemption because i was getting calls from three widows that were told they went to the tax table that were told by the people up there that we didn't make it effective now it wasn't something they were offering i got a message in here from dennis that dennis has talked to marty marty is now briefing his staff that the enabling legislation was concurrent with passing the voters so if you get a call from a constituent that says hey i went to the counter and they said it's not into effect it is an effect thank you for doing that thank you dennis and thank you madam chair for that thank you that's all mr drummond thank you madam chair i'll be participating in the neighborhoods usa conference which begins tomorrow evening with a reception at the anchorage museum it's several days of workshops and neighborhood tours showing off our city to people from all over the country and i believe it's the first time anchorage has hosted it since about 1992 and uh if you're interested i'm sure there's still space available contact the community council's office thank you ms johnston you had something else i just wanted to mention that uh mr flynn and myself and chief mew all bicycled to the bacon station on friday to bike to work day and we had our little conference there thank you okay thank you madam chair if we could go back to the mayor's report yeah um the item that miss nordland is here for is the anchorage park foundation um by annual report on park investments it was a late on the table item and while i wasn't asked to have it part of the mayor's report it seems like a perfectly good place to do it so if with your indulgence if mr mayor there's nothing unlaid on the table on this item oh that's where i found it was in my pile i mean the clerk's office handed it out just tonight that's where i got it from but i'm just saying on your mic's off and here comes tech support to fix it right now oh it wasn't plugged in always the first question okay i'm beth nordland i'm the executive director for the anchorage park foundation and with me tonight is board member mark kroloff i try to give a report to the assembly two times a year to give you an update on um our investments in the park system that you uh so carefully steward with us um and it gives us a good opportunity to really crunch through our numbers and make sure that we are talking about the kind of volunteer contributions and other financial commitments and private dollars and get them all out in a packet for you and we put it in an aim format because we always like to get it read into the records what we're investing in the park system but as you can see the bullets show we are we have raised 15.8 million dollars for anchorage parks to date um 7.6 million of that is in private dollars in state and federal funding that is cash we have leveraged about 4.7 million dollars in volunteer time and materials and we have secured more than a million dollars more than that in rasmussen foundation challenge grants and more than a million dollars in state legislative funding that will get reimbursed after we spend it and again almost five hundred thousand 000 in federal funding that will get reimbursed after we spend it we have many capital projects in the capital budget this year and so um if you're in communication with the governor we hope that everyone's staying positive about the park investments what i tell the constituents your constituents is to stay positive about the volunteer investment and the private dollars that match any capital project in the state capital budget so we have our fingers crossed for that and more might take a little more than luck we have 46 construction projects this summer scheduled uh several of those seven of those are neighborhood park improvements we had one last weekend in in government hill and it was such an amazing success there were more than 50 volunteers out there and we had two television cameras and they got a lot done and we have time lapse photography of all their work up on the web so um you know good luck to the rest of the neighborhoods out there that are on our calendar for the summer because it's going to be a hard act to follow next uh we're in spinard june 11th so that'll be cope street park but we would like to invite you to all of these events and certainly any that are in your neighborhood and we will try to do that there are 17 challenge grants that are open this summer we're going to be working very hard on those construction projects those are specific constituent projects for park improvements like upgrading the mulcahy ranks at sullivan arena you know different projects all over town two eagle scout projects a couple community council projects so we'll keep you informed of those as we go hopefully we'll get great weather this summer for a lot of good park work and you also have in this memo a list of the youth employment and parks projects i think that those can be very fun to highlight in your own districts with your constituents and the youth employment and parks teens i brought numbers we had 168 applications this year and we did 113 interviews so we're really looking forward to a great park season there'll be 21 crew members from 16 ages 16 to 18. projects all over town we are also involved in the anchorage economic development corporation initiative uh that you've been briefed on work play live work live play we're helping with play and we're doing a noosa conference tour coming up this week and something we really get to highlight is the report cards and how successful those have been at attracting community involvement as well as other financial contributions we are going to do report cards in neighborhoods all over town in september and we'll be looking for your support and help in that and um those are the details and the numbers are uh in the back does anyone have any questions yes mr honeman yeah well first miss norman thank you very much for the report um and clearly i've been involved with some of the functions and programs that you have particularly the yep program and very impressed by the foundation's efforts and so thank you sir to the board and providing the guidance and uh very impressed with the numbers that come in from the private corporate non-profit and uh just private donations as they come through so just want to encourage you and encourage all of us to support our parks and i look forward to trying to meet the 50 at least or hopefully succeed at the little different park it looks like in july so i'm not sure if you have made presentation at the community council i wasn't there last meeting i was out of town but the little dipper community council is i think it's scenic they're very involved with the improvements i was there last night taking a look at the grounds very good thank you very much they're very excited miss gray jackson thank you madam chair thank you beth and to the foundation for what you do for this community i really appreciate it i appreciate the report what's the status of the accessible park for all the uh the cuddy family midtown park will be the home of the playground for all which will be the first but not the last a fully accessible playground in the state of alaska it's a 515 thousand dollar project we have about 100 000 left to raise and we have a couple of strong leads our our plan is to get that playground equipment in the ground in september right thank you and as you know i was very much involved with that and is the committee still meeting because i don't if they if you are i don't think i'm on a distribution list no we're at the asking for dollars phase but um once we pass that threshold we're going to start it'll pretty soon it'll be time to calendar the active volunteer community build part of this project so i will keep you all very informed thank you it's an exciting one here thank you mr burch yeah i want to thank you as well for uh for the report and i look forward to uh uh running through it i was just uh just from a historic standpoint how has the giving been going i mean i i can kind of glean a little bit of that from this but i mean are we kind of on a upward track or how how's how i mean how's the community doing from a support standpoint not only from a financial term but just from a community engagement involvement very good question we um in anchorage we are rich with volunteers people are very engaged in their park improvement projects it takes a lot more energy and staff time probably to generate individual contributions and i am resolved to put more energy into that effort but we're doing very well with grants and so and we're doing very well in the capital budget um how we do well in the capital budget is of course working with constituents who are volunteers so uh it's all related great i'll keep up the good work thank you mr drummond thank you so much thanks so much for coming beth i'm really pleased to see cope street park on the list um as a new assembly member three years ago it was one of the first parks i heard about from my constituents i had no idea it even existed it's surrounded by a rough neighborhood in spinard and i'm sure those neighbors are going to pitch in and roll up their sleeves and i know i'll be there so thanks a lot thank you i think i might be calling you to see if we can really generate some spenard interest mr hall yes i'll begin by the disclaimer that i actually said on this board so there's nothing predetermined here uh beth have we had any applications or any indication of parks and eagle river that would be a part of this program eagle river has their own levy for um capital improvements for parks in eagle river and that happened what six years ago maybe and um it's been really successful it's not a heavy levy but they they feel good about contributing to that park system and so we haven't given any challenge grants to eagle river and we don't have any other projects in eagle river i do take calls from from constituents in eagle river on occasion but the parks director also directs the parks in eagle river so we keep it in the family see here very good and i was curious with the yep program how did the hiring go this year the hiring is not complete i think you might all be aware that er has been having some um technical difficulties uh and the seasonal hires i think are annually a big challenge to get hired in the park system and youth employment and parks is no different but we've had wonderful interviews with uh great kids so i'm hoping that we can get those offers in the program i believe starts june the 6th so um so we're under fire we're ready to get those kids hired thank you very much and thank you for all you do do you have anything to add no i don't want to take more okay thanks thanks for i'm taking time on this lovely summer evening when we'd like to be in a park we would too the addendum and laid on the table items are in front of us thank you is there objection to incorporation hearing then um i'll read those items into the record 9a2 resolution um 154 resolution recognizing and honoring kathy quinones for 32 years of service to the municipality a resolution a3 on the agenda is resolution 155 uh honoring and thanking leanna hansen for almost 30 years of service to the municipality under bid awards 9c 3 on the agenda will be assembly memorandum 323 it's a recommendation of award to alaska contr pollution control incorporated to furnish year-round road maintenance services to upper o'malley limited road service area um the tune of three million two hundred fifty thousand dollars item nine c four on the agenda is assembly memorandum 324 it's a recommendation of award to gmc contracting incorporated for the glenn highway eagle glenn subdivision area drainage phase ii public works department project management engineering division one million two hundred and seventy seven thousand three hundred fifty four dollars and sixteen cents under new business nine d thirteen assembly memorandum 318 its proprietary purchase of a bomb disposal robot accessories from i-core technology incorporated and open vision ltc arm video x-ray system from envision homo x-ray llc for the police department one hundred and twenty six thousand two hundred seventy five dollars and seventeen cents item d14 is assembly memorandum three nineteen a cooperative purchase contract with resource data incorporated to provide a project manager for the enterprise resource planning application project i t department six hundred thousand dollars under um 9d15 is assembly memorandum am 320. it's a sole source contract with spx cooling technologies incorporated for plant 2 cooling water tower repairs municipal light and power four hundred and seventy thousand dollars nine delta 16 is assembling memorandum am 321 it's a proprietary purchase of computer software maintenance support and implementation services from open systems international for the municipality of anchorage mlnp 175 thousand dollars nine delta 17 will be assembling memorandum 322 it's a proprietary professional service contract with utility resources incorporated for preparing a revenue requirement cost of service service and revenue design study for a municipal light and power tune of sixty thousand dollars nine delta 18 will be assembling memorandum 326 it's the municipal light and power utility board of directors appointment of trigaric r taylor for introduction 9f6 will be a065 an ordinance authorizing a limited delegation of downtown enforcement of parking violations within the area bounded by ship creek to the north gamble street to the east 10th avenue on the south m street on the west to the anchorage community development authority and amending anchorage municipal code chapter 25.35 and that's set for a public hearing at our next meeting on june 14th 13a2 continued public hearing we have a an s version of ao24 this is an ordinance repealing title 31 anchorage water and wastewater authority and title 32 municipal light and power and also amending chapters 4.50 4.704.80 and 2610 to reinstate public utility commissions and conform general duties common to all advisory utility commissions and implement the repeal providing for a transition period 9 delta 4 there's another s version of title 23 the building code this ordinance would repeal and reenact anchorage municipal code title 23 to adopt 2009 and other recent additions adopting local amendments of the following codes administrative building mechanical plumbing electrical fire fire protection service outside service area energy conservation existing buildings abatement of dangerous buildings safety coated for elevators and escalators safety standard for platform lifts and stairway chair lifts residential school relocatables mobile aircraft shelters grading excavation and fill fuel gas and that's accompanied by memorandum 325 also for introduction tonight 9f7 will be ao66 this is an ordinance amending anchorage municipal code section 10.60.057 to clarify the prohibition concerning conviction for a sexual offense and providing for retroactive application to march 29 2011 the effective date of 2011 39 and this is set for public hearing our next meeting june 14th also for introduction is ao 67 this is an ordinance amending certain sections within title 32 of anchorage municipal code governing municipal light and power to enhance business practices and communications set for public hearing uh 6 14 11. under new public hearings not 14 f2 we have a amended version of am 284 and ao2 ao59 and this is an ordinance amending anchorage municipal code chapter 1570 noise control providing for clarified definitions clarified noise permit conditions addition of a section regarding measurements of noise and amending sex section 146030 to increase fines and repeal anchorage music code of regulations chapter 15 70. so with that is there a motion for the agenda okay i already asked if there was objection to incorporation i thought oh i'm sorry i did not is there objection to incorporation of those items into the agenda seeing no objection all right the amended agenda is before you but okay that's been moved but and seconded so i will now go down and ask people what they're interested in talking about tonight further miss drummond is there an item you'd like to pull no madam chair thank you mr trainee apparently i'm reading it 9a1 all right is that mr honeman anything for you no i believe i'm reading nine a alpha three nine alpha three okay and on the late on the table items nine f seven and nine f eight okay that's great jackson thank you madam chair i'd like to pull nine bear one thank you madam chair all right mr hall yes madam chair i'd like to pull 9e 7 9 f 1 and 9 f 2. that was e 7 f 1 and f 2. correct all right mr star i have no items mr trauma 9 delta 12 9 delta 12. all right anything else miss johnston mr flynn thank you madam chair for purposes of declaring conflict of interest item nine delta seven okay mr burch no items administration madam chair mr mr michaelis uh i believe nine uh i believe you pulled uh e7 for the purpose of letting the advisory commission render their report correct yes mr um that that was pulled e7 was madam chair mr jackson thank you madam chair um a two nine apple two needs to be pulled nine and i'm happy to do that okay thank you thank you madam chair all right i'll read over these to make sure we have them all nine on the regular agenda nine a one nine b one nine delta seven nine delta twelve nine e seven 9 f 1 9 f 2. on the addendum we have 9 a 2 and a 3. on the late on the table we have f7 and f8 did we catch them all okay at this point the consent agenda minus those items is before us that passes unanimously mr trainee object to deal with 9a1 the uaa group to approve air 2011-153 is there any objection to that transiting none that item is approved unanimously is there any representative from the debate team that's here and if so could they come forward to the mic please do you want to debate about it i am there's a resolution of the anchor's missile assembling honoring and congratulating the 2010 2011 a seawolf debate program whereas this year the uaa seawolf debate squad advanced two teams to the elimination rounds of the 2011 world university's debating championship wdc held in university of botswana and whereas these two teams were among only five from the u.s to earn the chance to debate in the elimination rounds with yale advancing two teams and the university of vermont advancing only one and whereas uea student alexis sorry about that a senior majoring in international relations was the highest ranking individual speaker from the u.s and whereas the seawolves performance at the wdc resulted in the world debate website ranking them 11 in the world and second in the us second order to yale and beating out teams from harvard to stanford mit and cornell and whereas all eight uea debaters who completed the world championship competed the world championship and from alaska alexis geology i know i'll ruin sorry about that brent frazier cullen hugh michelle hernandez michelle hernandez drew cason wiley cason amy stanley and amy parrott all attended alaska high schools and our prime examples of how alaska students can compete on the world stage whereas professors and directors of the uac wolf debate program steve johnson assistant debate coach sean visco played a vital role in getting up the debate team for success and whereas the anchorage community is immensely proud of these students and couches achievements now therefore the assembly resolves section one that members of the 2010-2011 sierra debate program are honored congratulated for their hard work dedication and success and for representing local community and the university of alaska anchorage in such grand fashion passes approved by anchorage assembly this 24th day of may 2011. [Applause] excellent wait a second please mr birch i i just want to uh echo the support that you've received here this evening with my first exposure to your debate team was at a rotary club and i have to tell you it was awesome i mean you can you know being able to debate both sides of the issue when you come to the the floor is phenomenal i mean it's it's an education we could all learn here but the part that particularly appealed to me was kind of the beating on the tables you know when people in the audience kind of supported something i i just i i don't know what i i don't maybe you could expand just uh for 30 seconds on what what that entails but i really like that aspect oh absolutely it's it's rooted in the british parliament uh house of commons and people pound on the table and they support something so anytime and you have approval instead of clapping it's just here here yeah you're here well here here you did great i was hoping you could introduce yourselves yes my name is sean briscoe i'm the assistant debate coach and amy stanley she's one of the four competitors who advanced to elimination rounds at this year's uh world university's debating championships uh she and her partner aiki were actually the the top seeded team from america so out of the five teams that advanced uh she and her partner were the top american team to advance wow that's one for wiggles mr honeman yes uh first of all is mr uh lopsis is he here tonight at all no he's not heading back home probably because school's out he said well thank you congratulations by the way i say we're probably better than yale but they'd want to debate about it i'm sure uh and i'm in no shape to this position to do that but again i think it's a huge honor for the university for our anchorage campus of course and for the all of alaska to go to a foreign land essentially and and work our way through a world debate team and to finish so high and and of course that has everything to do with of course your coaching and mentoring but uh homegrown people i mean actually and so you're uh were you born in anchorage or raised anchored i've actually been here since i was three years old i graduated from chugiak in 2007. oh there you go did you get guys well congratulations and again job well done and and thank you for your for bringing be here tonight and present thank you mr mayor yes thank you um a couple of things i have followed the success of the debate team for years but i had a chance to first see them in action when they took on the irish national debate team at a certain irish pub downtown about three four years ago and uh it was just a tremendous event to watch the the young competitors from ireland take on our our debate team and while we prevailed it was it was incredibly entertaining and just something of a great cultural experience as well but i had the honor as well a couple weeks ago since the legislature was still in their special session uh to present a legislative citation to the debate team and their coaches at the little italy and the reason little italy was chosen is that nike geologists is the son of the owners of little italy when you don't see him uh prevailing on the debate team he's helping run a small business he's a very hard-working young man and it shows in his debate preparation so congratulations to the whole team the coaches tremendous job thank you thank you very much the next item would be um a2 a resolution recognizing and honoring kathy quinones ms gray jackson thank you mandatory move to approve second is there any objection to approval hearing and seeing none that item is approved unanimously could um could the representative who's going to accept this come forward thank you and i'm sure this is a resolution of the ancient municipal assembly recognizing and honoring kathy f hinones kq for 32 years of service the municipality of anchorage whereas on april 5 1979 kq was hired by the department of social services and has remained with the municipality of anchorage at the department of health and social services where she has steadfastly served the anchorage community as a senior office assistant senior family counselor and lastly a family family service counselor and will continue to serve until she retires on june 1st 2011 and whereas kq has served as a superb example of what a public servant should be through her dedication and taking care of clinic clients her enthusiasm in educating youth about healthy choices and her shining personality that brightens the day of her peers at work and those who have the privilege of meeting her and whereas kq has displayed a commitment to excellence that will not be easily replaced and is an individual who will be greatly missed by all who know her and have come to see her as a counselor advocate and friend now therefore the anchorage missile assembly resolves that kathy k.q cannonias is recognized and honored for her 32 years of service with the municipality of anchorage passed and approved by the anchorage assembly this day [Applause] i would just like make a quick statement that it's been a pleasure and an honor to work with the municipality of anchorage and certainly to be an employee with the department of health and human services we have great people there great family support and all the years that i've been there so i would like to thank all my family friends great co-workers department heads supervisors and all the above thank you very much thank you we'd like to say a few things don't leave yet okay mr honeman i just want to say thank you a wonderful career and i know you've done great things for our community and i don't know what you'll do in retirement but i hope you continue to do something positive for the community and hope you just enjoy your retirement thank you thank you that's great jackson thank you madam chair i've known kathy for 28 of those 32 years and i just want to tell you that i was truly honored when somebody from the health department came up to me and said kathy would like for you to present this i was truly honored to do that kathy and i wish you well in your retirement thank you madam chair thank you for all you've done for us thank you very much very much the next item before us would be 983 this would be ar 155 thanking and honoring leanna hanson and is and there was a second is there any objection to approval of this item here you can see none of that item is unanimously approved chair and members of the assembly this is a resolution for the of the anchorage municipal assembly honoring and thanking leanna h hanson for almost 30 years of service to the municipality of anchorage whereas leanna h hanson began her service in 1981 with the municipality anchorage of anchorage as a personal computing technician with the public works department and whereas she transferred to the public transportation department in 1985 and progressed through successive assignments of increased responsibility becoming an impost center consultant one in 2005 and whereas while mastering a multitude of complex computer problems she was instrumental in moving the department from shared personal computers with floppy disk drives using lotus 123 and wordperfect to dos and then to window windows based programs ride share people mover and anchor ride scheduling and telephone services to new systems including bus tracker and tele-driver software and whereas she was an outstanding and dedicated employee during her tenure with a municipality of anchorage and whereas she was recognized as people movers employee of the month in december 1986 received a merit award in 1980 1992 was nominated in 1999 for work unit of the year and was recognized for her efforts in managing y2k potential issues and received multiple commendations from her co-workers for her team spirit and willingness to go above and beyond and whereas leanna was always diligent in asking questions we don't know what we don't know when she was not sure the answers in order for her to get the job done right the first time and in the most efficient and effective manner and whereas public transportation department employees view her as a friendly helpful and compassionate employee who could be dependent on for accuracy professionalism and confidentiality now therefore the anchorage municipal assembly recognized the many contribution and honors leanna h hansen for almost 30 years of outstanding dedicated service to the municipality and the citizens of anchorage passed and approved by the anchorage assembly this 24th day of may 2011. [Applause] um i just wanted to say that it's been a pleasure these 30 years working with a an outstanding bunch of people um uh who are cooperative and very innovative and i'm honored to uh have worked with all of you thank you thank you mr honeman yes thank you and ms hanson i know i started my career at peoplemover and i know we didn't have a whole lot of interaction before i left to the anchorage police department but i know you've had a great career at the tribe public transportation and thank you very much for your service to community thank you thank you and good luck on your time miss great jackson thank you madam chair i know i sound like a broken record but when you spend 28 years like i have working for palette you really know a whole lot of people leanna is one of them i work with her transit along with paul and the early 80s and i'm really sad to see you go leanna but also happy that you um retire and going to enjoy the rest of your life so congratulations to you thank you madam chair thank you thank you for all you've done for us thank you very much [Applause] the next item would be 9b1 this is a resolution requesting a citizen's naming panel move to approve second uh madam chair thank you thank you um we all included the mayor received a letter from juan de green the president of the naacp and i'd like to invite her to the podium to make a couple of comments thank you madam chair good evening good evening mayor assembly members thank you for um having me here tonight i just first and foremost um as you said my name is wanda green i'm president of the naacp i do have a few of my members here in the crowd if you just want to you need to speak into the mic yeah i'm sorry tv loses you when you turn your okay i do have a few members in the crowd from the naacp if you just care to stand up and um just quickly take just a few moments of your time we just want to let you know that we certainly appreciate the fact that brady ward who is a pioneer in anchorage alaska that something significant in this town will be named after him i don't have to tell you this but as you know he played a great part in developing projects such as the ted stevens international airport um jc penney's nordstrom's many of the shopping malls that we enjoy today and he also worked on projects on elmendorf and fort richardson in both hospitals providence and alaska regional and many hotels here in anchorage but even as significant as that is he also founded the fairview community patrol and fairview community council he made that community safer he was also responsible for traffic lights and speed signals school crossings and the drug free community signs that made fairview the safe and it helped contribute to make fairview the safe place that it is to live today and on behalf of the naacp and the members that are here we just would like to thank you for doing this um i just also wanted to mention that at our last um general membership meeting um we kind of got together and started discussing this and we named a um gathered a naming committee um within the naacp and it is our sincere hope um that hopefully that we can work with the municipality and maybe work together on on projects such as these in the near future and um that would certainly be my hope and we are certainly looking forward to that and again we thank you thank you mr green all right sure mr honeyman has a question no uh i just want to thank wanda green and and the naacp for your efforts and would look forward to hearing your input perhaps you may have some information that you can share with the naming panel also if i might madam chair um i recognize i'd like to recognize alaska state senator johnny ellis the rules chair for the alaska legislature alaska state senate also daryl hess past president of fairview community council and asked they might come down and share a few comments as well thank you okay thank you very much thank you welcome senator ellis good afternoon madam chair um i'm joined here by mr darrell hess my name is johnny ellis i'm a proud 30-year resident of fairview and represent that wonderful neighborhood in the alaska state senate i'm here tonight to speak strongly in favor of this naming panel i appreciate the effort that's been made to do this i've wrote written around um the neighborhood done right arounds with mr grady ward in in past years uh when he established the uh community patrol uh he was just a wealth of information about the history and the culture of the neighborhood the good landlords the bad landlords the good tenants the bad tenants all of those things that go into uh the the fabric of the neighborhood and so i'm just very proud to be here tonight to encourage you to pass this resolution in support of a naming committee mr grady ward deserves such an honor thank you i'd just like to echo what senator ellis said when i started attending fairview community council meetings in 1999. grady was in his 70s at the time he didn't attend a lot of meetings and i'll be quite honest i didn't know him that well i met him a few times but after serving five years as president of the council i heard many many stories including stories of senator ellis and grady being shot at by drug dealers as they patrolled the neighborhood and i was privileged to help mayor sullivan prepare a proclamation which uh i was honored to read at grady's funeral and during that process i talked to his son ray talked to a lot of people that knew him and i was absolutely astounded at the life of this individual who came to anchorage in the 1940s and had to live in a tent down by the railroad for three years because of his color no one would bring to him and that he gave so much back to the community i think this is an opportunity with this naming panel to show that we can name things after those everyday heroes who may not be elected to office who may not donate a lot of money to have parks named after them but they make a tremendous difference in our community they are those people who are everyday heroes so thank you thank you mr honeman has a question just to comment i want to thank you guys for sharing information and also uh i can testify mr hess that i was in that area when the shots were fired so i do know that that actually happened on the february area so but thank you again for your comments appreciate it thank you very much is there any further discussion on this resolution is there any objection seeing none that is unanimously approved the next item before us is 9 delta 12. seven pardon me this is um assemblyman 309 about a utility relocation amendment number one for independence drive extension colony loop to o'malley road with acs and i believe someone besides mr flynn should make the motion second thank you that item is before us mr flynn uh madam sure as we have discussed many times my wife uh has acs as a client this contract obviously involves our friends at acs and therefore would ask to be excused from participation in this matter is this us is your wife's employment a substantial part of this particular contract acs is a significant portion of her employment okay then per your request sir i'll ask that you not participate in this discussion right this item is before us i'm going to ask if there's any discussion is there any objection seeing none that item is approved 10 to zero and mr flynn comes back thank you the next item before us is 9 d12 this is assembling miranda 314 recommendation of award to doyon utilities llc to provide anchorage regional landfill gas to energy project 2 million dollars yeah the reason i pulled this is because when there's been a complaint filed we need a motion move to postpone and then prior to the deliberation madam chair um just a minute i need a motion on the floor something okay there's a motion on the floor now mr trombley was first in queue and then i'll go to you mr flynn if you don't mind madam chair i apologize mr trump i have a conflict in this one too all right go ahead mr flynn my firm represents corex which is a partner to do on utilities in this arrangement mr flynn i'm going to ask that you'll be excused on this one too thank you all right mr trombley it's now to you sir well the one reason i the reason i pulled this is because or wanted to postpone it because there's been a com there's been a complaint filed as far as the bidding process goes and the administration do you have any comment through the chair mr trumly there officially has not been a complaint filed at this point we've been notified that one of the respondents does desire to submit an appeal on the award we have not received anything yet other than an email saying that he would appeal to the assembly to convene the bidding review board so is it basically my it's basically my understanding that if there's an appeal to the bidding review board we need to delay award until that appeal is done is that correct sir uh chairman of sander that is correct it would uh after the assembly approves that is the cut off for an appeal so if the assembly were to approve it tonight the appeal could not be uh formatted and formulated and submitted okay one last question if this does go to the bidding review board how long would it take before we could see it again in other words so we could know when to postpone it too chairman oseander we will be um contacting the bidding review board as soon as we receive the appeal and have an opportunity to review it at that point in time if there are in my opinion no grounds for the appeal i would submit to the assembly that we not convene the bidding review board at this point in time it's very difficult to say yes they should go to the bidding review board and make my recommendation in that manner mr trainee madam chair i think what we need to do with this just to prove it and then if somebody wants to file a complaint they can it goes a bit review board but the first processes we need to take is for us to approve this ma'am well i'm confused mr training because i thought he just said it once we approve it it cuts off any ability to appeal no i think they can once we approve it i think then they can file an appeal clarify that so you want to clarify it for us uh once again through the chair uh assuming training um the assembly's approval of the contract is the cutoff that we have actually established in the code for uh an appeal to the bidding review board so if the assembly were to approve it tonight no we would not honor their appeal okay but you don't have any appeal in front of you now do you uh through the chair no we do not thank you at this point miss johnston um but you did get an email saying that they were fight they're filing i mean i've seen some of the emails going back and forth and there was concern on how to do it and now they know how they can electronically file a repeal um in response to your question yes we have received a notice that they desire to appeal and that they would be submitting one i had given them until five o'clock today to do so and provide some grounds so we could have some consideration to their appeal at this point i have not received anything have no idea what they're going to appeal on now this award has been pending for several weeks we've gone through a work session with the assembly on this i believe the assembly members are fairly familiar with the contractual arrangement that is to be made with doyon now the respondent that desires to appeal has not given us any grounds for an appeal at this point we have had many emails going back and forth but he has had the successful proposal for a couple of weeks now i he's had plenty of time to submit an appeal he has waited to the very last minute there are a number of questions okay um anything else was johnson i i guess i just asked the chair if we maybe could start asking questions on the motion and and then we can maybe see if we want to postpone we can start the debate in other words as far as well the motion is to postpone and so i think we need to speak to them i'm sorry i thought the motion to postpone was second it was not seconded nope i was waiting for a date i will second it but i was waiting we were having a discussion postponed till june i would suggest since i rather than recognize that motion i would suggest your intent would be best served by not yet seconding it and that would allow us to openly debate the main topic okay and so you can always make the motion to postpone later on okay all right mr burch well you know i speak against postponement we we we were approached probably two years ago or longer about uh uh you know the interest in using the waste gas off of the landfill to generate power for uh use that the uh joint may not even have been joint base elmendorf richardson at that time uh but anyway it seemed like a novel approach it was revenue to the city and it seemed very constructive we have gone through a long and tortured process to get to this point and uh what i saw in an email you know popped up today or yesterday way way way down the road here uh proposing to basically use this waste gas if i remember right it was to generate or to produce diesel fuel for the buses or something which isn't is not anything that we asked for in our bid solicitation so you know and so unless you unless you're really willing to kind of overboard the whole thing which you know i i'm not prepared to do i think we've got a good faith uh proposal here it's been brought forward over uh you know a long period of time it's been given uh due consideration i would encourage approval of this uh process if there's something that's out of you know out of line then then the appeal can come in but uh i don't think it's appropriate to really hold this thing up based on the potential that somebody might appeal so i would i would encourage an affirmative vote on this award thank you mr trombley another reason to postpone this is because at the work session there was talk about in order to make this project if possible you need four generators right now the permit for four generators has has not been approved by the epa and in talking with at the work session i said well how long could it take they said well it's supposed to take 90 days but we have waited up to three years for for permits and so i i would just say that this is um we're moving too fast on this until you get a permit until you know you've got a permit all of and if and if they if epa comes back and says well no you're not going to get a permit and the whole project is down anyways and so i would wait till you get a permit before we move any further mr hall yes uh my question is in municipal code what's the time allowed to a file and field once a uh once a rfp or a bit is open did you hear the question it's to fred the question was to use how much time to appeal uh through the chair i i apologize uh simon hall i did not hear your question i was my my question is according to municipal code what's the timeline allowed to file an appeal once a rfp or a bid has been opened the code allows a or requires us to give a minimum of seven days notice prior to award assembly approval is the date of award and that is the cut off okay thank you mr honeman well i guess that my question has really been answered but i i believe that i have to go with mr burch on this i think this has been a lengthy process and and given the fact that there's been some time for an appeal and questions have been answered and they've been given a deadline and we don't have it in hand as a municipal administration i i'd say we need to approve this contract and if it doesn't work out uh for that that individual or company that's in there well you know that's that's the economics of it mr trainee madam chair i'm going to vote against postponement remember the work session we were at we asked him where is the gas going now it's being flared out they're burning it it's just the same as if we're using it to generate that's being wasted let's simply vote against postponement on this item and let's get this gas producing electricity thank you madam chair ms johnston yes i have a couple questions and i'm sorry i wasn't at the work session and actually instead of that day i was looking at a waste to energy plant in norway that serviced the same size community as anchorage and that made me think in that contract you have guaranteed a minimum gas could we produce in that landfill that minimum amount of gas without increasing our cells without increasing the landfill in other words do we have that amount of gas for 20 years with our current cell structure now if you're the through the chair um if you're asking with the the trash that's in the landfill at at this point today if we stop putting trash in no we could not make that happen it would continue producing gas probably for a period about 10 to 15 years at the current level which is enough right now to run three generators and by the way we do have a permit to operate three doyon already has a permit in hand to operate three generators two full-time one on a part-time basis so can we make the the full amount of gas that's in the contract if we were to stop putting trash in the in the landfill today no we could not can we produce enough gas to produce energy for a fairly long time yes we can so when you say that that we have enough gas for the next 15 years with our current landfill are you saying that for every year we would have that much more gas in other words if we went another five years at our same disposal rate we would have enough gas to meet this contract i mean i'm just concerned about the exposure of committing to gas for 20 years if we do not have we will not have the gas available if for some reason someone other than solid waste services puts a waste energy plant in and that has been discussed um it's been presented to the energy task force and i just i i don't want us to be i don't want us to have that exposure well the the as the longer you put in gas and obviously the more organic material you put into the landfill which is pretty much 50 to 60 percent of everything that goes in there obviously it it has the potential to to become fuel so the longer that it goes that you put in gas the more the more the longer you go putting in trash the more fuel you can you can produce and if you look at the the model curves basically the amount of gas peaks um several years after uh we stopped putting waste in the landfill even under the current model of going through to its its current life so yes the answer the answer your question is so you feel if if we continued with our current model for another five years we would not have any exposure for the 20 years of gas there there are remedies in the contract for for that depending on how that that plant came about and could you enlighten me what those remedies are um well if if if there is not enough gas produced um through no fault of the municipality um then then basically the contract ends we scale it down or we can or we open it up to negotiation to scale it back but but there there isn't a liability at that point now if the municipality were to go forward as as the the um if we were to go forward as the municipality to create the the cause that the gas wasn't to go forward then we would have to pay down what's left of the um the unamortized portion of the contract the entire contract is worth 13 million dollars in equipment obviously as that goes out farther the amount that that is unamortized goes down okay i have one further question as i was reading the am and the material on this i saw that as you're aware and you and i've had discussions back and forth the assembly had a resolution where we asked you to hire a consultant to help you put out the rfp what you did instead was do the rfp and you hired a consultant to review it um i noticed that a consultant with corey hines is that correct corey hines and ch2m hill work and and and i know corey i like cory i respect corey but isn't he on was he at that point on the solid waste services advisory board cory hines is on the board yes um ch2m hill is was the firm that was hired cory happens to work for ch2m hill i just i that raised the flag to me i mean it's not that that corey isn't a great member of the advisory board nor is he uh probably is a very capable person but first of all you reverse the whole process of what the assembly asks you to do and you've explained that to me i'm not quite sure if i agree with you but you've explained it but then you hired somebody that is intricately involved as a commission member advisory member i would disagree we went out for an rfp to hire a technical consultant we hired ch2m hill um corey was one of the members that worked on it but we did not specifically hire corey as an individual as a matter of fact corey was a minor contributor compared to some of the other technical expertise that that was brought forward by ch2m hill so you feel very comfortable there is no conflict you can you can say to me there is no conflict there there is no conflict of interest ma'am okay thank you i right now don't know how i feel about this it's not a large i've i've never felt really comfortable with the whole process which all of you know i do think there is some exposure it is 13 million dollars and you're right as it gets amortized down that exposure will be less and if you feel that we have 15 years of gas i feel less concerned about the exposure as i say i'm not happy of how the whole thing rolled out [Music] but i'll go for debate thank you madam chair i wasn't able to make the work session because i was out of town but i didn't need to be there because this project has been on the table for a very very long time as i'm really happy to see some renewable energy occurring in our community first off i thought the motion was on whether or not we were going to postpone because somebody might appeal and we're down talking about the project and i don't really think that i think that's out of line frankly we also heard from the purchasing director that um the person that might have appealed had until five o'clock today well it's 6 20 right now five o'clock is long gone and i also heard our purchasing director say that um from emails there really didn't seem to be any grounds for an appeal so madam chair with those comments i would um hope that my colleagues would move on so we can continue with the rest of our agenda and vote for this thank you madam chair mr trombley at the work session you you you've current right now you just said you have a permit for three and you're operating three generators at the work session you had said that it you need a permit for a fourth generator in order to make the project a reality right now you do not have do you or do you not have the permit for the fourth generator it is my understanding that doyon has a permit in hand to operate three generators but it takes four in order to make the project reality so do you have a permit for the fourth no sir it as a matter of fact there isn't even enough gas at this time to operate for generators and if you look at the curves that we gave you um you'll see the average curve if you recall there was the the the graph with the the kind of boxes on it right if you look at the average curve it was down below the the the um tier one uh level gas um because there isn't enough gas to produ to operate at that level in the first two to three years so um there is as i say we don't need the fourth generator until um several years down the road and you know right now they're they do have a permit in hand to operate uh two generators i i believe um the the president of doyon is here can could verify that if you'd like but we don't we do not need the fourth generator until several years down the road to actually operate the the project so right now you have enough you're producing enough gas to gen to operate three generators and to make the project a reality that is correct that's direct comp that's in direct conflict with what you had mentioned at the work session and i wrote it down so i i i i moved to postpone since there there seems to be additional misinformation the atom of course is postponement um the people in the queue i'm going to i guess ask if you speak only to postponement at this time mr starr you're next and mr trainee oh you pulled out mr okay mr training on post pull the question madam chair okay a call of the question requires a super majority and this time um i he's making a motion to cut off debate so that would if the motion passes then we would immediately vote on postponement without any further debate so a promotion excuse me right if you vote yes you are running to cut off debate and immediately vote on postponement if you vote no then you're willing to continue debate mr flynn is excused one two three four five six all right that that the motion to cut off debate takes a super majority so it fails all right the motion to postpone is back in front of us please speak only to the motion to postpone mr trainee did you have anything further on that i think everything's been said mr burch yeah i just speak against postponement i think you know we have a process here where you you put something out in front of the public you put a lot you know people that bid on this put a lot of energy effort and initiative in uh in putting a proposal together uh and then when you have something that kind of comes in uh left field after the you know after the the bids have been open and everything's been uh you know laid out it it just doesn't seem reasonable and uh i would speak against postponement and uh you know i hope this is something that works i mean i i think when the idea was brought to us uh several years ago it seemed very innovative and uh it seemed like a real positive way to go and i wish them great and exposure succe the community and the in the uh in the city and i would uh speak against postponement and support the original mr star on postponement yeah i'll speak to that and then my other comments will follow and i won't have to speak to the main motion but you know if this assembly hasn't done a very good job of researching out all the aspects and and there's been a yin and yang going on between actually what the intent was on the best use of this and if you read your am it speaks to how this happened and i probably should have pushed a little bit harder and the best use of the landfill gases could be many numerous or a combination of others and one of the concepts that this this this provider that's uh that's i think trying to be diplomatic and not appealing because he's tried to present to us on a gas to liquids concept and we didn't embrace it we didn't embrace it as an assembly back in 2009 and somehow or another we've we've flavored a language that the gas use can only be used for electricity production as opposed to that and the rfp was structured that way mr man i know you're shaking your head no but it was reaching out to who can produce electricity with our gas and i don't think that's the best best use i really think we have an opportunity to power on landfill vehicles uh perhaps package it into a product that can be sold or utilized by our residents in our community we're also overlooking the fact that mlmp provides electricity to the j bear group in fact mlmp is the largest the largest customer of mlmp so i suspect that we're actually going to delete or dilute our own revenue sources on another utility that we own which is mlnp so you know for that matter i think we need to step back take a little bit of discussion time over and above it and i would urge postponement just to have this other opportunity uh presented to us which would be a gas liquids presentation there's plenty of good models that work out there and if not then i'll be a no vote on the main motion mr mayor on postponement yes thank you you know i would urge the body not to postpone on the comment about the rfp and the narrow focus we actually pulled that rfp back at the request of some potential proposers who wanted to um have the opportunity to present other ideas and we actually broaden the rfp just so um new concepts could be presented so it was not narrowly focused and if it was seemingly narrowly focused at the start we actually withdrew that rfp rewrote it opened it up to a variety of other concepts other than just generating electricity sir so i mean that i thought we really went overboard to make sure that all potential respondents had the opportunity by us pulling it back rewriting it and then resubmitting it at this point there's no one else in the queue please vote on postponement and that motion to postpone does not pass so we are back to the main motion is it at the mo the motion is already on to approve sir has already been made so is there any further discussion and there appears to be done seeing none please vote for the main motion and that matter is approved seven to three the next item on our agenda is under the e section miss uh f7 investment advisory commission second i i pull this item in order to allow the investment advisory commission to address this with us is there a representative of the investment advisory commission here welcome thank you thank you i am karen jordan and i'm chair of the investment advisory commission my co-chair tom maloney had to leave i'm sorry and then we also have the treasurer danmore here are there any questions about my letter or do you want would you like to speak to just the high points okay that'd be great as most of you probably know the trust fund was originally established after the sale of the atu utility it's been in existence since 1999 so that's over 10 years we've had additional contributions made to the trust over the years but not recently we've had our ups and downs like all the markets um the commission is an advisory commission we're not the fiduciaries really the decisions are made by the treasurer dan moore at the advice of callan associates and our main consultant is mike o'leary i feel we're very fortunate to have mike he is also a consultant with the permanent fund and some of the larger retirement funds and i feel that he has given us good advice especially when we were stumbling along all of us felt we were stumbling along in some of the down periods like in 2001 and the most recent 2008-2009 the fund is invested pursuant to an investment allocation that is in the investment policy which you should have received and in 2010 our return was slightly less than our policy target but in 2009 we had substantially exceeded it so i think one of the most important things to note is over the last 10 years we have exceeded our policy target the target would be 4.07 return and we have returned 4.26 percent return um and if you look at the uh same time period and you look at inflation the average annual rate was 2.6 percent so we at least are making some positive headway not quite what we had hoped but the markets haven't really responded the way we had hoped either also the commission uh reviews the municipal cash pool investments many well i shouldn't say many years ago prior to 2007 those were invested uh internally in a pretty conservative manner we did go out to bid for um additional managers and we've divided up the pool and that's explained in our letter i won't go into details but our return over the since 2007 has been 3.08 annual return and the benchmark would have been 2.89 so we've exceeded our benchmark but more importantly if it had been invested the way it was originally being invested it would have only returned 1.4 so i think that the municipalities should feel good about the way the cash pool is being invested i want to thank you for your service mr burch has a question i just wanted to echo the thanks to the chair for the the good effort and initiative you're putting in there and it's certainly demonstrated by the by the results you're seeing and i know when at a time when it becomes increasingly more difficult to uh to generate a little income out of those resources your efforts are very much appreciated thank you you're welcome thank you for coming tonight you're welcome thank you is there objection to accepting this report seeing none the reports accepted unanimously the next item on our agenda is for the items to be introduced f1 uh ao63 an ordinance amending the zoning map and providing the rezoning of about 10.46 acres from r6sl per a084143 to plip eagle valley subdivision tract b um mr hall madam sure i pull that one to refer it back to planning in sony we need a motion introducer second and a third thank you and the motion is made to refer to planning and zoning commission thank you that has been introduced and referred um then yeah it just takes three on that the next one is an ordinance uh 64 f2 on the agenda amending title iv boards and commissions and anchorage muslim code section 7.40.050 on 16.95025 to create new boards and commissions revise enabling language sunset provisions repeal and active boards and commissions and related matters mr hall move to proof uh introduce introduce uh that one i'd like just a minute was there a third okay mr star was the third mr hall i would not like to change the public hearing date until the 24th of june 24th 28th 28th all right is there objection to that public hearing date seeing none that matter is been introduced with a public hearing of for the 28th the next item for introduction f7 laid on the table this is a066 clarifying the prohibition concerning the conviction for a sexual offense and providing for retroactive application of march 29 2011. thank you and there's a second is it and miss johnson is the third and that's set um for public hearing on our next meeting on the 14th is that correct mr holman i believe it is yes all right that item has been introduced and madam chair i just wanted to pull i just wanted to pull this uh to add my name as a co-sponsor on this all right we'll add your name as a co-sponsor thank you and then next item before us is 9f8 that's a067 this is an ordinance amending certain sections within title 32 of anchorage municipal governing mlmp to enhance business practices and communications blueprintdeuce that item has been introduced and the public hearing date on that one is also at our next meeting 6 14. all right those items have all been injured madam chair just to confirm i wanted that add my name as a sponsor on this one as well all right we'll add your name on that one too mr honeman thank you that concludes our consent agenda we have uh no appearance request so at this time the assembly is going to take their dinner break be about 20 to 25 minutes we are in recess haul the anchorage assembly back into session and if someone could pass a word to those folks in the back that we're starting up again it'd be appreciated thank you madam chair go ahead mr jackson thank you madam chair i moved to change the order of the day to take up item 14 b like bravo thank you madam chair is there objection freaking assembly agenda is changed i'm sorry you said bravo all right at this point i'd like to open the public hearing on ar 142 this is a resolution approving an alcohol beverage conditional use for dispensary beverage dispensary use and license number 4847 in the b3 district for the hot quarter grill uh dba table six bar and grill located at 3210 denali street sweet sweet seven and eight anybody would like to testify on that matter please come forward i ain't seeing no one the public hearing is closed is there discussion seeing no discussion please vote and that item is approved ten two zero very good mr star did you have one too no that was one thing okay at this point we are at 13a on our agenda there are several items that are similar to this so i would appreciate if somebody could make a motion to combine the public hearings on 13a 13a2 14a and 13b all right is there objection to combining public hearings the public hearings then will be combined if you would like to speak to us on the issue of reorganizing awwu or mlnp please come forward and if if you have if you could please give us your name and spell your name please certainly chris warren k-r-i-s-w-a-r-r-e-n madam chair members of the assembly mr mayor i'm a 29 year resident of anchorage and a 29 year customer of acreage water and wastewater utility and also for the first 24 of those years i was an employee of awu my career in water and wastewater treatment began in southern idaho and for the last six years of my career i was the treatment division director for the water utility i'm here tonight to urge you to continue allowing the utility to operate as an independent authority a great deal of thought research investigation and time was put into the multi-year effort to establish the board authority it would be a real shame to undo all that work after only a few years of operating in that fashion the primary purpose for establishing the authority was to enable the utility to operate as much as possible like a private business with its own purchasing and engineering staff as well as a focused board of directors the utility can much more quickly get projects on the street than it was able to do under the previous government's model i can recall a number of occasions when construction seasons were lost due to the inability to move projects to the municipal bureaucracy which in many cases required projects to be needlessly delayed or re-bid resulting in higher costs for contractors as well as rate payers the same can be said for most of the central support services provided by general government to the utilities rather than being supportive it's been my experience that centralized government is more often than not an impediment to progress and efficiency and while i'm a big fan of mayor sullivan and his efforts to promote efficiency within general government mayors and administrations change on a regular basis as do their policies aww has a long history of setting the standard for efficient operations it was the first municipal department to engage in strategic planning benchmarking and long-range financial planning many of the other departments have followed our lead in establishing similar programs to evaluate their own operations most of these programs and the resulting efficiency improvements were implemented under the capable leadership of mark primo who's been the general manager for over 20 years and for whom i have the utmost respect mark has developed a strong management team and has performed the amazing feat of working with five separate mayors over those 20 plus years let's talk about rates i'm sure you've all been provided with the reasons why rates are going up so i'm not going to go through that with you but when you think about what we pay for our other utilities and conveniences 80 bucks a month for water and sewers seem like a pretty good deal to me especially when you can use all you want and by the way between my wife and my cell phone we pay more than that for on a monthly basis i imagine most you folks do too i've heard some of you say that government should run more like more like the private sector and now you have at least one of your utilities running like that so why in the world would you want to make it run more like government thank you mr burch has a question sir thanks uh for your comment and insight chris i guess one you know you talk about running more efficiently as a private sector operation have what what's your perspective you know a number of years ago we uh we through the city sold the atu the phone company and the city basically got out of the phone company business uh what's your perspective on the city getting out of the water utility business if you will you know marketing or selling that if you will well uh through the chair mr burch um i think if you could find a willing buyer sell it i'd rather you see you do that and put it back under general government that's the problem we can we i don't think we ever could find a willing buyer it's not so much water utility it's more the wastewater side that you have problem selling i have to carry so much debt that there's just not that much interest out there thank you mr honeman thank you for your time your service to uh this community and through the utility and appreciate your comments and and the world to heart thank you thank you thank you very much sir anyone else would like to testify on this matter please come forward no you started well you both can so please somebody thank you or in harmony good evening my name is bob mayer um as i have publicly testified before the anchorage assembly against the creation of title 31 in 2005 and against the creation of title 32 in 2008 i feel compelled to return here in 2011 in order to support the complete repeal of both titles due to time constraints i'm going to focus my comments on title 31 now the only reason title 31 was created in 2005 was to facilitate the deregulation of the anchorage water wastewater utility house bill 108 was the vehicle introduced in the state house to accomplish this goal in order to move house bill out 108 out of the state house another level of review of aww rate cases was required hence in 2005 between the two sessions of that seating of the alaska state legislature the anchorage assembly created title 31 or this aww board of directors the mission of the aww board of directors has been two-fold first to facilitate the deregulation of aww and second to facilitate the payment of a dividend to the owner at the march 4th work session the presentation by the executive committee of this board centered on both now i have mentioned two items as aww board goals the payment of a dividend deregulation it does appear there is a third however it is clear that the aww board does indeed enjoy their retreats down at the alieska prince resort let me quote you from the september 2nd 2000 meeting minutes of their meeting and i quote so quote director west suggested that another retreat for the board be organized similar in concept to the one held in september 2008 but not as elaborate the retreat was a very positive event end quote now what does the word elaborate mean to you when describing just one of this board's retreats personally i think the word speaks for itself and you guys really wonder why you have so much trouble with your rate cases before the rca because truly if the interests of the ratepayers were properly considered one of the designated seats on both boards would have been reserved for a credentialed consumer advocate but that never happened in fact at one point the aww board was loaded up with members of the former mayor's senior staff but it was consumer advocates both in and out of private legal practice who discovered and have successfully argued against the illegal rate base as moved in anchorage ordinance 2003 160. the arguments of the consumer advocates prevailed in the 2005 rca decision also in 2007 with the honorable philip h volland affirming the 2005 rca decision and also in the state of alaska supreme court decision remanding the case back to the regulatory commission of alaska and thank you mr mayor i'm sorry your time okay and there appear to be no questions but thank you very much okay thank you richard braun you need to spell it yes please you got it in spell check already well dick always wanted to spell um i've watched this debate and heard a little bit here but a guiding principle i like to go by is if it isn't broken don't fix it and i haven't heard why this system we got is broken just like mr warren said things have been running pretty good the rates are pretty good what are we trying to accomplish and if we can't really fix it all we're going to do is meddle with it and turn it into a political puppet i i think that's the wrong direction so just keep the guiding principle keep things simple and if it's not broken don't fix it and i'm going to yield the rest of my time so he can finish i wish we could do that i'm sorry sir let me read it for you i've got a minute anyone else would like to testify please come forward hi my name is joe bernardini b-e-r-n-a-r-d-i-n-i i am the purchasing manager with aww and i've been obviously very interested in this um i've been worked fortunately with the air force for a number of years i work with faa for a number of years i'm very familiar with bureaucracy and how things work having worked with the city in city hall for 17 years i understand how the city operates to a certain extent too one of the things i've heard during work sessions is consolidation and efficiency and we're obviously on hit list of purchasing for aww to go back downtown but adding bodies doesn't equal efficiency by no stretch of the imagination first i think we need to look at what's wrong with the processes downs down in city hall by by virtue of a professional coming in looking at swim lanes streamlining and what are the redundancies what are some of the things that could be streamlined to that add value to the process and take out those things that don't add value to the process i think that should probably be done anyway regardless of whether you pass this or not um adding bodies again won't create unnecessary efficiency you heard chris talk about how chris warren talk about how things are getting out faster and that's true we are a smaller purchasing organization i only have one client to serve and that's aww we get things out very very quickly i'm in constant contact with downtown we've enhanced some items for downtown purchasing we've offered our assistance on many many occasions i asked fred virtually every time i talked to fred colton back if i can help him in any way we've done many things to assist the city also but that'll go away when when we are absolved and have to go possibly back downtown if some of us if if we're lucky enough to get a job downtown but the big thing here is you've heard captains of industry local industry you've heard many many people say hey why are we doing this why are we doing this and i'm still confused i still haven't figured out why we want to break something that isn't broken and and again um uh i've had the great pleasure of working with aww and i very much enjoy working there thank you miss johnson has a question yes i'm over here were you involved when aww was looking at doing their own erp have you as purchasing well there was talk about us going out for our own erp system but we never got to the stage of issuing an rfp so you just in the general discussion were you part of that discussion internally only not in consolidation with with downtown though and now now you know that that it's going to be all part of the i'm aware of what's happening downtown yes and that erp is not going to fix what's broke you they're still use they're still problems and i really don't want to get into them in into a public forum but there's still things that could be done that could streamline and make government run a little bit more efficiently adding bodies in my opinion is not the answer at the bot the bodies you know they've had unfilled bodies available to them that they haven't filled yet at least from a purchasing standpoint so and and the problem with that is is they just uh recently hired another buyer but they had to get them from out of state and there just aren't that many people that do what we do here so i have a question how many since you were with the municipal purchasing and and then you went to aww how many people in the purchasing division um in the municipality moved over to aww when when i moved yes one and now i've had um let's see i've had uh we're only have a staff of three myself as the purchasing manager we have a senior buyer and we have an office assistant the senior buyer has been filled uh one two three this is the fourth time so the the person that is now occupying the position came from downtown but i had three others that uh have left for various reasons before that and when you were downtown and awwu purchasing was being done from the municipal purchasing office how many people were responsible for that well it's not broken up by department workload downtown isn't broken up by department has broken up more of what your specialty is for instance i was a construction buyer downtown so i did all the construction contracts i was also uh tasked with doing some rfps complicated requests for proposals and i would be special projects but i did all the construction you have another person that does all the rfps you have somebody else that does commodity buying for them you have another person that buys all their computer supplies so that's how the workload was spread over several bodies yes and now it's done by three people specifically for aww three people we do it all right thank you thank thank you anyone else who'd like to testify and good evening madam chair assembly my name is brad alt and that's b-r-a-d-a-u-l-t i'd like to state first that a lot of people might ask what is my dog in the hunt here i'm not currently a resident of the city of anchorage however i have been a 35-year resident of the state of alaska and involved in the water and wastewater utility management arena for over 25 years both as an operator and then later as executive director of the alaska rural water association most recently i am the water and wastewater instructor at the alaska job corps center i've been involved with director primo and his staff for five years and training the workforce the upcoming workforce that's going to be needed in the coming years we all realize that we are experiencing the great gray out in terms of certified trained water and wastewater operators fundamentally the most fundamental thing that i see at uh discussion here is what is the purpose of this department awwu and when you understand the vulnerability that any community has when it comes to that one critical asset that could have the most negative impact should something go wrong you begin to realize the importance of a person in the position of director primo and his staff one mistake just simply one mistake could lead to catastrophic illness could lead to a devastation of the community both not only in public health but in public safety realizing that the crossover having adequate and reliable water is really fundamental to civilization fundamental to community living as a part of my background i've spent considerable years training and coaching fledgling utilities and best management practices how to organize your structure how to operate effectively with the income and adjusting rates or setting rates and how to uh basically communicate to your public the true cost of delivering water that true cost is best represented by professionals in the industry and not should not ever become subject to political leanings of a of an assembly body and no disrespect intended uh the priorities that must be uh demonstrated to the community uh have to be uh said and set out in science and practice and therefore easily or more readily justifiable to the community that's going to be tasked with paying their water bills and keeping that water going so um i would uh speak in opposition to uh to this proposal that uh board of directors remain intact thank you mr burch has a question well thank you brad for your testimony and uh also for your good work and and training the the people that are are taking those jobs i i guess one perspective i'd be interested in you know given your your statewide you know kind of overview and experience would uh you know this utility basically existed for a long time without an appointed board and i guess you know and i i guess this the sense is that it's somehow or another insulated from from political you know back and forth uh in the current structure that it it and that it wasn't prior to that i i guess i'm i i still struggle with uh uh you know i mean i think you've got good people there they're gonna do a good job irrespective of whether there's a board there or it's an assembly or a mayor or whether it's privately held or publicly held understood i'd just be interested in your perspective kind of on a statewide view i would speak in in this regard to the fact that as a fully financially regulated utility that when you have a board of directors that represent the profession as opposed to the uh to the current administration it lends to uh significant credibility when you are approaching the rca for rate structure they realize then that when you are asking for an increase uh in rates that they are justifiable and better defended uh by those who understand the true cost of of generating water so i think it's a credibility issue in terms of um you know regulating our costs as far as the state is concerned i i think just just to follow up on that point i think uh we haven't really done very well with the regulatory commission from from my i mean i think we've we got millions of dollars kind of hanging out there based on whether or not we can charge for contributed capital but uh um anyway i i do i would just say you know i would challenge anyone to step forward who has not had difficulties with regulatory commissions so um you know that being said i i think that this uh that this would be a mistake and uh to to repeal uh this so i thank you thank you very much thank you very much anyone else would like to testify yeah madam chair uh members of the assembly mr mayor my name is tim sullivan s-u-l-l-i-v-a and and i currently sit as the chair of the anchorage water and wastewater utility um i see what's significant to note here is that uh in all of these public hearings that have occurred with regards to repeal of titles 31 and 32 there's been one person in in favor of it everybody else has been opposed and i think that you really should take take take heart with that on april 8th of 2011 the anchorage assembly heard from members of the administration in a work session on the reasons that the administration officials supported assembly members flynn and johnston's proposed assembly ordinance 2011-24 to basically repeal title 31-32 neither of the utilities were invited to comment on the observations and regarding utility management and operations um at this time i'd like to respond to some of those uh some of those comments that were made and some of those observations were made by by the administration um statement title 3132 could exempt utilities from personnel rules in fact title 3132 describes a process for the board to recommend to the assembly personnel rules applicable to executive and non-ref employees only in fact section 31 3010 states the personnel rules and effective title iii shall remain applicable to utility employees until such time new personal rules are approved by the assembly which is how the utility currently operates uh second statement awo has not been effective at implementation of his personnel rules in spite of the process prescribed in title 31 in fact today neither the municipal attorney's office nor the employee relations department has acted upon the aww suggestions the draft rules were referred to the municipal attorney uh april 21st 2008 over three years ago and nothing's nothing happened from there change in personnel rules could lead to disparity in treatment of employees under personnel rules or an administration of union contracts fact aw agrees that it is cumbersome to have elements of collective bargaining agreements unique to an individual department if that agreement extends across departmental boundaries that is the case now for amea and local 367 contracts that is why able has complied with both amea and plumbers collective bargaining agreements as a result there are no grievances from amea or plumbers claiming disparity of treatment uh statement aww has a staff of seven employee services people for 286 employees compared to 20 employee relations employees for all of general government in fact awesome employee services division has the full-time equivalent of 3.75 people providing employee relations functions for 286 full-time equivalent positions across the utility one of those employees is dedicated to the implementation of utilities disadvantaged women's business enterprise compliance responsibilities a function not provided by the employee relations group and general government additionally the division houses a part-time courier safety officer and training officer none of these functions are provided by the employee relations group and general government on the other hand the 20 employee relations employees in general government are backed by additional technicians and administrations administrators providing support to human resource functions and other individual departments um can can you summarize i will there it was also mentioned that there were three communities that were contacted with regards to efficiencies that that they were developing for their communities corpus christi albuquerque and tacoma and in fact all of those communities had different than what was what was specified with regards to how their implementations and their efficiencies were were promulgated lastly um we certainly appreciate your support for our cause with regards to uh not repealing title 31 you do thank you one question so maybe you'll be able to get your other points out mr holman yeah mr solomon thank you um i'd like to hear if you're you're just addressing the three localities there that uh is there some specifics there that show that highlight to you the differences or the similarities there are there are mr human thank you very much through the chair um corpus christi maximal implementation is an example of effective consolidation of back office operations that's what was that's what you were told from the administration in fact it was already implemented many of the innovations that corpus christi is heralding in particular the integration of work order management with gis in fact a number of improvements being implemented at corpus christi are derived from applications pioneered at awoo through the use of a common outside third party vendor albuquerque was identified as an example of successful consolidation in fact the local water authority is not administered by the city of albuquerque in fact the state of new mexico ordered that water service for the albuquerque regional area be administered through an authority independent from city government to prevent the recurrence of previous political manipulation of the city water service and the third was tacoma fleet consolidation uh the consolidation of vehicle uh procurement maintenance was identified as a cost saving measure for tacoma a 2005 study projected cost savings were relatively related principally to extending the service life of vehicles by one year however the the city-owned uh water electric and rail utilities dictated that it should own and operate its own fleet and the tacoma public utilities which operates electric water and rail for the city under the direction of five member board participated in that study thank you thank you mr training anything else i certainly appreciate that mr trainee thank you very much uh problem sir uh approaches one one specific is is uh um with regards to approaches to accounting between municipal entities general government uses peoplesoft while mlmp uses powerplant naval uses excel additionally general government sees this as an area of high attrition and staff this was a statement made by the administration in fact awol uses a combination of tools including peoplesoft internally created web browser tools and excel to meet the requirements unique to ao's economically regulated business abra proposed new plant accounting software in his 2011 capital budget followed the mlmp model for the specific needs of a regulated utility but the project was deleted by the assembly however neither consolidation or new software tools will solve the problems of attrition which is response to longevity of the workforce and the work environment thank you mr promley a lot of comments about political whims using the utility and in water as a political tool i enjoy water i use water and i'm interested most people out there do use water so maybe not all customers of awu but in what situation could you conceive of is to which a political body would manipulate water to uh for a political game well it wouldn't be just water be water and sewer okay and waste water and uh it would be in in the form of rates uh you know we make recommendations uh actually the staff makes recommendations to us and we discuss uh rate increases or rate decreases whatever the case may be and in fact it could come to a political body and for political reasons because people have called and said we don't want our rates increased that rates would not be increased and then the health of the utility would suffer as a result okay thank you mr flynn mr sullivan perhaps i have uh forgotten the last three years and everything that we've done here we still approve your rates even today correct absolutely you do thank you absolutely you do thank you there are no further questions thank you very much anyone else like to testify hearing and seeing no one public hearing is closed on 13 a 13 a 2 and 14 a madam chair um i'm sorry miss johnson's been in the queue ms johnston yes i'd like to move the s version of 2011 s mrs gray jackson did you didn't mean to weigh in on that one did you know what i wanted to do madam chairs to move 2011 62. well i certainly you have the option to remove a substitute yeah yes but mrs johnston apparently has the motion on the floor at the moment right and the second mr training were you still the second okay who was the second for miss johnston mister thank you all right miss johnson you have the floor yes as you know this legislation has gone through a number of different approaches and i think we've we've tried to listen to both the mlmp and the awwu board if i if anybody's interested this says version is sitting there by the guard and basically what we've done with this version is we've maintained a board for awwu but we've done it in chapter four and what it is is the board of directors it has most all of the same same um mandates as it did in title 31 it's the directors or directors should be a member in good standing the alaska bar with experience the same cross section of directors the plan of the utilities capital improvement program and maintenance strategy and operations and make recommendations to the mayor plan the utilities operating budget and make recommendations to the mayor oversee creation of the utilities strategic plan and make recommendations to the mayor oversee creation utilities long-term fiscal plan and make recommendations to the mayor recommend tariff rates and fees for products and services provided by the utility to the mayor for approval by the assembly which is this is all being done at this point recommend appropriate reasonable tariff rules for the utility to the mayor and existing tariff rules approved by the regulatory commission of alaska as effective date establish procedures for review of formal and formal complaints from customers for appeals and decisions on such complaints within the parameters of section 8 and will recommend to the assembly revisions to the code that the board deems necessary or desirable for the efficient operation of the utilities or benefit of the customer i feel that that we've hit a a reasonable compromise um yes we are getting rid we're we're of chapter 31 and 32 but we've we haven't really done a lot to weaken the effect of the board that we understand is such a credible board and a good board for aww and i hope we can have your support thank you there's no one else in queue seeing no further debate please vote didn't i get it there and that is approved seven to four the next item before us is 13 b move to a proof and that item is before us is there discussion madam sheriff just real briefly this basically uh makes the conforming amendments to comply with the legislation we just approved all right if if we could hold the noise down it'd be appreciated thank you all right seeing no one else in queue please vote on 13b and that item is approved seven to four we are now at 13 c and um all of its subsets so i if i'd like a motion let's see are they all s versus the court are they all s versions no yeah they are no all right they already are all right i'd like to open the public hearing on 13c this is basically an ordinance requiring id check for the retail sale on service of alcohol beverages there are three versions of this the initial introductory one which covered all liquor say service and sales the second substitute which covered package liquor stores and a delayed action on bars and the third version which just deals with packaged liquor stores if anybody would like to speak to this please come forward richard braun again i like the looks of s1 if we have to choose one of these it shows a little wisdom i think compared to some of the other versions i think you found out it's just not so simple as the whole idea was in the first place [Music] um if maybe paul could uh illuminate us on uh all the rules that you've already got say for underage drinking and just how well are we doing preventing underage drinking did our past prom season for example show that we're we're doing a real good job on underage drinking or is it that we still have a problem the rules don't work there's too many loopholes probably i think the problem with this particular ordinance is the same thing if we can't solve underage drinking how are we going to solve this problem when we're talking about adults who can legally use some of these substances there's just too many loopholes too many conditions i don't see this thing succeeding at all it strikes me more as a loss of freedom for the average adult in this town with harassment over id checks that really aren't required if the if the owner of the establishments know you um can tell that you're not inebriated all the other things that can come up with this [Music] i just didn't see this all go away until we can solve underage drinking and prove the rules do work on preventing alcohol abuse so far i don't think rules really do work because we still have the same old problems it's always been prohibition didn't work our underage drinking rules don't work our dwi rules don't work people are still doing it all so an id check of some form or another here i think is just a waste of time [Music] i spoke i think last year when this first came up or whenever this first came up that there's just too many ways around it for this to be effective so i i don't see what we're going to accomplish for the effort and it's just a loss of freedom you know the degrees of freedom that you have as a citizen is just one less degree of freedom and what's i'd rather keep it than lose it for what we're going to accomplish with with any of these although s1 shows wisdom you guys realize that hey you can't just slap this on everybody and make it work there's just too many too many contingencies problems and loopholes so thank you thank you very much anyone else would like to testify can i go ahead my name is barbara pempek p-e-p-e-k and i'm from north star community council i am very much in favor of checking for ids i do not consider it onerous at all um i do drink uh when i bought some shoes about a month ago at nordstrom's they checked my id when you use a credit card in this town it's very normal for them to check an id so the idea that anybody would be all upset that they were asking to see an id for any reason is ridiculous to me i am in favor of um going all the way and checking it in bars and doing everything but i do understand that we did just vote on strictly the package stores and so i would be in favor of that uh limitation and i think that this is going to be a lot like the smoking situation where um people at first thought oh it would be terrible not to have smoking in restaurants anymore they'll go out of business and in fact it turned out to be a very good thing such that the bars then could be added into at a later time thank you thank you very much anyone else this is the standard correct side of you i spoke once before but that was on the previous uh the original one since this is a revised one can i speak again go ahead thank you [Music] a lot has been uh made of the law that is this not going to work there's too many loopholes whatever numerous people have said the same thing letters and editors same thing i'm going to have to interrupt you have to say your name again though pardon name please david almer u l m e r can anyone hear the assembly in the audience name me one law in the united states that works 100 of the time [Music] will stop anything no you can't how about god's law any god's laws that here you can't break no absolutely not that's you can break any law so that i feel is a weak argument it's because you can't get a perfect law that we should do away with it let's do away with all the laws also a lot has been mentioned about the 486 people is such a small number in anchorage that we're inconveniencing everybody else in anchorage because of 486 people if we had 486 bank robbers in anchorage the fbi would quadruple the size of their office here in anchorage if we had 486 known terrorists in anchorage cia would move their headquarters here and also there was a letter to the editor and i can't uh back it up because i didn't check into it but somebody wrote in that in the last five months there was 225 young adults under 21 that were prosecuted for not having uh for trying to buy alcohol here in anchorage in the last five months i can't back that up [Music] the with if you want to get in smaller numbers let's go with 19 people remember 911 19 people affected all of the united states probably all over the world 19 people who made laws for those 19 people how silly that was you want to get even smaller yet how about one remember that airplane that was coming in here to anchorage that korean airlines that they couldn't identify the air force scrambled their jets they had them up in the air downtown anchorage vacated everybody was scared one only one and you guys are saying 486 is not enough [Music] thank you thank you anyone else who'd like to testify hey uh my name is joseph nicoma brooks uh you know i think this is a wonderful idea because you know it uh emphasizes on the structure needed to put regulations in place you know being a younger generation myself you know i think it's important to have uh structure and well it's not really discipline you know it's discipline to an extent if you get disciplined in regards to this issue um let's see uh well i think it's a wonderful idea because you know uh you know i always got that feeling you know if they're not checking ids then you can you know just doll up your face and then pretend to be someone you're not and then get what you want that's all i got to say thank you very much good evening madam chair members of the assembly my name is sylvia i'm the director of increased char and i have two board members with me oops ed o'neill and jacomond and i'm briefly going to read to you what i emailed to you this this afternoon the proposed ordinance is too too wide in scope and i'm sorry to interrupt we can't hear you very well can't can you hear me better now yeah okay the proposed ordinance is far too wide in scope and has little to effort to reduce drunk driving the issue is to address sales to individuals whose driver's license have been breast drived based on restrictions since posed by the court of law a rest drive driver's license means that the individual is prohibited from consuming alcohol there are 486 rest striped drivers license in anchorage according to the 2010 census there's approximately 308 000 people in anchorage the individuals with restaurants license are two-tenths of one percent of our city's population there are less than three hundred chronic immigrants in our community about one-tenth of one percent of our population most well known to the package stores operators most of whom refuse to sell to the chronic public inebriates because of its alcohol content and because most package stores do not sell to the cenebriates mouthwash is their preferred drink of choice what is the proposed ordinance expect to accomplish and chris char believes that there has to be a better solution to the rest stripe situation a hundred percent id check would not reduce drunk driving or the other crimes that lead to address drive driver's license if a person has has a rest stripe license they would either show another source of id or find someone to purchase alcohol for them statistics on drunk driving show a continuing decline in both drunken driving arrests accidents that are alcohol related and deaths from drunk drivers there's a there's probably nothing the city can do to ever eliminate the problem entirely however our time energy and resources should be directed at talking at taking actions that actually accomplish to something and chris char and his many members stand ready willing and able to work with the city to address the problem but to find a proposed solution that works for all electronic monitoring is the answer to stopping a person from drinking alcohol electronic bracelets that monitors drinking and location anchorage has these bracelets in place and the state of alaska already uses them as well there are private companies in anchorage that already provides this type of service can i continue i'm going to wrap it up you could pass it on to one of the other gentlemen to finish reading you want to help the district again a perpetrator under this control cannot consume alcohol without the bracelet electronically informing a central monitoring agency that a violation has occurred the technology is relatively inexpensive and would be incurred by the perpetrator in order to successfully implement a program like this one many factors have to happen before implementation once a careful review once a careful thought out program is put together successful will follow thank you thank you mr burch has oh wait a minute yeah mr burch has a question excuse me i just had a question on the and i had uh have corresponded with the mr viewer on on on this particular subject and and it it it it appeals to me at a number of different levels but is is it this it's actually the state courts that apply the red stripe uh to a license that is also the state courts that step in and do the uh that would do the the monitoring well the rest right is through the state of the rest tribes are to the state of alaska department of motor vehicles there would be a state um issue license but it's a judge this court ordered court-ordered judgment so a court could actually or also order is there a law in place that would permit that so the judges have that latitude today well it's happening with other you know um perpetrators that do other things you know they have the ankle bracelet so this is the way that we're trying to go is towards that particular successful long-term solution that would work for everybody i don't think um if i had a rest stripe i'm not going to go to brown jug or any liquor store and show my res drive when i might have a regular id or a passport a source of id or even going into a restaurant or into a bar i'm not going to show it because the circumstances behind it i know that out of 486 rest tribes currently in anchorage we have already arrested 12 and that's because they just go in they show and civil penalty comes in and that's when we really get into that thank you thank you very much anyone else who'd like to testify my name is robert woolsey w-o-o-l-s-e-y i'm the general manager of the taproot uh the new taproot on spinard and just to kind of put some things in perspective i've been following this law pretty closely and so in the last couple months i've asked my employees to keep track how many red stripes do you come along we have a 100 id check at our at a restaurant bar and i tell all my servers every time someone comes in check their id and i ask them to keep track of that over the several months same with my security guard we have a security guard that comes on at seven o'clock so nobody comes in nobody leaves unless their id has been checked and i've asked them to keep track of how many of these red stripes they've come across the answer is one in the last two or three months so just to put things in perspective um another thing to put things in perspective is a good friend of mine has a red stripe on her license she's not a chronic immediate she got a dwi she's stupid obviously not the most responsible thing anybody's ever done but she did end up getting a dwi and she's got a red stripe and her last license it's her first dwi um she's never been to jail she's never broken a window when she's been drunk by no means a chronic inebriate but she's got a red stripe on her license so there's that also when she goes out to the bars she uses her passport just to let you guys know there's tons of ways around it and it's more than anything it's it's an inconvenience for a bar and a restaurant to deal with i mean i already put 100 i.t check at my place i'm a responsible general manager i want to make sure that no one leaves my restaurant that's drank too much i want to make sure they don't get over served i want to make sure i don't serve anybody age god forbid but um this particular law just the way it's it's worded and it's it's been reworked a couple times since just to go to be geared more towards just the packaging story just it's it's definitely not the way to go and it's i don't know i think it's pretty unproductive that's helped mr honeman has a question yes and actually mostly a comment i want to thank you for doing 100 id checks your establishment i think that is a very responsible thing for you to do as a business owner and particularly when you're dealing with potential minors or someone who may be uh in this case prohibited so and i'm congratulating you for catching the person on the red stripe i don't know if you followed the procedures because you have several penalties that you could collect as a result of it's like 1200 bucks or something that's a positive thing so uh thank you for your uh being a responsible business owner in the community so appreciate it mr burch i just curious sister what what's the duration of that uh the mark on the court ordered so as soon as she's you know she i guess apparently she's gotta do the whole dwi thing you're talk you're referring to the red stripe as far as i know um she has to do all the work she has to have the you know the blower in her car for a year and and pay tons of money you know and then i think once that off don't don't quote me on this by any means but i think once she's done all the work it's like a year or two you know and then i think that red stripe will come off okay thank you thank you very much yeah you're welcome anyone else good evening assembly members mayor i was here a few months ago my name is mark opergaard i had discussed with the assembly the missing available time for the kincaid motorsports park was given to john rada throughout the winter with no results i haven't had any input from mr rada to give you a quick overview of why i'm here uh mr odegaard i'm going to interrupt are you wanting to speak to the alcohol id issue no is that i didn't think so oh okay yeah um i thought it was open mic time incorrect you and i have talked and i'm i do want to get to your issue but i apologize you're gonna have to wait until we finish some other things first absolutely thank you sorry anybody who'd like this else to speak on the id for alcohol hearing and seeing no one public hearing and 13c is closed would you approve s1 madam chamber okay i'm going to in general try to recognize people who queue in first rather than verbally but mr trading was got that one actually first yes i did however that is before us now and mr trainee i'm going to let you speak to it first since you queued in thank you we've got an amendment for this one was passed out by department of law mr weirder did you guys want this one to be added into it it's an amendment to the s-1 version mr ritter was this from you yes sir of law through the chair mr trainee if the ins if the assembly is going to be passing that's one we would recommend okay we passed this one what i want to do is add this amendment to it i can read the whole thing madam chair if you've got a copy we can verify that that's where we're moving we all have copies i don't think it's necessary to read the whole thing but you could you read the headings so people know what okay the heading is mandatory identification check and retail sale of alcoholic beverages and generally there's a paragraph it ends with required by this section it's basically it for to deal with criminal penalties right it's amendment one section one page two lines thirty two four through forty two okay and was there a second to that second thank you would you like to speak to it further mr training just since the department law has given it to us if we do pass this one i want to make sure it's as correct as possible and i appreciate department of law doing it mr trainee the clerk wants clarification you did move the amendment didn't i yes we'd move the amendment i'm moving this and i said amendment all right we're discussing the amendment is there any further discussion on the amendment mr wheeler madam sheriff i might for the record i would like to add a few points on what this amendment's all about please first the department of law wanted to better clarify what the obligations are of a employee or agent of the licensee or the licensee himself or herself that they happen to be the one running the cash register in terms of what they're supposed to be checking for so that's clearly understood number two there was a reference in the s1 version to amc 145 but title 10 carries the same provision in it already with respect to the civil penalties so there was no need to jump to 145. we felt it was better to keep it within title 10. three because it's anticipated that this will be largely handled through civil citations we wanted to make sure there was a mechanism to handle those citations if the person who is cited wants to appeal and to do that we looked at two options one where they could go to the administrative hearing officer or two go to court court right out of the gate is not necessarily good options in terms of the resources and expense it takes to get to court and get that processed so in order to get it under the hearing officer's jurisdiction you need to either have an amendment to title 14 which we couldn't do under the scope of the title of this ordinance or you make reference to an administrative appeal process under amc 360. so we've done that here so that the administrative hearing officer can handle these civil citations if the person cited wants to appeal thank you miss tucker you all have any further comment you wanted to make no madam chair all right thank you mr honeman did you want to speak to the amendment not not to the amendment per se but to the matter okay i'll get back to you then mr star did you want to speak to the amendment yeah through the chair to mr wheeler in some situations now the civil penalties apply to to say an underage person enters a store that's oftentimes just the fact that they're underage um and the vendor can pursue civil penalties against them if a person showed up at a liquor store with no id is there a case to be made that they're actually violating the law the chair mr star not that i'm aware of unless you're under age this amendment doesn't sort of lend that authority to the vendor to say hey you've just tried to buy alcohol and you don't have a permit puts the vendor in an awkward spot i guess is what i'm trying to say is that does the civil penalties under chapter 10 go that far through the chair the civil penalty applies to the person who's responsible for making that id check so if it's a clerk or an employee or whoever else is running that counter they're responsible individually for that check so they would be the person to whom the citation can you refresh me now when you have an underage minor that comes into the store uh is that because of the fake id they're trying to use or or not what what's the mechanism and what chapter do we do that we don't do that under 10 then through the chair if you give me a minute i can check that thank you and i'll be happy with your answer in a minute if you don't mind um are you can we go ahead and vote on the amendment before you get your response or do you want to delay the vote on the amendment well i want to make sure that we don't have an overreaching authority here and that's my only interest is that i'm confused as to how the penalties are applied to somebody that provides an underage either they're underage in the store or they're underage by the presentation of a fake id and i guess i'm concerned now that we may have an opportunity for somebody to say i don't have an id and i'm in here trying to buy alcohol does it apply okay well you there's no one else in queue for the discussing the amendment so it appears to me we need to take a short at ease so solicit the purchase to attempt to purchase or to possess alcoholic beverages for a person under age 21 to enter a premise and to offer present a licensed or a document which is does not represent the true age of the person and for a person to refuse upon demand to produce id to a law enforcement officer i think that covers all of the 21 h21 provisions mr star if if somebody goes into the store and has no id be it they a minor does this strengthen those above categories or does it in your opinion kind of cloud the question that now the miner can just say hey i don't have an id i'm just not going to buy or does it encourage the miners now to try to roll the dice with no id or no fake id as another option and hope hope they don't get caught i guess that's my concern is does it does this actually strengthen anything of the above in your opinion it this importance and this amendment does not change the fact that someone can walk into a store of any age be asked for id and say they don't have it and walk out there's no there's no criminal offense attached to that event anything else mr stark all right there are three people in queue does anybody do any of the three of you want to speak to the amendment okay go ahead ms johnson yes in this amendment you have that violation of the code the licensee or the licensees employee or agent failing to conduct the mandatory identification check i have two questions one is in the past downtown we have passed a similar sort of conditional use on on the package stores down town if i'm correct not similar okay mr flynn shakes his hand um i guess i'm concerned about having this violation of the code go on to the licensees employee or agent when when i think it should be the the actual server should be the one that's held accountable why did we make it so inclusive mr wheeler the provision is actually personal to the individual who is to do the check this is written so that it's clear that that could be any number of people including the licensee themselves if they do it or their agent whether they're an employee or not or any employee who's supposed to do the check it's going to be a citation for that individual who should have done the check so it's the actual individual here you're not you're not reaching beyond that that is correct anything else no thank you all right anyone else on the amendment saying no one else is there any objection to the amendment saying no objection to the amendment the amendment is incorporated we're back to the main motion mr honeman yes and i make these comments um i'll try to be brief you know this issue came before this body well over a year ago then assembly person mike gutierrez had brought several concerns up from our part of town from the community councils in that area reference to packet stores really there were some other concerns in vague areas where reference a few of the establishments that also serve alcohol bars and the biggest concern that uh it was shared was that there just wasn't uh what appeared to be owner operator responsibility and uh they were simply asking could we put a provision in um to basically check for 100 id check because that may just be the deterrent just maybe the deterrent to keep people from making purchases when they shouldn't be now to summarize over a year later well over a year later there was an attempt by those in the package industry package stores industry and i lost brown jug and jar for trying to work out a compromise where in lieu of an ordinance in lieu of anything in written law that they would voluntarily go as an industry to the package stores and get 100 compliance in lieu of any mandated ordinance any law law restriction or requirement and that lasted all of about 45 to less than 50 60 days to put it that way and then things started falling apart and those who had agreement initially were not so i'm just kind of synopsizing some of the history here now here we've come before this after a ballot advisory question and i'll be it i attempted to make sure the battle language was changed so that it included all of the industry as a whole not just one segment i think it's discriminatory frankly that we single out one section of the industry and just in the package stores i think it should be applying to all points of sale of alcohol in our community and simply because i think it does work and it will work over time when just like the tobacco law analysis was earlier people aren't going to be happy people are going to complain and frankly there's so many red herrings have been flying across the this whole argument that it smells like the seattle pike place fish market and uh and i gotta tell you there is no 100 fix there is no one law that's going to be the answer or an antidote for this problem that we face in our community but i just happen to know in my heart i'm a law and order kind of guy and i've and i've been on the enforcement side of taking laws that someone else made and trying to apply them in the field and i know that from time to time that they haven't always worked now let me give an example of that right before my retirement in the outback incident and you probably don't recall but i was there eating dinner with my wife in uniform and three gang members came in and actually assaulted a a a victim who was trying to celebrate his graduation and one of the suspects the one i wrestled and had the longest fight with was 19 years old he was out on a felony conviction had an ankle monitor with alcohol restriction and was drunk now this somehow proposed put an ankle monitor on a person so that they won't go into a store or they'll know right right away that didn't happen it wasn't until two days later when i made contact with a monitoring company and their answer was well we we lost track of them we do see that there's monitoring there's alcohol on board but we saw that he also went to jail so you know not a big thing no one ever responded to the scene no one ever contacted authorities at all whatsoever referenced this guy now i'm just going to say this it's not going to be 100 percent fixed 66 67 percent of the voters said yeah we think we should go ahead and require this at package stores there was an attempt to make this an a across the board fairness to wear a service of alcohol in the city at all locations i'll relive i'll go back to what the voters the questions before the voters were as an advisory but i will say this i have i am been a very big fan of many many many peoples operators business owners and folks who represent the industry but i will not say this without with i say this with all literally and all seriousness i've been very disappointed in some of the folks that i've heard from and some of the reasonings or excuses i call it for not being a responsible owner we're simply asking you to be a part of the solution and try to help us to make this a safer community fifteen dollar id card versus i don't know what an ankle monitoring cost so that's my that's my points i urge approval of this package stores s1 version thank you chair mr trainee thank you madam chair i appreciate you bringing this one version forward that's what the voters asked us for when we brought this to them a 67 percent plus a little bit agreed on that voted i remember this body trying to deal with a pakistan that went into distingu i was mispronouncing the mall outside elmendorf remember we put restrictions on a package store there they had to have 100 id check and then they came back to us and said please don't do it to us because it's not fair this is fair this makes all package stores play by the same rules remember we had one guy come from south anchorage a while back he wanted to get a package store in south anchorage and he says i'll do 100 id checks don't worry about it we turned him down because we didn't want that location so he came back for another location we asked him are you still going to do 100 checks oh no i don't need to do that because now you're going to prove the place i'm going to this gives us an even playing field across the board everybody going to package store is going to be asked for an id so i tend to vote for this i hope you remember your constituents that voted for this and vote for it also thank you madam chair mr burch i guess my uh my concern is the fact that it it is focused on the 486 red striped licenses and i have been intrigued and have followed with interest the potential for the uh the new newer technologies the the ankle bracelet that has been referenced earlier that's come up in in testimony and and certainly in some of the communications we've had it just seems inherently to make more sense to single out the people who are a problem rather than the very large majority of folks that do not have a problem that said i had considered doing a sunset provision with this uh with our ordinance and offering that up uh with a contingent on the court systems adopting an ankle bracelet in lieu of a red stripe and talking during the intermission with the chief and and others it's my understanding that there are some uh uh technology uh shortcomings at this point uh that just make that probably not possible but i i certainly would uh uh you know push towards that and and like to pursue that of course it's going to be a larger playing field that's going to be something's going to have to happen at a statewide level but uh that said i think the s1 version that's brought forward this evening uh represents in large part that which was in front of the voters last election and uh i will be supporting it thank you seeing no one else in queue please oh there was somebody flashed on no all right please vote and that one passes ten to one the next item that i'm sure i missed who said that no i'm sure oh good i'd uh request an immediate reconsideration in urgent vote immediate reconsideration has been moved um please vote and that item and miss gray jackson voted in error is that correct mr jackson so immediate reconsideration fails all right the next item before us on the agenda is um the building code 13d this is ao 2011 4 and there are two versions three versions that's right the initial an s and an s one so if you'd like to speak to us on the building code revisions please come forward good evening madam chair members of the assembly and mr mayor my name is mark masteller m-a-s-t-e-l-l-e-r i'm the alaska director for cascadia green building council and i did submit a letter of april 21 that i assume you all got so i'm going to be summarizing that cascadia green building council is a proud chapter of the u.s green building council and the canada green building council we we do a lot of work advocating educating innovating around green building or high performance building in the in the commercial sector primarily i'm speaking tonight uh to support adoption of the 2009 international energy conservation codes when you deliberate on title 23. basically like i said i'll be summarizing my letter of april 21. i believe energy conservation and energy issues and are directly related to life health and safety and critical to the whole thing is that energy efficiency is the quickest cheapest way to improve our near-term energy security because buildings last a long time you have you have an opportunity to really encourage long-term savings for the taxpayer or encourage long-term waste and increasing costs aggressive energy codes work to reduce the tax burden to the building owners in this case the citizens energy codes also work to improve utility reliability create more comfortable and healthy indoor environment environments through improved air quality and reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions i want to read something real quickly from the cold climate housing research center they recently issued a policy report called alaska energy efficiency policy and program recommendations this is a quote the unifying theme in these recommendations is that energy efficiency measures can add up to a very significant energy resource we can implement these programs with very short lead times compared to the design permitting and constructs construction of major power plants the money we spend on efficiency investments goes to local businesses for labor and supplies the money that we save stays in our local economy and gets spent on other needs such as food education and recreation finally uh mayor sullivan has correctly highlighted the increasing fragility of our natural gas supply in this area and to repeat energy efficiency is the fastest and cheapest way to reduce energy consumption i urge you all to support including the 2009 iecc international energy conservation code uh amendments when you deliberate title 23. thank you folks thank you very much anyone else like to speak to this matter please come forward yes hi uh madam chair members of the assembly my name is blaise burkhardt uh first name is blase last name b-u-r-k-h-a-r-t i'm a principal architect of burkhart craft architects um testified last week at the public hearing for the building board and uh lifelong alaskan been here over 50 years and kind of grew up with the city i first heard of some of the proposals to eliminate both the sustainable design ordinance and the energy code recently and i'm currently under commission for two municipality of anchorage projects uh both one that is leed certified and one that is and actually both of them are applying the 2006 version of the energy code i find it a little troubling that i could be involved that level and i'm just now learning of the conflicts that i know you all have been wrestling with uh but nonetheless i did write a letter um to all of you that summarizes in some more detail some of my concerns i know that some of the testimony that you received written testimony so far from opponents who would like to see the energy code repealed i certainly respect them they're my colleagues happen to disagree with them i think some of the detail that's been provided in some of that testimony cloud's the bigger picture issue and to me i just look at it rather simply to me this is not about um whether or not government should stand you know should should take a role in mandating how a building gets done i generally am a uh conservative minded person but it doesn't stop me from understanding them we all come together and our community grows that the need for zoning you know takes place the fact that you could argue that the energy code is not a health safety welfare issue likewise we have landscaping ordinances to me is establishing a baseline for for energy conservation in our buildings an appropriate thing to do or not and i think it is appropriate and in fact if you choose not to adopt the energy code at least for commercial construction which is where my practice primarily lies you will have no baseline to even require roof insulation or wall insulation at all and i find it a little troubling that at the front end of our our winter season i can watch public uh service announcements asking people to conserve because we're running potentially dangerously low on natural gas and at the same time at the end of that same winter season we're debating whether or not we should have a baseline for general building performance i think the current energy code in terms of building envelope is not onerous there are i do agree with some of my colleagues opposing this adoption that one section of the five relative to lighting and power is onerous and i don't know why we wouldn't treat those troubling pieces like we do any other code adoption piece and study them by local amendment and make a a power or a or an energy code that is a right fit for our community and and meets our needs ms johnson has a question for you sir um were you at all involved in as far as title 23 in the code revision i was not i have been asked whether i would be willing to in the future okay um do you think that the current gas prices in the market as an architect would you design a building um with conservation in mind i mean do you think the market drives conservation well ultimately it would um but i think there's a bigger picture as well um i think that there's the market and what it's doing the you know cost effectiveness and viability and then there's is there a limited supply of this resource and what do we do if we use it all up so i think it's prudent to you know to take those steps so long as they aren't you know knocking the financial visa feasibility completely out of the water and i don't think that the the just in the building envelope pieces alone the basic wall roof insulation components in the energy code are essentially the standards we all practice by today they are not more owners than that there's a couple of places where they ask for a little more and i don't think that's added dramatically to the cost of the projects i've worked on so you would probably be doing it anyways no matter what and that is one of the arguments that some of the opponents have said we don't need a code we're already doing this well i made the statement to the building board that i spent a considerable part of my early career in this town working on projects upgrading some pretty bad buildings that were constructed in the heyday of the you know the 70s right but as a community i mean i i feel as a community we've matured beyond that and as a market we matured beyond that did you say that as an architect as you're hired well i would hope so and you mentioned you're doing one for the municipality with leed certification correct and do you are you comfortable with the lead certification in my letter i i wanted to focus primarily on the energy code because i have different levels of opinion on each i believe we should have a long-term view for sustainable design you know standard in our town but i would be the first to argue in my experience with the lead program that it's probably not the right fit for us and i've suggested i i i commend mr nassing or a summary that he's given you and i think it's in the exhibit b or perhaps one of the other staff memos that you know as that whole issue emerges there may be better options the reason i feel differently about the energy code is that absent doing anything we're trying to create our own if you will and look at what it's taken to get a zoning rewrite so we tend i mean we could say the same thing about our building code that we shouldn't adopt you know some of the arguments about how the agencies put together these codes and so forth are true of that code as well but we need a model that we can start with and amend to our needs locally one last question with the leed certification that's supposed to be in rewrite what in 2012 i'm not sure okay thank you mr honeman yeah mr burkhart i just want to thank you because i know that i've been to many community council meetings and and other meetings where you're you're making i guess the presentation to the community council the community reference uh like fire department i believe you're working on at least two of them right now and uh and i've always found you to be very professional very uh being able to explain in detail and answer a lot of the questions so i value your opinion and i think you said something i just wanted to clarify you're saying that you as since you've been in the industry and working through redevelopment and redesign you're finding that it's you're trying to correct problems that perhaps the code wasn't as stringent back when and now you're finding that that may be problematic for today because you're trying to make upgrades and make sure it meets current code is that is that a fair statement kind of um certainly that was true earlier on in my career i think in some ways as our as our community has grown we've sort of hit them you know gotten to them all um but i guess from my concern is it to me it's similar to the whole issue of building safety one could argue that because it's the standard and we've matured okay why do we need a building safety department because we're all gifted talented professionals doing the right thing anyway i don't see the problem with saying hey as a community we're concerned about this energy issue let's set a baseline let's make sure it's not onerous and everybody wins and then there isn't an issue if there's another boom and things get carried away and you know what happened in the in the heyday was growth was happening faster than anybody could check it or keep up with it no we don't have those problems today um have we corrected every building i can't say we have but it's not as if um i'd be lying to you if i was to say this is a common thing we deal with every day on older buildings it's you know it was at one point and i think over time we've hit a lot of them thank you thank you very much anyone else like to testify madam chair members of the assembly mr mayor my name is don mcclintock mcc l-i-n-t-o-c-k i'm here on uh tonight on behalf of potter creek development i'd like to speak to you specifically on one section and the international fire code you're adopted tonight it's a page 121 of the s1 version and 124 the original and s version and it's the amendments to section d-1071 with that basically this is the provision that provides if you have a development that has 30 or more dwelling units you need two access points it has two exceptions and this has been on the books actually for quite a while approximately a decade that i'm aware of one is if you have fire sprinklers and the other is if the fire chief determines that there's potential access through future development recently this exception has been interpreted to include not the interior roads that are within a development but to include the collector roads so this would mean for instance potter valley road which all of its little neighborhoods you pass through would all be counted through for that 30 dwelling unit limit that would mean that gerdwood and the next home being built in gerdwood would have to meet that test obviously it can go on on highland road eagle river road suck again glenn elps upper djarman in other words the change in interpretation of this code has created a policy issue because i do not think it's the intent of this body to create a moratorium on building we live in a topographically diverse environment we live next to the mountains many roads in fact can only go in one direction so actually i'm here to speak against all three versions that are printed in front of you because none of them go far enough the fundamental problem is the interpretation of what a fire apparatus access road is and we believe that a proper amendment to d1071 would include a redefinition that we're talking about the interior roads in other words if you haven't used development off collector road and you want to put more than 30 dwelling units on then fine have a secondary access or have fire sprinklers but don't count the aggregate of every developed along that collector road because it's an impossibility it can't be met and what happens when there's an impossibility is you get in consistent application of this requirement and that would be unfair to everybody we would urge this body to revisit the amendment of d-1071 and expand the exceptions to define a need for secondary access to only the interior roads and not the collector roads thank you mr burch you know i would like to thank you for uh for zeroing in on that that has been a long-standing concern of uh certainly uh ms johnson and myself in in south anchorage and i think uh to a larger extent uh uh perhaps even our eagle river contingent because uh uh when you when you start getting right down to it alaska is uh uh at the end of the road and uh in you know so you you kind of start zeroing in on neighborhoods you look at gerdwood and there's a single road into girdwood you look at a lot of our communities in south anchorage and it's the same problem and i think it is a question of interpretation i appreciate you bringing that specifics and hopefully we've got some specific language that we can amend to uh you know you know firm that up and and make sure we do not have a moratorium on building thank you thank you thank you very much thank you anyone else madam chair members of the assembly mayor my name is tyler loken i own and operate a small construction business i employ about 15 people we work in the residential and light commercial fields i oppose the adoption of the international energy conservation code the adoption would mean burdensome cost will jump true energy conservation is theoretical at best we can't tell the future what's all going to happen i'm concerned about energy conservation but using five tons of energy to to save one ton energy is is not energy conservation we've got to look at it as a whole it takes a lot of energy to constantly keep up with new regulation to make it to produce it to transport it and i think that needs to be taken into account um so i look at it as a whole not one specific point or area more cost to the customer theoretical energy savings that will take sometimes tens of years to pay back more regulation comes with more more watch power to watch it more government to track it [Music] and while big industry drives code and and kind of a green dream your constituents my customers we are burdened with a price that uh in in cases offers very little payback both financially and environmentally thank you mrs johnston yes do you do any building that has to use alaska housing finance yeah yes and no yes um because i was told this week that alaska housing finances actually incorporated in their their respects and their requirements for the 2009 um energy code and i was wondering if you as a builder were aware of that i am and and and you build accordingly uh if i if i'm going to build for last housing yes the previous speaker brought up the fact of of just the the building envelope and and when you build do you build for i mean what is your building envelope as far as insulation well it's based off the o6 that's where it stands right now uh those six states in a wall that there needs to be r19 there is a lot of you know move and and there's a lot of r21 that's going in walls so there are some changes uh i just across the board i just i kind of want to know where the curb is is going to stop with with constant change and updated regulation that's it's very costly but you currently build for r19 as well as opposed to r21 that is the baseline yes okay thank you mr trombley with alaska housing you said you do build for them what do you see the is there any way you could estimate the percentage increase in building for alaska housing which has a 2009 iacc as opposed to me who's going to go with the most you know 2006. that's going to definitely depend on a lot of different factors i mean to give you a an average would be be really tough we did there's some engineering firms in town that did run some model tests on uh code compliant this was a ten thousand square foot office building so it was not residential but significant cost increase payback was upwards of past 20 and plus years so thank you thank you very much anyone else good evening madam chair members of the assembly mr mayor my name is scott boney b-o-h-n-e i am a member of the building board and was asked to come on their behalf to talk a little bit about where we've gone through in the last few weeks uh the board does acknowledge that the iecc as written is imperfect especially regarding the electrical requirements that they are heavy and onerous we are currently underneath the 2006 iecc so we do have a code that is in place the building board recommended to take the 2009 iecc and send it back to committee to review the and make amendments to the code specifically regarding uh lighting and the power requirements but also possibly looking at some of the energy conservation requirements on thermal envelope uh the board did pass uh an amendment uh well past the codes coming forward to you as the 2006 iecc is currently amended basically as a placeholder with changed language forthcoming which would probably be in 2012. to answer one of ms johnson's earlier questions regarding energy design most local architects are designing responsibly and will design a building to last 50 years and has great energy conservation built into it however not all owners are really interested in stuff like that and quite often you've got possibly a big box store that is coming in they've got a five to seven year payoff on their buildings as i understand it energy conservation isn't real high on their list and you may be seeing roof values with thermal insulation as low as say 24 on the roof which [Music] works well in a very short time where you may want to flip that building but uh the building's going to last there for 50 years and though big box one may build that move out within a few years somebody else is going to come in and that building still has a 40 plus year life that we all have to be responsible for so i just wanted to bring that forth as uh part of you the answer that uh the question you had asked before and i'll remain available for questions thank you miss johnstone has one right now to follow up on that um so if i get understand this correctly you as a board have asked us to go to use the 2006 rating as a placeholder until we reviewed the code in 2012 is that what you're saying regarding only the iecc the rest of the model codes would uh we were we did recommend 2009 editions and and so and and not to amend because the electric lighting is your biggest issue right that is the biggest issue that has been brought to the attention of the board yes there's also some thermal but it's dwarfed to the concerns of the electrical requirements well where i'm concerned is is being the person that has sponsored actually that version is that you're telling me that that a big box store which wants to pay off within seven to ten years will that make a big difference at the 2006 versus the 2009 insulating envelope i don't know if it'll make a big difference but there is a difference between 2006 and 2009 uh thermal values and as i understand 2009's are a little bit higher right yeah i'm just kind of confused with your testimony because you're kind of you're kind of asking two different things here i'm being very careful uh representing the board and the board's wishes and just stating facts okay thank you well thank you madam chair um i've been kind of struggling with this one to the last couple of days because your board's recent decision to step back on the energy conservation code has caused a little kerfuffle in the industry as you may know um and what i'm hearing from you right now is it's specifically the lighting issues that that at this point have come to the fore regarding the energy conservation code is that correct that is correct okay when you go sit down would you i'm looking at it but i want to make sure i don't screw this up would you delineate which specific sections in 2360 are the ones that have caused concern you don't you can just bring it to me on paper after you sit down because i i'm kind of interested in moving forward the 2009 requirements of maybe putting placeholder language in those specific aspects and allow you guys a little more time to deliberate now we get that number i think don's got it which one 505. just 505. it's the only one okay not the exterior lighting or anything like that nothing i'm aware of not that i've heard it's been primarily the interior okay thank you very much excuse me sorry there was also some electrical code that you were concerned about it wasn't just the lighting no it's the lighting portion of that electrical energy part that's the energy conservation code no it's just assembly members i'm andre spinelli i work for spinel homes i'm also president of anchorage home builders and i'm also chair of the cchrc south central advisory committee i'm i'm in to green building i'm in favor of it i'm into energy conservation um i design a lot of houses i pretty much grew up building and designing homes i can tell you from the 2006 to the 2009 to the no code that we had before 2006 spinel homes energy standards will remain the same we build the hfc standard i participated on the iecc review committee and and we pretty much made it uh in alignment with hfc standards hfc there's two standards in the code there's a prescriptive method and a performance method the performance method uses computer software and modeling and you can pretty much play with the components you can put you know little to no insulation the walls put it all in the ceiling you know do whatever you want and just you get to a star rating and for for my houses i really i don't see a difference just kind of speaking in general i'm currently designing my own house and or my future house and i'm looking at super insulated and all the you know cooled stuff and low you know zero to low energy zero to net zero or close to net zero energy and the one thing i've i've figured out is basically comes down to adding a bunch of insulation before you get to you know replacing energy with renewables or whatever but you're at you're adding a ton of insulation and what i've kind of got to is i can always add that insulation to the outside of my building and people are doing it all over town there's tons of houses in college park or uh south edition that have little to no insulation and the most economic way they found is to actually you know blow foam in the attic or add foam to the exterior and recite it and when i look at my house i i don't see the payback i'm basically betting on gas prices doubling or tripling in order for me to get a five or eight year return on my investment and uh with something that i can always retrofit later i don't i don't know me for me personally if i'm going to make that choice the second thing in that thing is i can't actually afford to just go add 20 or 30 000 to my house you know and i have to get in a praise for that and will the appraiser see the value that i see or i just makes me feel good inside that i'm you know saving the planet or whatever um i don't mean to make fun of this situation i'm i believe in it but i i just don't know that it works and the other one last comment i wanted to make is hfc's been paying home buyers to upgrade their houses to five star plus the standard spinel homes house is a four star plus hfc has been paying 7 500 for you to upgrade to a five star plus home we charge seventy five hundred dollars for that upgrade the home buyer just has to get on a list and then they get the money right back i probably fifteen to twenty percent and that's pushing it that have actually chose that option and it's just because the upfront cost doesn't allow them to to get into that house thank you miss great jackson's a question thank you madam chair thank you for coming out this evening i'm sir anyway you said that you sat on the energy co committee yes did i hear that okay and so um so do you i wasn't real clear i mean i heard what you said you talked about expense but do you think that we should adopt a 2009 code or just leave it to leave the 2006 in place and i i deal with the permit department quite a bit right and if they had less work to do that would be great i think that would alleviate a lot of their problems and the way i feel at least in housing i can't speak to commercial construction i don't know the ins and outs of it but housing i know really well uh i don't think it's going to change one way or the other so my question is this okay do you think that we should adopt the 2009 code or should we leave 2006 in place i'm that's the question yeah i'll answer that very directly um if you're gonna keep the energy code i would just adopt the current one i don't remember about the 2009 code then yeah okay i'd be in favor of eliminating it all together and that's it also ask if there's anybody in administration that sat on this energy committee that i can ask the same question to madam chair that's okay right i'm just curious uh yes my name is ross nofsinger is that on the committee yes i did sit on the committee so the same question goes to you do you think we should adopt a 2009 code or should we leave 2006 in place if so why not why or why not thank you madam chair myself and my staff would be for adopting the 2009 code mainly just to maintain the continuity and the fact that we'll be under all 2009 codes versus will be under 2006 energy in 2009 everything else which creates confusion for architects engineers and and whatnot thank you anything else was great jackson thank you mr honeman well i i think that pretty much sums it up but uh mr smelly i think thank you for i know from your family i believe uh working with homes and building homes in this community and and uh i thank you for take i think if i'm not mistaken i think your home building has been somewhat of a standard and setting a standard throughout the community for a while so i'm just giving you some strokes in that regard but at the same time i i did my own home project recently myself in the last couple of years and i know that i was kind of surprised to see even during the process it took a longer than i thought so the code changed a bit and i was held a little higher standard and of course i went farther than i planned initially so i was i can't remember the phrase of it i think level three remodel comes to mind if that makes any sense to you but basically i had to bring everything up to current code and and i was glad to do it and frankly i made some extra investments it cost me a few more dollars to do it but i wanted to make sure that i exceeded the minimums i mean frankly that's my perspective and do you think the 2006 code is below and i guess that might question go back the reasoning for the 2009 code particularly in the area of energy is it uh for either one of you is the 2009 code i guess the standard that everybody else is using around the country is and that's why we're moving to adopt because that that seems to be the theme to me there's much difference as far what how it applies to residential and housing i don't think that there's a lot of difference and that brings up kind of a a big idea in the industry of skipping code cycles to save the municipality time and money okay anything else thank you mr flynn thank you madam chair andre good to see you where's your new home going to be when you finally build it uh west anchorage turn again bad move bad move we like having you downtown andre thank you madam chair you come to the east as well thank you sir no more other questions thank you anyone else my name is don dwiggins d-w-i-g-g-i-n-s i'm an architect licensed since 75 here but i've written a couple of letters to the assembly within the packets but tonight i'm representing the building owners and managers association which is represent represents 28 million square feet of anchorage about a third of the assessed valuation of anchorage i'd like to talk first very briefly about the elevator i the ifc 607.5 i think that that should be taken out imposing an average of fifteen thousand dollar cost on these owners of buildings with these old elevators i hope you know you're writing an invoice or sending a bill to all these people to upgrade elevators when they've been working fine for all these years and they shouldn't have to do these additional upgrades obviously i'm here primarily on to talk about the iecc i don't think it's needed at all i think it should be taken out completely the ahfc has adopted the 2009 so basically every house in alaska that is getting financing through hfc is already being required to comply with it i don't um i don't particularly like the 09 version uh it's it's gone another step above the o6 in terms of its envelope requirements it exceeds in my opinion the best practices of the industry basically you've got an industry that knows what to do and now we have a code that says not only are you going to do that we're going to take it a notch higher and the only reason that code is necessary is to force people to do stuff that's not in the in the best interest of the the economy of the economics of these buildings um it's we got along fine without it up until 2008 when they adopted the 2006 for the first time prior to that we had envelope uh requirements coming out of ashrae since the early 70s if i remember right so it's not like we were don't have a baseline that we can't fall back on the 2006 code which is currently in force really hasn't been enforced very much so it's kind of a new standard unto itself and i think that the unintended consequences of all these energy costs are not known so we really haven't felt the cost impacts of all these things the iecc is not a life safety code has nothing to do with it what kind of light bulb you put in your in your building has nothing to do with whether you're gonna die in a fire it's a ridiculous uh requirement it's an insult to every design professional in alaska we're already using the best practices to design our buildings and i guess if you want to say that there there's people sneaking business buildings through the building department uh with without complying that's one thing that's more of a comment about the building department than the design profession um in my opinion do i get an extra two minutes as a group no sir i'm sorry but you can summarize okay well mr trainee wants to help you well i i just wanna i'll i'll i'll leave it at that i've got a whole bunch of other things to say but i'll comment on the summary of the economic effects um the public sector will have increasing costs in increased costs for everything you build schools municipal buildings everything is going to cost more to save this money you're going to spend a lot of money to save you have what i refer to as dollar station nickels on this energy stuff because you're going to spend a lot of money you're never going to get back on the energy savings you've got to retrain your inspection staff you've got additional review processes they're going to have to get spreadsheets and new software to do these evaluations of course all that gets passed through the private sector by increased fees and so on the increase of the private sectors all the additional cost costs for the additional inspections which they're going to pass through a huge cost to the owners for all these elevator upgrades and i would comment too on the sprinklers for assisted living you're basically going to put anybody that's on a well out of business by not by requiring sprinklers in those so i'll just wait for questions mr train anything further mr johnson so when you currently design a building what our factory do you usually have in the walls and in the ceilings i mean the roof it depends on the kind of building but i i do primarily commercial i haven't designed a house in many years and i'm asking this as a commercial architect whatever the mechanical engineer tells me the the envelope requires it's uh probably our 19 in the walls r20 something like that are 38 on the roof and do you when you begin a design of a building are you looking at sort of are you looking at balancing out conservation and design of course it's i haven't i've yet to have a client come in and say i want to do a really energy inefficient building i want to i want you to waste energy and do the really bad stuff you use t12 lights and all this kind of stuff we always design to the most economically beneficial system that's available out there if if leds were economical we'll be using those instead of t5s or tas i mean every time the technology changes we adapt immediately as soon as the market permits it and and do you find anything in the 2009 code that is makes is very impractical right now as far as building for energy efficiency honestly i haven't compared the 06 to the 09 on a on a word by word basis but i understand that the 09 has higher envelope values i mean when they talk about r45s and things like that on the roof that's a significant increase and if you were to go back and if you did an analysis and said okay i've got to put two more inches of insulation on a roof for instance it takes 60 years to pay that back because it costs so much for the insulation and you don't get that much benefit once you get to a certain point at if you doubled it you're not going to get that much improvement so there's a point of diminishing returns on this energy stuff and every year they pass a new one they say well it was good last time let's just crank it another 30 percent well it's already the point where the paybacks are longer than the life of the building and a lot of the systems we're putting in them not to mention the fact that the technologies that are available to us are changing so fast that what we do today is going to be obsolete in five years and it won't it'll never pay back okay thank you mr trombley you've been doing this in 75 you said uh-huh have you noticed that is it government regulation or is it private industry that has driven standards my my question to rephrase it would be this is that doing this since 1975 would you say that well it would be just that would rephrase this new rephrase is it market driven and the second part would be if the regulations are so great why does it have to be regulated why wouldn't somebody automatically want to do it well when i first moved here the fha minimum property standards were the gospel and then they changed it to some other standard and then they went to ash race 90 something or other and so we've been we've always had a baseline out there in the marketplace just to protect us against the if you'll forgive this the the carpetbaggers that come in and don't put foundations under the buildings and things like that so there's there's a there's a validity to having a baseline but having it's so defined that you have to have a table i'm i i remember moving here going to the fourth avenue theater and looking at the murals on the wall and seeing you know giant locomotives and ships and planes and all this kind of stuff and the last in spirit and how we could be the bigger and best and go go grow and now it's like we gotta count one light for one watt per square foot on our on our office buildings what happened to ourselves where where did we lose our our spirit i mean this is ridiculous we can't conserve ourselves into prosperity we've got we've got to push back someday and say enough is enough where does common sense come into play here and where does the the economy of what we're doing uh happen i mean a lot of these things that they're asking us to do just because a technology exists they're saying you must use it because it'll save energy well what if it costs more than the the energy you'll save over the life of the building that's that's foolish investment so what you're what you're saying is that the 2009 iecc will make things more complex and will make them more expensive yes [Music] thank you no more questions anyone else would like to speak [Music] chair lady oseander members of the assembly mayor sullivan can you hear me all right good my name is boyd morgenthaler m-o-r-g-e-n-t-h-a-l-e-r i'm a professional mechanical engineer who's been practicing here in anchorage for 35 years now i'm here tonight to encourage you to completely eliminate the international energy code the 2006 2009 no code i believe that the energy code is not good public public policy it does not protect life health or provide safety it has very little impact on energy use and it is not based on realistic economics the reason i say it doesn't have that has a little impact on energy is is relatively easy to understand if you think about it every year we replace about one percent of the buildings in anchorage and the proponents of the energy codes say that we might save 30 percent energy on these new buildings but as i can testify every one of these architects in the room would give you just about all of that 30 percent anyway so the marketplace will provide most of that and at best we might save maybe less than ten percent of one percent of the energy used in buildings per year well over a ten-year period of time that's one percent of the energy but in a 10-year period of time our population is going to grow 10 percent so there's no way of getting around the fact we need more energy so we can't conserve our way into energy to solve the energy problem and the energy code is not going to do that for us so the problem then you start facing you focus on the energy code itself and it's concerned about energy but as you've heard it's not focused on the cost of construction and it's the cost of construction that we're all concerned about it's money we're concerned about we all remember the oil embargo of 1970s one day we were paying 25 cents a gallon for gas and then we were paying 35 cents and then we were paying a buck well that was not an energy problem that was a money problem and that's what we have today we have plenty of energy it's here it's available it's just too expensive it's a money problem if we don't allow owners to focus on the money problem we fail them thank you thank you there appear to be no questions thank you thank you anyone else who'd like to speak see madam chair assembly members mr mayor my name is steve fino i'd also like to address the uh international energy conservation code component of title 23. could you hold a minute and spell your last name sure t-h-e-n-o thank you i'm also a practicing mechanical engineer here in anchorage i've been doing so for over 30 years i'm a strong advocate of energy efficiency and energy conservation i would i'm also a strong advocate of life cycle cost based decision making and informed decision making i would encourage the municipality to advocate uh for energy conservation energy efficiency long-term sustainability and planning design and decision making relative to public projects i would also encourage the municipality to support the public in this endeavor by raising awareness on the issues and making available to them the tools to make good informed uh decisions relative to the same i would not specifically advocate adopting a specific or prescriptive energy code and the reason i wouldn't do that is i don't think that adopting a specific energy code takes into account or allows you to consider first cost energy costs and long-term operating costs in the decision making on a specific building project or specific system the codes in my view were really developed primarily to address public safety and not really to address kind of the broader performance issues of buildings per se i think alaskans have done a good job over the years of making good energy efficiency and energy conservation decisions and i think they'll continue to make good informed decisions using a life cycle cost based decision making good energy modeling and good considerations of future trends and energy costs and energy costs and energy supplies without the need for a specific energy code so that's what i'd offer thanks thank you very much wait a minute sir just a minute mr star has a question you speak clearly and i appreciate that you're a mechanical engineer i am yes when i want to propose to my clients in a building scenario the difference between say an r19 or an r21 or even higher value perhaps in the exterior of the walls you can do that you can you can say you know if if you go to 19 and 21 it's all science but now i'm faced with the factor that i have to take my my insulated panel wall from a three inch foam four to a four inch and so how do you how do you do that i mean in in clarity so that you can spell it out there and believe me i've tried to do it it's not as easy as it sounds right well if you're gonna model the performance of building and look at any particular segment of a building construction you have to understand that the building taken as a whole is a pretty dynamic model so you could invest a lot of money and increase the r value of a wall from say r21 or r24 d r30 or even larger but if a large component of that building envelope is actually consists of glazing or a large component the building envelope is really south facing glazing that south facing glazing is designed to take advantage of the solar energy sources then the increase in the insulation value on that opaque section of wall probably didn't provide any significant payback uh for the additional costs you undertook but we can model those costs and the performance of the building uh very specifically usually the um the unknown factor that goes into comes into play there really is the long-term energy cost and so we often do sensitivity analysis where we'll model the building starting with a baseline best practices then we'll model different thicknesses of wall insulation and we'll compare that to scenarios of what future energy pricing might do and from that point also was that there may be other things that make more sense to do and sort of leave it up to the industry if you will and is that where your industry's at are you guys getting pretty smart in this town on on that yes absolutely and i think we've been doing that actually for a long time to consider all the options in developing that that ultimate building designed to keep the life cycle cost at the absolute minimum yeah is business good right now or is it slow business is good actually thank you thank you anyone else like to speak hi my name is jason gamache g-a-m-a-c-h-e you've probably seen my state my face before a few times for better for worse and i've written you all some uh some letters and emails and i appreciate those of you who've taken the time to read that for those of you who've already read my email i'm not going to go in a lot of time regurgitating that here publicly but i would just like to second support for uh adopting a baseline energy code and and please if you have any any hesitation to to defer to your code officials that's why that's why we have them in place to make these type of uh informed decisions about how we practice our business i'm i'm a practicing licensed architect here in anchorage clearly i represent a younger generation i plan to be here for a very very long time i plan to be building energy efficient buildings for my community for my neighbors for my children as well we do need energy security and i would like to make sure the lights stay on for my children and that i can afford to heat their homes i am represented with a risk to my clients that i'm not willing to put them in and in that case i feel that it's our responsibility as a community to build the best possible built environment we can and through government or or local legislation that helps guide us through that process i would certainly be willing to do so repealing the code all together would be a disaster frankly i am very much in support of adopting it and i wouldn't be opposed to amending it in any way that was particularly supportive to our community i'm not here for myself i'm here for the betterment of my community from my family and your family as well to the idea of this being a non-life safety issue i think is ridiculous frankly it's about sustaining life as our community i've heard the argument that adding extra structural support to our building is an added cost ada accessibility and ansi code is an added cost and not necessarily a life safety cost but i would never never advocate for removing either of those from our local building codes our buildings need to be accessible they need to be structurally sound because of our particularly given environment and they need to be energy efficient alaska excuse me the united states uses more energy than anyone else in the world alaska uses twice the national uh average per capita that means we use more energy than anyone else in the entire globe we're not bad people we're not we're not building bad buildings we just have an environment that's extremely difficult and demanding and we need to make sure that our our buildings all maintain a baseline and that we're able to improve on that in the future thank you mr holman has a question sure thank you for your your comments and i look forward to many years you're working in the industry as well um here in alaska in anchorage being a little selfish here but um you know you heard the argument first of all have you been either invited or requested to be on any of the committees or commissions to to give input not locally but i do represent alaska nationally and internationally in fact okay um and you've heard some of the arguments of you know whether or not it's cost prohibitive or cost effective or whatever what do you say is i mean is it is it all about the dollars and sensors that does it at some point in time have to be something that you know you talk about i guess you could say the survivability or sustainability of a building for a period of years but if you build something at the minimum maybe that's all you get but if i mean i use that the same analogy on the pipeline and if you just benign neglect and do no maintenance or no upgrades the darn thing's going to fall apart on you anyway and everybody knows that going in but you extend that life don't you by actually adding two or making us something a little bit more than that that's absolutely correct when we when we design a building for an owner particularly a public owner many of my projects are public buildings you're talking about life longevity of a building how can you how can you design something that's durable and sustainable that can uh extend the lifestyle of that public funding we have to be very sort of conservative and fiscally responsive with public funding for buildings so by extending the lifespan and making it a more sustainable more durable building with more energy because frankly we don't know what energy is going to be like in the future i mean i could be i could be dead wrong it could it could go completely south but i be very frank and honest with you it's probably going to trend upward so by extending the longevity of that building particularly for a public building that we know as an owner is going to be around a very long time and i'm going to have to be me my wife you guys everybody else is going to have to be paying for i would certainly advocate for that as well thank you thank you sir thank you anyone else who'd like to testify regan seeing no one oh holy caring is closed mr flynn you're first in queue thank you madam chair i'd like to move uh the s version of ao2011-4 and there's mr trump were you the second he moved s not s1 the difference is the s1 the s is the 2009 energy code the s1 is the 2006 energy code okay mr flint you have the floor thank you madam chair i'd like to begin with amendment i know we have several others on page 139 lines two through eight mr flynn the clerk i'll get a written copy you know the drill i know the drill i've been drilled um following requirements on line two remove all material and replace page number again please 139 lines two through eight following requirements remove the following material and uh insert the word reserved and the idea behind this we have a second place second there is a i guess an impassioned discussion over whether we should have an energy conservation code i tend to fall on believing we should and if we should should it be consistent with the other code sections i tend to believe we should however i am conscious of the concerns related to this specific provision that were revealed to us by the committee reviewing this and would like to give them the opportunity to revisit this specific section um there are two people in queue are you speaking to the amendment is johnson to the amendment yeah mr honeman to the amendment no to the overall seeing no one in queue for the amendment is is there objection to the amendment saying no objection the amendment is incorporated and mr flynn we're waiting for the hard copy coming your way all right i'm chairman miss johnston oh i'm sorry mr weaver could mr flynn clarify again which section he's amending mr flynn sorry page 139 lines two through eight that's section 23.60.505.5 while we're i want to interject at this point that to the audience and to my fellow assembly members this is an extremely challenging document to deal with we never received the actual code itself we basically are dealing with a uh document that's incorporated by reference and we're dealing with uh literature or sections that we're dealing after they've been deleted so i am going to express some leniency in motions when they're made in terms of exactly where they go or exactly where they don't go because of the difficulty of dealing with this material i heard pretty passionate conversation from staff that every amendment has implications for other sections and so basically if you are general and not specific your amendment will be accepted by the chair all right with that mr weaver do you now know the section on the amendment yes we do um would you like to make there are implications with some of these that um mr nassinger would probably speak to all right i would really request that you put your name in the queue so i can call on you and know if you want to speak yes ma'am all right i since you didn't do that this one has already been approved but i will allow you to speak to it if you would like okay it's section 505's interior lighting power requirements what this local amendment does is it takes a section out of the um this local amendment is in both the 2006 and 2009 versions but it's different in each version in 2006 the code committee basically said that um the the um the lighting power requirements are too restrictive in the energy code and what that was is it would limited electrical engineer who's who's designing lighting for a room to a certain amount of watts per square foot say like into the mic sir it would say like um you cannot go over two watts per square foot when you design your lighting system and basically it limits them from over lighting a room and and what the committee did at that time was they figured it was going to be too restrictive it would you know it was totally new concept for anchorage so they allowed a 50 fudge factor they basically if it if it was 2 watts per square foot was the limit you could multiply it by 1.5 so it would allow engineers to design to 3 watts per square foot now in the 2009 version the 2009 code committee thought that all right we can tighten this up a little bit so they reduced that 150 percent down to 125 percent so there's only 100 or 25 increase on on the code um baseline and then they put a sunset clause in there that engine that in 2012 it goes away completely meaning that electrical engineers would have to meet the code baseline so that's what that means that's that gives engineers more latitude in and laying out the lighting design for a room it gives them more flexibility in terms of selecting light fixtures they can select less efficient light fixtures when lighting a room they can put more light in the room than what the energy code itself would allow so does that clarify it any questions mr flynn the the purpose was to allow you to take another look at that and having it the language i gave you reserved as i give you the opportunity okay okay that was my goal so okay i'm sure we'll hear from you again right thank you all right miss johnston you're next yes i have some amendments that i've passed out and um i suppose we'll go film one at a time are there copies of the amendments available for people in the audience if they'd like copies right now okay so go ahead mr okay um the first one is the men's section 23.15.426.3 and other relevant citations referencing residential care and assisted living facilities to add language exempting small assisted living facilities which is five or fewer residents from automatic sprinkler systems requirement iso move and madam chair just for those following along that's on page 57 of the s version okay miss johnson would you like to speak to it this is um this is something that you and i have both discussed as far as some of the smaller residential care facilities a lot of them in in our district are on well and septic and it would be extremely difficult and expensive for them to have sprinkler systems and we feel it's overkill ms greg jackson thank you madam chair i remember lots of discussion on this subject during a work session and as far as i'm concerned and i respect the fact that you both have constituents on wells but you cannot put a price on life you just simply can't do that and with that said i'd like to hear the administration's response on this amendment thank you madam chair mr weaver or mr nostinger whoever i guess one of the issues with well and septic is is if an assisted living home is on well or septic that means they're in a rural area where there's no fire water there's no fire hydrants out in the street to fight a fire additionally there the the roads could be somewhat questionable it's good they're going to have a longer firefighter response time so i guess our argument would be is that they actually need the sprinkler even more than say an assisted living facility that's when within the anchorage bowl proper anything else was great jackson no thank you madam chair thank you mr honeman on this amendment yeah i just was um checking and i'm not not to disrespect miss johnson but the 8 700 is cost about and i'm curious as to where that number came from and can someone from the administration answer is that is that a reasonable cost or is that a ballpark figure i guess i don't know where you got the numbers that ms johnson uh we got those numbers from the industry um back when we were working on these amendments a year ago or so and so this the numbers that are on this amendment is actually something provided from the administration i guess through numbers that you re administration the code committee has received these numbers from the industry okay and i don't know is this can i talk i don't know from the fire department's perspective what what's your ruling on reading on this uh thank you mr holman through the chair we were concerned about this provision primarily because the folks were talking about are incapable of self-rescue we really need to describe for the audience and the and the assembly that the facilities that we're talking about here these folks are in beds they they can't even get up to go to the restroom some of these folks cannot stand up at all they might be there for palliative care they're going to to within in their life or they're just very critically injured so um i i inspect these buildings and i'll go in a building that might be two or three stories tall with five or six or seven or more what you're proposing to do is say these ones with five people in beds that cannot even stand up on their own they have a single caregiver there and it's typically not the homeowner that is not capable of carrying even one of them out and that building gets becomes uh on fire it's it's just a it's it's ridiculous to think that those folks will be able to get out on their own so the provision in the code uh the code committee actually relaxed the native code language the native code language said if you had one person in that condition you had to sprinkle it the code committee we believe pretty wisely said you ought to be able to care for your two parents who are incapable self-rescue and not have to sprinkle your home we agreed with that we thought that was a wise approach but when you hit three now remember we're talking about homes here but these are businesses these are commercial operations that are operating out of homes for profit some of them for a lot of profit five people incapable of self-rescue one person they're caring for them the building is on fire and those people suffer and die horrible deaths it's it's absolutely unrealistic to do it fire departments opposed to it thank you yes that wasn't the cue for fire um how many people have died because this hasn't been in effect in anchorage um yeah we're not aware of any fire deaths in anchorage we are aware of two fire deaths in fairbanks some 20 years ago and that's when they instituted a requirement in fairbanks so my correct saying that there's been no deaths in anchorage because this hasn't been in effect no i wouldn't say that i don't know that fact for an answer but i would not say definitely that's not the cause we have had fire deaths luckily for us we haven't had any well we have had some this year but not due to uh als assisted living facilities okay thanks james just a quick question for you again it was your parents what would your answer this issue be think they should be sprinkled or just don't worry about it thank you mr trainee through the chair absolutely they should be sprinkled if they were incapable of self-rescue i wouldn't want to leave my mom at home alone with a caregiver not related to the family who couldn't carry them out of the out of the home and and to follow up uh mr trombley's question we did have a home fatality here about two years ago and it there was a window problem but it was an elderly couple and the the the man got the wife out i mean it choked you up he got his wife out the window he couldn't get out he was just not capable of getting out that window those folks could walk these folks are in bed guys they're they're not even able to get up and use the restroom and the the ones that can get up and move we're not proposing regulating those we're not even proposing regulating existing homes this is only for new structures it makes no sense to take this out of the code thank you thankfully thank you thank you madam shirt um james according to the notes that we have with this amendment it mentions that current code requires sufficient staff to evacuate each resident within three minutes if there's no sprinklers is that your interpretation as well that that is correct mr flynn through the chair uh we we do timed evacuation drills on the facilities that we inspect and if they can't meet the this this issue about being incapable of self evacuation is scientific it's not something that i just look and say well they don't look like they can get out we time them if they can get out of the building in three minutes they fall in one category if they're over three minutes they fall in another if they're over five they fall on another and if they fall into that highest category we classify them as an institutional occupancy and again we're talking about three to five people here incapable of self-rescue and in your inspections have you encountered homes where they where there was not sufficient staffing to get people who were non-ambulatory out of the structure within three minutes have you found violations of that section yes mr flynn um it's i will say it's typical and i don't believe i'm exaggerating it is pretty typical for folks to use a home for this purpose and then leave a single caretaker there and it's my experience that the single caretaker is not a someone who is built to firemen carry someone out of a building it is somebody who is probably uh going to just be able to get themselves out you know a fire starts in a building moves very very rapidly if you've watched the videos it's it's not like the movies it really isn't time to crawl through the smoke and grab somebody and drag them out in the family possessions you have minutes to get out five people in beds there's just no way and these homes are also complicated because some of the folks are ambulatory and some are not so they put a chair lift on a stair you've seen these things that fold out the fire department really doesn't like those because they get in the way of the stretcher so there's those things in the way there's stairs in the way they're these are homes they're not institutional facilities thank you very much for the perspective the residences at the end of the driveway that only have one way into the neighborhood they're embedded a lot of these as you say are homes they're embedded back into neighborhoods plan developments but if they only have one way in no matter what they have as this code is now going to be presented if they only have one way into that development they're going to get a sprinkler system no matter what is that is that true through the chair again this is the issue of the second means of access right 30 or more it's a little bit more complicated than that well it is admiring for sure sir and that's where it's not so simple to say you know you can prove up on it or you can have 1500 gallons of water my street's dead end out there we have embedded homes and this is a class society that we live in it'd be wonderful to put all these folks into those fire perspective and those sprinkler system homes with the immediate response and be wonderful to have in some cases fire hydrants out in those areas but we don't this is the problem that we have is you're going to force every one of those folks that want to consider that business development to take care of our senior population out of there so we've got these linked developments and i appreciate your passion that you speak but i've got to think about how my community is going to develop from here on forward especially as an aging community i do not want my elderly folks to move and my folks don't live here perhaps but others do and they're aging out and if we say hey look if you go into assisted living out in our community it's going to be x because we have to do all of this we have to balance that that's my challenge point right now so but the answer is if they go into a residential neighborhood and they're embedded into a community it doesn't matter what the response time is there's one way into that development you're going to put a sprinkler system on them if we do this well we're mixing two issues here we are but they're interlinked you know they are so the the sprinkler issue and the assisted living really uh has no bearing on whether or not there's more than 30 units in that development it could be in um an area that's got five ways in five ways out and they don't require sprinklers for any reason these are specifically required because of the occupancy type and the statement that has also been made about the cost of sprinkling you have to have this giant tank and all these things this is a sprinkler system type called a 13r or 13d uh it's not the same sprinkler system that you see in this building full camera doesn't have the same density so you're not necessarily talking about the same type of riser backflow prevention all those things it's a different system it's not as costly right and it still provides that level of safety i want to keep the business model open for as many of these folks that want to provide that level of care to us we have a housing shortage now that we can't we can't take care of that so that's my discussion to to how that conversation of yours went was that it's very passionate there's very lot of passion in there but we also have the class society and the inability to do some of the stuff based on our rural nature and that's that's my constituent basis speaking so thanks for your comments all right so so the fire sprinkler system in the in the homes this is being turned into sort of an emotional issue now uh when we start taking it to the case of your own parents and stuff like that but if it's such a large issue and it's so important why are you exempting existing structures because what's to say that instead of building a new structure i'm just going to go open up a home in an existing structure when if it's such a large issue wouldn't you just mandate it and everything in in every assisted living home through the chair um the code development process starts at the national and international level and industry level folks and there's lots of builders there a building owners and managers group which mr wiggins is a part of is as part of that group developers they argue and fight these things out for years before the code is published in this book that you see the thick book so some things are retroactive and some things are for new structures currently in the code there's only two types of sprinklers only one type of sprinkler systems that are retroactive and that's for a highly industrial dangerous process that we don't actually have here in anchorage these other things are not retroactive so in my experience and looking at the way i look at it which is admittedly very conservative i would probably say they need to be retroactive but that that part is not my decision that comes through the national level and then we don't want to take away the work that these code committees have done they've worked for a year on this process private development folks it i think it's specious for us to just gather and say that we think even for me to say i i think it should be a retroactive requirement these have been very carefully thought out and and i think to not have it retroactive is probably part of part of that argument well to be honest with you i don't think it should be in there anyways but but i just i just it just frustrates me beyond belief when we hear things like you can't put a price on life and you know there's no intellectual honesty here because it's in existing structures but we're not i mean not interesting structures but in new structures i don't think it should be in there at all but to make the argument and to make an emotional argument out of it when you're not going to deal with it in its entirety i think i think is wrong either it should be everything or shouldn't be in anything and frankly i don't think it should be in there at all i i can't follow thank you man i'll just draw okay amendment number two in chapter 23.75 elevator controls to extend timeline for compliance with the emergency recall and in-car operation regulation extend compliance to give elevators with a raise of 75 feet or more 10 years to comply in elevators with a raise of 25 to 75 feet 14 years to comply we heard from public testimony tonight the cost of this and we've been i've been quite familiar with this for the number of of constituents um existing language gives five years for elevators with a raise of 75 feet and seven years for those with a raise of 25 to 75 feet the modernization is approximately 45 000 per hydraulic elevator and 100 to 150 000 per traction elevator miss gray jackson thank you madam chair um ms johnson thank you very much for uh having a reason below each one of your amendments and you have a statement here that you just repeated that says there have been no known problems with existing elevators do you know that for sure number one and number two wasn't there a couple a couple years ago an issue with jc penney's and also what i heard recently there was an issue with an elevator at the john thomas building i think a couple of weeks ago thank you madam chair either the administration or miss johnson johnson do you want to respond you you're looking at me like you're i had trouble with the i couldn't understand your last one what'd you say the john thomas building on third avenue okay there was an issue i think a couple of weeks ago with somebody that had an accident it wasn't hurt terribly bad and i don't know all the details but it was an elevator issue okay and then i'm not there i might have been out of town thank you one of the aspects of this is what i've understood from code enforcement was that that they feel that the elevators might catch on fire without this retrofit um and um i haven't heard of that happening but i'd be sure to you know i'd be happy to hear from the administration ms johnson threw the chair up there's there's two provisions here we're talking about with elevators one is emergency recall and the other is a sprinkler head in the pit so the what the emergency recall issue is about the the elevator is tied to the fire alarm so when the fire alarm activates we have heat sensors at each floor what we don't want is the elevator typically the elevator recalls to the first floor we don't want the elevator recalling to the first floor if that's where the fire is and we don't want the elevator doors opening and having the fire come in and get you with the doors open because it's very quick it's very hot so that's what the elevator recall issue is about the pit in the sprinkler the sprinkler head in the pit has to do with the space underneath the elevator that fills up with the garbage and cigarette butts and gum wrappers and all the things that most of us never see but the elevator inspectors see on a regular basis with the addition of all the hydraulic fluids that run the elevator so you've got these combustible liquids and combustibles in the elevator pit and that's why the head we want the head in the pit how often are elevators inspected i have to refer that to the building department oh ideally speaking once every two years but um with staffing limitations they have a pretty tough time keeping up i just i just wondering as far as how long it would take for that trash to to actually collect in the bottom of the elevator pit um do we know of any cases where miss albee great jackson brought up two cases of two elevators would this have made a difference with either one of those i'm not familiar with those cases i couldn't respond to that mr anything else miss mr honeman right and and perhaps mr gray addressed this earlier i know that you said the code committees and such has spent over a year looking into this but the number uh that strikes me and i and i'm certainly not um i'm looking at the dollar figures and i'm i'm not going to ignore the fact that there are some extra extreme costs particularly getting a hundred thousand dollar range the seven to five to seven years it's in the existing uh proposed amendment um and what is the numbers where do they come up with the five to seven years i mean is that would it make a difference if if it were say like eight to ten years versus five to seven or is it it's just a number to me but what is the reasoning or justification for that number your correct search just a number that the code committee came up with and there's probably not a whole lot of magic to that thank you mr starr well isn't the the upgrade requirement tied into several other building systems including the firesis smoke detectors and the ductwork and all the other improvements so when we limit it to saying we're just going to deal with the elevators to deal with the elevators to get the new technology to dial in you have to go after the other systems and so you know you've got your building owner has to deal with several things of components that are truly costly measurable so you know when we talk about the the emergency recall can you just modify an elevator with emergency recall and not tie it into in today's modern technology that's the elevator people tell me is they can't do it they have to upgrade both systems so you're saying they have to put in a new fire alarm system in order to upgrade the elevator recall um that's news to me i haven't heard that well you can call jeff at otis and he'll tell you what what he knows from his technicians and his ability to do it that's what he told me when i was doing my homework on the issue mr stara through the chair there are cases where you do have to upgrade the fire alarm system that that's absolutely correct it's not always required but some of these systems that talk to the elevator and talk to the fire alarm system are are very complicated so an older alarm panel may not be able to make that elevator do the things it needs to do and there are also hardware upgrades to the elevator that may be required so i i think it's absolutely true to say that there are cases where the whole fire alarm system will have to be upgraded and those are probably the high-end estimates that that you're hearing about with that said it it sounds like the administration is not terribly opposed to extending the time frame uh that that was proposed by the building board ms johnston sorry i didn't realize how that had that on but i do want to say with this amendment that this would become effective as the effective date of the code as we pass it mr flynn yeah you know the building i work in is a little bit older i believe it was the first high-rise construction after 64 quake and it's been around long enough that i worked on it 20 years ago but uh mr otis and company have been over doing some work on it for the last i don't know three weeks no big deal to me i work on the third floor i walk all the time but but for those who um this would inconvenience uh you know people who aren't as ambulatory or have to go to a higher floor i recognize that giving them time to comply with this is probably a good idea mr honeman madam chair i'd like to propose a friendly amendment if possible make her to adjust this i have no problems with an amendment to extend the time frame but just add three to the factor of the original existing proposal so instead of seven and fourteen make it uh eight and ten i'm sorry yeah eight and ten um the clerk says she reads it's 10 and 14 now and so what are you suggesting the uh the proposal i believe was to make it seven to fourteen from five to five to seven existing language gives five years for elevators with the rise of seventy five seven years for those the proposed amendment by ms johnson goes from seven to fourteen my proposal would my front amendment to would be to adjust that by a factor three so instead of five it would read eight and instead of seven it would read ten all right is there a second to that there appears to be no second sir back to the main amendment miss great jackson do you want to thank you associate i um just want to address miss um johnson's question in regard to the elevator accident i mentioned at the thomas building because i just got a tax on it if that's okay right um okay the elevator didn't level out when it stopped on the first floor and the person who was on it walked out and tripped hitting her head on the bookshelf she needed wait a second she needed lots of stitches blood was all over the place and this was a couple of weeks ago thank you madam chair thank you is there any further discussion on this amendment see none please vote okay this amendment passes nine to two we're back to the main motion ms johnson you want to continue yes okay my third amendment is on amendment 23.45 d-1071 and it begins at one or two family dwelling residential developments amended by adding three additional exemptions these exceptions shall not require the installation of a approved automatic sprinkler systems or a secondary access road the number of dwelling units within the multiple developments connected by access street or peripheral streets defined by 21.75.035 or any road with a collector or greatest status should not be aggregated to determine whether separate approved fire apparatus road is required would you like to speak to that miss johnson well what we're doing here is we're addressing some of the concerns that mr mcclintock brought up we have these issues in both the upper hillside and i think you have a monega river we have them in gerdwood and we need to um i want to address that i so anyways that's this is we have three amendments that will be addressing the secondary access and development requirements that's great jackson thank you madam chair i would like to hear from the fire chief and probably the fire marshal on these on this amended actually at all of these amendments thank you madam chair sir um i don't care who goes first thank you yes ma'am through the chair ms jackson um i have i just received these tonight the three amendments and they actually conflict with the amen with what's in the fire code now in 2000 in d107 the it came in that's the year that it came in in 2000 one or two family dwelling residential developments developments of one or two family dwellings where the number of dwelling units exceeds 30 shall be provided with separate and approved fire apparatus access roads and shall meet the requirement of section d104.3 that was put in due to firefighters being killed in par other parts of the country not here in alaska but for one way in and one way out that was in 2000 in 2003 after the builders and folks got involved there were some exceptions that were put in uh exception one where there are 30 dwelling units on a single public or private apparatus access road and all dwelling units are equipped throughout with an approved automatic sprinkler system in accordance with section 903.3 0.1.1 and it continues with the fire section with the code section that was put in there as an alternative to help out so basically if you want to use a i'll give you an example potter valley road that goes up on the south part of town potter valley road there's a road that goes up there's only one way in and one way out that is correct in 2004 a developer approached the firefight the fire department and said hey we need we need to do something here what can we do well they pointed out the code section if you want to continue to build up here either build an access road or put the sprinklers in the developer agreed to do the sprinklers and they put it on the plat notes you know they did what they could the developer even went to try to get a road built with the state to get a second access road built but what happened was the platte note wasn't red or wasn't enforced because it was a single-family home building said you know what you guys are single-family home we don't really look at this they didn't pass it over to fire and the houses got built more houses got built so we addressed it in 2004 and we've addressed it again in 2007 when i became the fire marshal and then here we are addressing it again and i want to just tell you one thing that the previous fire chief chief goodrich told me when we when i became the fire marshal he said look building code's based on science you know they use measures and physics and all that the fire code is based on death people die because of what's what hadn't been in the fire code and some people will say well jeepers you know we've got one one way ins and one way outs all over the place stuck again heights highland mountain road that's true but we try to correct our mistakes in march 25th 1911 146 people were killed in the triangle shirt fire because they weren't adhering to building codes and they were treating people badly we don't do that anymore we do it correctly now and to change the code and the other two amendments they and i would actually ask address mr wheeler to give us his insight because it seems to fight with the main part of the code so that's my two cents but the fire marshal actually has been working diligently with building and he's been doing this for quite a while so i'll let you finish in there well i just want to make a really quick comment actually your comments were more than two cents in my opinion i live in a subdivision where it was built in 72 and there's only one way in and one way out and you know everything you had to say it makes sense frankly you know you made a comment that there are firefighters killed because of this issue but not here in alaska does that make a difference no ma'am it doesn't i just want i didn't want you all to think that i was trying to say that we had this happen in alaska but also remember that it's not just the firefighters going in it's the egress the people coming out the evacuation right right right thank you mr honeman well it's been probably about two years ago now but i believe there was a retired police lieutenant whose house burnt to the ground in spite of the best efforts of afd and brought up a tanker and it was up off botanical heights or way up there off the hillside i could say i wouldn't call it upper hillside but it was definitely off the south 40. and i recall that was a one-way end one way out although that i believe there was a loop that exited out if you if you zigged and zagged and jigged and jogged but uh you know i i know that for sure that that uh if you ask him he would love to have a sprinkler system in his house that night and because he had a perfectly good well it was operational and i don't know what would have happened if uh if he could have kept the fire uh get kept the power on if the fire hadn't shorted out because i believe the fire actually started an electrical short but if the power stayed on and the pump kept pumping water i would suspect that he would have taken that fire sprinkler system over over not and mind you they had to build a new house and he had to haggle with his insurance and some people might say well at least he made it out alive and they barely did the house was uh that was some folks so i i i guess my baseline question to you chief and fire marshal is that is a does this amendment make sense is that to the fire marshal to the fire marshal thank you mr honeman through the chair we we don't support the amendment we don't believe it makes sense and and and i i don't think again i apologize to uh mr trombley because i i do uh make an argument that that is pretty emotional i i apologize for trying to do that um in in my job we do have to pull bodies out of fires we sometimes we trip over people when we are when we're doing arson fire investigations because we didn't know they were there it can become very emotional it's it's it's difficult work uh like every other work that everybody does everybody's got some difficulty in the work this issue what we're talking about is a fire on the hillside again uh eagle river the eagle river valley we're talking about the fire in an area with no hydrants no fire water one road and the example the chief is the potter valley road about 110 homes maybe 140 or so all of those folks are trying to flee that wildfire that's spreading across the hillside and to add to this we have had a spate of attempted wildland fires just in the last two weeks in fact we got a call from apd that they had some kids in custody that were throwing molotov cocktails into these some of these fields out near these wild this is called the wildland interface so the fires on the hillside the fires in eagle river we have no fire suppression water up there to fight it with you have these 130 homes everybody's got two or three cars they're all pouring to come off the hillside we're trying to send a tanker up there and an engine and we we just got the one road and everybody's coming out so what what the fire department has got planned for this is another work group and i know you hate to hear about work groups but there are some solutions that have been proposed for these existing roads that predate unification in the municipality we think we can solve the problem but honestly you know forgive the pun but throwing the baby out with the bath water is is not the right way to do it on this one a box canyon with one road in and no sprinkled homes and no way for our apparatus to get there and no way for the folks to get out because the fire spread across the road uh is is just not a solution mr birch life is filled with risk and uh you know i think when you when you move farther away from the fire station and just to to through the chair to the uh the fire marshal now does is potter valley is they have hydrants up there no no hydrants okay because i i'm in valley view which is uh right off of o'malley we have hydrants and we have a couple hundred thousand gallons 250 000 gallons of water storage um i i guess the question the question i would like to uh want to board madam chair can we have the chief and other people in the audience not debating while some of the members are asking questions yeah it would be very helpful if you just give responses to the questions please thank you the the the impact is is is is significant and if you start looking at a golden view and obviously the concerns that we've had with wildfire out there and and recognizing our single point access uh gerdwood as uh my cohort in south anchorage mentioned uh the gerdwood road basically that's one one lane road uh and you know i i guess my question would be has the city you know through the planning office have you coordinated with them to to assess the uh the impact that this would have on residential property owners because i i submit that there's a whole lot of people that have invest invested a lot of money over a long period of time waiting to build their dream home and a remote location on you know somewhere outside of uh in the municipality uh and outside the core uh service area and you know it'd be very challenging to all of a sudden i mean i think it impact tax tax revenues because all of a sudden the value of a piece of land that you can't utilize to build a home on is is is going to be significant and is is that impact been assessed at all mr birch through the chair um we have not done an analysis of those individual circumstances but i the thing we need to uh address on that is that the development that predicated this amendment uh is not in the circumstance of gerdwood or in the circumstance of stuck again this this situation has not been brought to folks that are developing in those in those circumstances the development that this was predicated on uh it has been noticed multiple times that the road's got to go in after the next development and it's after the next development so we're at the point now where where we don't uh we're at the point now where we don't have any other solution on that development for the other developments that predate unification the municipality because if we mix all of these things together it gets very complicated uh stucco road gerdwood and and eagle river road we have what we think is a pretty good solution for those areas but we don't want to develop that into code language and throw it on you tonight without meeting with the developers without meeting with community councils of folks in those areas we think we have a good solution for that and and i don't want to bore you with all the details i shared it with ms osander on the phone uh yesterday or today but we're talking about some areas of refuge where folks can get away from the fire let the engines get in if they can't get out the road they've got an area where they can go to gerdwood we're talking about maybe the airfield uh there's a stucco road we've also got an airfield that we could use for an area of refuge so we think we have a way within those existing subdivisions to accommodate this but a subdivision that's been planted since 2003 when this is in the code really doesn't fall into that it falls into the agreements that were made under though under the code that was in effect at the time i wouldn't make a clarification here mr gray i you said that this is predicated on a particular development that hasn't been stated in debate miss johnson it was this predicated on a particular development okay thank you i just want to clarify that miss johnson anything else i see no one else in queue is there anyone else that would like to speak madam sheriff mr wheeler sorry go ahead a little slow on the button um two things one this is numbered amendment number three but because the s version was moved you have number three already in there which refers to the wildlands code and the s1 version deletes the wildlands code uh reference that's not just a numbering issue yeah and and we're maybe the numbering isn't right we've been trying to keep these general if that would be i guess the point is to make sure that you understand there's a numbering issue in the wildlands code is in the s version that you have currently in front of you so that's number one number two this amendment refers to dwelling units within multiple developments and i don't know if developments is defined i couldn't find it in any of the local code amendments that are currently in our code i don't know if it's in the published building codes but the assembly might want to speak to what they and what is intended or the sponsor may want to speak to what is a development under this provision so there's some understanding of what areas are going to be aggregated or cannot be aggregated okay are we ready to vote on this or miss johnson yes as a general amendment um remembering i think we can save developments i'm a little i i'm comfortable with that that language because i'm just thinking throughout anchorage you have multiple develop developments that are done by different developers connecting and i don't understand your your issue with that term mr wheeler would it be helpful to ask mr weaver how he would interpret it within those staff depart the department i don't know if that's a solution or not here question is the meaning of developments mr weaver multiple developments excuse me well madam i'm sure members of assembly could be interpreted many different ways okay so you think it's problematic too it is problematic okay thank you sir ms johnson do you want to postpone or do you want to vote okay the motion the the one that's numbered number three is the one we're voting on right now and that amendment passes seven to four my next go ahead my next amendment and we i have it listed here is amendment number four but let's have it as a general amendment a secondary access road should not be required if it is determined by the city engineer that construction of such a road cannot practically be built because of significant obstacles such as topographical conditions public lands such as dedicated parks or other public lands with restricted ass access or other insurmountable obstacles that the city engineer finds to exist preventing construction of a secondary access road ms johnson that was seconded by mr burch all right thank you um would you like to speak to it ms johnson i think it's pretty well self-explanatory um i think we've even mentioned some of those roads um tonight thank you that's great jackson thank you madam chair again i'd like to hear from the fire chief on this amendment thank you um the fire department does not support this amendment based on everything i told you before and what the code the code is in place was in place since 2007 and nationally looked at looked at over 11 years recognize that it's important to have it and to put that put this on a department planner to say that you can't build a road there i just don't we don't support it thank you thank you madam chair mr honeman i'd like to uh propose a friendly amendment to this amendment and would require if is determined by the city engineer and the fire marshal is that acceptable to the maker of the motion ms johnston no or yes no she's not accepting as friendly would you like to just make it as an amendment gentle reminder but i'm sure there's no such thing as a friendly amendment it's okay to make an amendment then okay all right so you've made an amendment and it's been seconded to add the words and fire marshall is that correct that was great after the word city engineer by the city engineer and fire marshal and fire marshal all right is everybody clear on the amendment discussion on that it was seconded by mr trump training seeing no discussion is there objection to incorporation of that amendment all right put it on the on and that one fails five to six all right we're back to the motion amendment as in its original form mr trombley miss johnson again um yes uh the city attorney municipal attorney reminded me that it should be determined by the municipal engineer not city engineer would there be objection to changing the word city to municipal seeing no objection that change is made all right miss johnson anything else anyone else on this please vote on amendment four and that one passes seven to four miss johnston your last one my last one is number five on your sheet the secondary access shall be deemed to exist if one or more existing interior streets in a subdivision is connected to an existing right-of-way and mr trombley were you the second okay would you like to speak to that miss johnson um no it's just i as i'm still fixing the same types of problems and looking for ways of [Applause] developing access ms gray jackson thank you madam chair again i'd like to hear the fire chief's position on this amendment thank you madam chair either with the far oh i'm sorry mr hall she asked specifically for you sir i apologize i was talking to the city manager once again we have we oppose this and uh all of these amendments we oppose for based on everything i told you and based on the 11 years of the review by the people that do the fire codes anything else was great is mr weaver you wanted ma'am chairman um members of some i just want to um have the assembly understand what this amendment does basically it says if you have paper platted dedications of roads not constructed that that that would be adequate for access and it's obviously not is there any further discussion mr wheeler madam chair when i read that provision it seems to me that it completely consumes the requirement for secondary access because if you haven't one street which every subdivision has at least one street then you don't need secondary access under any situation so unless i'm missing something here this would pretty much eliminate any need to look at any other provision in regards to secondary access because every development would have at least the one road is there any further discussion seeing none please vote and that amendment fails are there any additional amendments mr star this is under the fire code as well 2345 1106.3 it's a local amendment basically i just want to change the fuel tank uh give us the site the clerk didn't get it i don't know which page you're on i'm using the s1 at 120 of uh 221. 24 what 23.45 23.45 1106.3 and for the information about amendment chair that's on page 123 of the s version thank you starting at line 7. it's restricting the fuel tank sizes my amendment would say uh online uh what patrick what line is the the 250 gallon 110 same as this one i'd like to modify line 10 to what it is now 500 gallons second would you like to speak to that mr stern no essentially there's a there's a very very good number of uh fuel tanks already that are greater than 250 gallon size throughout using the private it also is is about 500 gallons is is not a not a huge tank it's also the level that you start to get your fuel breaks on the bulk deliveries and again most of these aircraft uh sometimes you feel them if they take 100 gallons 250 gallons is is hardly enough to get out of town with some of these aircraft so i'd urge support on that it'll make the piling community be quiet thank you mr burch did you want to speak to that amendment is there anyone who'd like to speak to that amendment seeing no one okay the second was mr trombley it appears did they yeah they did use their buttons okay could and do you have it in do you need it in writing are you ready if you could just write that out mr start would be helpful okay that one passed unanimously either mr burch got another amendment okay see on page one line 29 page one of the 20201-4s where it says 2360 international energy conservation code i would replace 2009 edition with 2006 and ask that the staff make the associate associated modifications behind that that are necessary could i make a suggestion and maybe i could have some help for the administration wouldn't would this thing be would his intent of this motion be impacted the same way if he just moved to substitute the s version my concern is all the additional changes that mr nausinger put in to make the o6 correlate can do you mind if i ask that question mr mr burch the intent is basically to uh to avoid the update of the uh uh of the energy conservation code to the o9 edition basically revert to that yeah i understand that what mr nassinger did though was he he pointed out in the s version s1 version there it wasn't quite as simple as that uh well it would be my intent to make that uh motion on line 29 of page one and have the corresponding revisions necessary to accommodate uh those those aspects and that's one uh incorporated by intent i see okay and was there a second all right that item is before you miss great jackson would you like to speak to it thank you madam chair i'd just like to hear um from the administration on this proposed amendment thank you madam chair on behalf of the fire department we we haven't had a chance to analyze this one yet i didn't didn't know that this was coming up uh this uh uh pardon me uh we're on the energy code i'm sorry stripe comments alright um i i guess if there were to if this amendment were to pass we could correct the s version i mean is that what you're asking is how technically difficult would it be no no that's not what i'm asking what i'm asking is what's your um position on this amendment oh i would not support this position because i i failed to see any substantial logic behind it to be quite honest with you it's having worked with both the 2006 and 2009 versions for commercial construction there's really relatively little different between the two the the most substantial difference actually has to do with our local amendment we have on lighting where where we reduce we reduce the fudge factor basically in the 09 version over the 06 so basically the most substantial difference for commercial construction actually has to do with the local amendment we have so and then other than that um the the residential the significance of the residential changes were clearly laid out in in your exhibit b which would basically pull the municipality of anchorage in line with ahfc for consistency and there was testimony on the lighting which we already removed exactly okay yeah okay well thank you very much thank you madam chair thank you mr burch i would just encourage uh support for this modification i think we've had ample testimony and and certainly a tremendous amount of of email communication and and concern voice by many in the building owner and management uh arena and the in the design and construction community that uh this is really overreaching uh that it does uh adversely impact and usurp some of the ownership uh opportunities that people would have uh i know we've and i i just think it's the right thing to do and would encourage an affirmative vote thank you mr hall yeah i i guess i really need a clarification here if if i'm correct if we drop if we adopt 2009 there are no exemptions if we adopt 2006 than existing buildings are exempt am i correct in that um currently on in the 2006 local amendments there's an exemption under the mechanical portion and the electrical portion not under envelope compliance but just under the mechanical requirements and the electrical requirements that mechanical and electrical systems would not have to comply with the energy code when you're renovating an existing building and the 2009 code committee chose to drop those amendments after further reflection feeling they weren't we're really not that onerous mr hall are you satisfied do you need any further clarification no you know i been relatively quiet through this entire thing and uh the thing that amazes me is we have conversations about this is only 8700 this is only this this is only that and when you get down to the end of the day i'm one of those individuals that a number of years ago was trying to find a residential care to put my father into a father who didn't happen to have any insurance to cover the cost of it and um we keep adding uh a few hundred here and a few hundred there and the first thing you know i i understand that uh my dad may and my dad was in a in a residential care that wasn't sprinklered it was an extremely nice place but it was still six thousand a month but it just gets to the time where um you know they're not in residential care they're staying in a home uh because nobody can afford to get any kind of care for them and there's a huge difference in 2006 and 2009 in regards to uh to cost and we eventually get to the place that we just price individuals individuals have been able to get that kind of care as well as the same thing in commercial properties we again eventually get to the to the point where the price is just too great for people to be able to pay so that's that's a real concern of mine seeing no one else in queue please vote on mr burch's amendment two and that passes six to five are there any additional amendments and mr foot oh he's he's getting us okay are there any additional amendments at this time all right we're at the main motion as amended madam sheriff i make clear given the last amendment i guess that would eliminate the amendment that i had made previously this section so as we're cleaning this all up please note that my amendment shouldn't be as interpreted as getting rid of the 150 fudge factor and we'll just live with that as the way it is thank you actually i was going to make a suggestion to the body and that is since we're dealing with a very complex document um would you be willing to allow this to go back so that the folks have a chance to fix it all right well it's just a suggestion it's just a suggestion okay with that the main motion as amended is before us please vote that one passed nine to two i've asked mr michaelis to tell us what our must-do items are because of the time okay all right mr michaelis has requested that we deal with item d and f first could i have a motion to amend the agenda to reflect is that objection hearing none um i'm sorry what was the motion to amend the enf next i'm sorry not to amend to reorder the agenda just do which ones d delta and f thank you franken delta and um the intent on delta this is the hillcrest is to just let postpone indefinitely at this time i'd like to open the public hearing on uh ao49 this i'm sorry all night night 119 to about this is ratifying executive order renaming hillcrest circle and hillcrest place in anchorage to city view circle is there anyone who'd like to speak to that with the understanding it's probably going to be killed coming forward i'm here from uh hellcrest drive and this particular one was on the other end is how crest circle there's hillcrest circle drive and place and uh we came in to the assembly chambers and we are asking that it be killed and then we'll regroup and do it again and the administration agrees with you anyone else hearing and seeing no one and that was seconded by mr trombley is that correct all right is there objection to miss miss drummond you're in queue did you want to object to that i may have a conflict here so i'm because i own property on hillcrest place that we had i signed the petition we have discussed that and i would request that you post you abstain from this particular i will thank you um mr honeman you cued in did you want to speak to it no i'm sorry all right is there objection to postponing this indefinitely hearing and seeing none no objection excuse me this is 14 d is postponed indefinitely the next item before us is 14 f this is ao59 it's an ordinance amending municipal code chapter 15.70 on noise control and clarified definitions clarified noise permit conditions and adding addition of a section regarding measurement of noise also amending section 14.60.030 to increase fines anybody would like to speak to us on this matter please come forward hi there um i'm incredibly nervous i've never done this before but good evening we're we're fairly pretty easy going even though we're feisty okay could you start with your name and spell it lonnie laurent last name is l-a-u-r-e-n-t i've owned the property at 701 and 631 jack street for nearly 12 years it's three houses down from an i2 lot we're zoned r5 our neighborhood has been in a permanent construction zone since a soil company has moved in the complaints number in the hundreds over a period of many years for unbearable noise dust smell of manure and muddy roads the noise from the front end loaders the dirt and rock separators bulldozers and excavators is nerve-wracking to say the least it isn't just a constant drone of noise but it's banging and banging of the buckets i work nights and i have for many years i've never dealt with anything close to this i'm not a light sleeper yet i was forced up at 7 30 in the morning six days a week and it ran all day long only after much work was this company forced to comply with the ordinance to quit at 10 pm and not work on sunday i was going to work exhausted from the stress of the noise and lack of sleep it was impossible to sit outside enjoy your yard to have a barbecue or even read a book inside was just as miserable we've finally made some progress with the city health department and there's currently a lawsuit that is trying to force this company to operate under city code this was only after many summers of complaints noise readings excuses empty promises delays by this company hearings and verdicts against them this has taken a lot of my time and residence time and effort just to have a little peace in the home to force this company to comply i don't know how this amendment will affect this lawsuit i did my due diligence prior to buying my property when i bought my property i called the city planning and zoning and they told me it was approved to be a trust factory i accepted this later i was told it was going to be a small business park great sounds fine the organ says that there's a limit to the amount of unreasonable noise and disturbance that a residential neighborhood is supposed to endure so i thought i was covered i am concerned that i won't be able to get out of this situation because who's going to want to buy there his property line is only about 15 feet from several from several homes my home is a mere 200 feet from this property line if the decibel level is allowed to be 70 as they say what do you think it's going to be in our homes there's nothing to uh to stop the noise so hot summer days windows open it's still going to be 70 or very close to it um i'm not sure why this is allowed when 60 is supposed to be the standard sorry i have a couple more things but i'll go quickly there seems to be some confusion as to whether this amendment helps our situation by having specifics in the noise limits on the other hand it seems to raise the noise limits at the same time it also does not speak to the process of the years of complaints before anything is even measured or warnings given we in the residence in the neighborhood would hope that you'll take this into consideration we are still a little bit confused as to how this amendment will help or hurt us thank you mr hoffman has a question okay uh and you've been i'm sorry i missed how long have you been in that neighborhood i've been there 12 years uh many of these people um a few that haven't aren't able to be here tonight are 40 years 40 years 20 years and so forth and the business that was that is operating there is it was it there before you moved in no it was a pretty much an open field um there was a lumber company doing some business there but it didn't affect us at all um and you've you've said you've got you have any petitions or anything from any neighbors concerns community council you raising this issue up with anybody there um we've actually got a list somebody here has a list of complaints that have been recorded with the city over the last um seven years okay uh they number in the hundreds also back here waving the paper so right so thank you thank you did quite well by the way thanks thank you anyone else adam charles couples apologize could you come back ma'am i'm sorry mr flynn had a question and then mr burch well i want to try and help ms lauren answer some of the questions she had for us because part of my service on this body i was involved in a informal task force working on this issue and odd that my former profession sort of brought me into contact with noise every now and again um ms ingle you were around then this proposal essentially i'll say reinterprets the middleton decision that brought about that previous assembly proposal and and basically says that the arithmetic mean is defined as the the average between two adjacent lots and and whatever's adjacent to the second lot has no bearing is that correct the single through the chair mr flynn i believe that what you're saying is correct yeah we're doing the emitter receiver only is in making our average that's correct okay and my recollection is the the department's re recommendation after hearing everybody yell at them from both sides was sort of halfway between what we have here and what the middleton decision represent is that correct who the chair mr flynn you're talking about several years ago our recommendation oh come on you remember it's got to be at least as good as mine i i wasn't director then so i'm trying to think about what that was um hold on just a second mr phone do you have any more questions for her thank you i want to try and get her question answered and see if she wants to ask me anything else um thank you mr flynn mr flynn i believe that when we proposed our table last time we we proposed a table that what did have slightly lower values this table strictly is the arithmetic mean between the emitter and receiving properties okay and then so is it fair to say then that what we have here is more liberal in terms of what it allows in term of sound emitters both in the current standard and the standards proposed four or five years ago whenever it was through the chair mr flynn i think that um if you accept the middleton decision then yes it is more liberal there are people who argue the middle middleton decision would be what we have was not what is intended by the current ordinance from what we propose now is what's intended so if you have that viewpoint then no wouldn't be more liberal but if you're talking about what the department proposed several years ago it probably would be more liberal okay miss laurent does that help clarify what okay let me sum up this is will will allow a little more noise than you're currently experiencing nothing madam chair all right thank you very much oh wait mr burch had a question i just had a quite the uh you talked about the it was the the property where the noise is emanating from that you're that is impacting your home it did you say it was zoned i too or that's my understanding yeah i guess the question was did you when you were looking researching that did you and i i don't know what the answer is but did you look through the permissible uses of i2 land i i did somewhat i uh it's it seems to be a bit complicated uh somewhere in that noise ordinance uh does allow for a um i can't remember how it was worded but excessive noise is is not permitted in any situation uh 60 decibels in uh in residential the code is quite complicated but as the planning and zoning told me they had approved this trust factory and uh there were uh i don't have the papers with just a wide range of industrial uses and hopefully limiting the noise as much as possible great thank you thank you very much does anyone else like to speak to us i hadn't planned on speaking on this tonight madam chair but i do have to know that getting the data from health and human services is a bit difficult uh about a year and a half ago i was looking for some information on noise levels in my neighborhood we need your name no it's jeffrey humphries geo ff rei thank you hm phras and uh i left uh four or five phone calls with the department of health and human services and i sent them two email messages and i never heard back uh i believe alan kemplin was also looking into the same information and he did not manage to locate it either it would be good if there could be transparency information and it will be accessible to the public thank you anyone else on this issue uh evening my name is nick de guerra d-i-g-h-i-e-r-a and uh i actually am a new semi-new resident to the neighborhood which uh lonnie is uh currently residing and the others and um while i understand the amendments to the law as actually defining a new barrier whereas the old law had a term arithmetic mean and uh didn't really define what that meant and so what we're being told is that meant 65 decibels and now we're being moved up to 70 decibels but it seems irregardless of what or regardless of what the level is there isn't a means of recourse uh based on the records i've seen from their complaints and how many they put in versus how many citations excuse me violations were submitted or submitted and then citations were submitted we have hundreds of complaints called in and 15 violations and five citations all numbering in the hundreds of dollars and uh this is after repeated years and it doesn't it doesn't actually add up so uh without a system for recourse all of the beefing up that's been done to the the fee structure and adding up all of that isn't isn't going to make a difference if they're not actually being issued or they're not being issued in a manner in which causes the current occupant to cease so actually increasing the amount of noise they they're going to make will increase the number of phone calls and that will just cause more people to come out and take more measurements and then if the same amount gets done on the end of that it will end up not even utilizing the new fee structure and the new penalty structure which actually is better but based on the current enforcement of it doesn't won't affect anything single did you want to make a comment on this point we can't hear you thank you madam chair i just wanted to uh emphasize too that there's a number of changes in this and not only is there to the table but we also um change the fee structure because we have been not able to enforce as much as we would like to based on the current fee structure it's not really admin there's not a strong incentive for people who are violating to comply so um we have um active um activity going on in terms of mitigating this problem and we also think that the change of the fee structure will hopefully the fine sorry the fine structure will hopefully give us some more in ability to enforce thank you thank you for coming anyone else would like to speak to this i have i have the um complaints if you would like to see them if you give them to the clerk then we can all see them to everyone this morning we got them so yeah okay thank you go ahead if you could start by identifying yourself please okay my name is jim bosch this is my wife carol and your last name is spelled how b o s c h thank you i'm going to let her speak first you could put it in the record as snoop dogg that's the appropriate moniker for mr bosh trust me hello my name is carol c-a-r-o-l-e b-o-s-c-h anyhow good evening all and um we live right next to alaska trailblazers okay thank you okay now i would like to clarify something i don't i'm sorry no you're fine go ahead okay we have lived there i jim bought the property in 1980 i have been there since 1985. beautiful area and this is where united leopard used to be a united lumber poster the the billboard there it said i won until alaska trailblazers moved in there everyone in the neighborhood thought it was an i1 rated area and then we started having trouble with alaska trailblazing and that's when we found out i called zoning they thought it wasn't i won until they dug in and found out there was an i2 with everyone thought was an i1 and shall we start having all this crap that means problems anyhow i want to say that the idea of raising the noise level of an industrial area right next to us a residential area is ludicrous just plainly no one will like it if you lived in that area we're unable to enjoy relaxing in the yard working in the garden barbecuing eating outside anything without this noise by raising the noise level it only devalues our land some relatives would have liked to have gotten married on our property and due to the heavy the the noise from the heavy equipment and trucks that was that was panned so it's only common sense to lower the noise and dust levels for one's health and welfare and quality of life in fact that's what i've been hearing on the radio is to lower its noise pollution and dust pollution and they want to reduce it and here we are wanting to raise it even the railroad crossing has and reduced the noise on the train whistle a cleft road and 120th crossings and other residential areas i'm upset sorry sir sorry thank you for listening to me thank you should i speak too sir and then we've got some questions uh i have a letter here where lonnie didn't have time to finish her presentation and uh it's from ralph and sc rasport which live in the area and it says you have our permission to mention the name in reference to the noise that is made by alaska trailblazers my husband has a heart transplant 11 years ago and takes some serious medication to combat combat heart rejection some of this medication makes it difficult for ralph to sleep and it seems like he finally gets able to sleep and then it is woken up by alaska trailblazers that was one of the planes saying are there any questions from me there are two miss honeymoon you're first you've been in the area since 1980 when did alaska trailblazers buy into that property how long ago first of all it was in 2006 before that it was united lumber uh there was a cartwright mr cartwright that ran a lumber business out of there hole quest and that's trucking went in there and tore down the dry kiln that was there and even with the noise that they made it wasn't anything like we have now and then hollquist was going to come in and build a trust plant but they gave that up because they found other properties and then alaska trailblazing came in and you've talked with these folks about the noise and trying to work on something okay and i got to do your email with complaints right thank you you bet mr trainee sir what when you have a complaint you call the city about the complaint and how fast the city respond to you or do they ever respond to you the city responds to the complaint they'll call us back and say well this or that sometimes they'll come out sometimes i understand with all their business they can't be out there every time we have a complaint when they come when we call it takes them maybe if we call it seven o'clock in the morning there's nobody there we finally will leave a message with the city they'll eventually come out by the time they come out everything all of a sudden just seems to get all nice and quiet okay thank you sir thank you i'll ask the department okay partnership i'll ask the department to as we get into this well what it appears to me is there's somebody in in the office someplace that lets them know that they're coming out to check on them that's what it appears i can't say that that's i'm not going to make that allegation it appears that way thank you sir thank you very much thank you madam chair um sense by or thank you thank you since by our rules we're going to have to stop at 11 unless there's a motion to continue i'd like to ask if we could have a motion to continue just to deal with this and to listen to the gentleman who's been sitting here all night long to talk to us on non-agenda item just those two things would if that would be acceptable to the body i'll make a motion madam chair to extend the meeting to 11 15. that should do it hopefully okay is there objection to that saying no objection is there anyone else who'd like to testify on this matter and we're under a time crunch now that's what that last thing was okay thanks my name is joyce christman and i live at 721 jack street and spell it c-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-n thank you you're welcome um i live parallel to the property that we are regarding at 1 20th and we've been putting up with this for way too long we've complained and we've complained i have sheets it's very small writing that they have done on the complaints we've called in out all these complaints there's 31 violations i don't know if any of them have ever been taken care of by alaska trailblazers from what i understand nothing but it is very aggravating if any of you would like to come down and check out bill street jack street any of the subdivision around there you're very welcome and just don't let them know that you're coming you'll find out what we've been putting up with thank you mr trainee has a question for you only complaining into the city how soon do they respond to your complaint um anywhere from not coming down at all or they'll say uh we didn't notice any smell from the manure that he brings in or while they were just moving some stuff around and the smell comes in really bad in fact on the 12th of may i called in at 8 13 am to tell them i've output myself to the knees because of the smell the stench coming from over there because of manure and i have the i've been calling the epa because that's who we found out would come down and i got a correct uh email back from chris salerno who is there he said he went down at 11 o'clock and didn't notice anything other than the um or the um manager had said oh yeah about that time we were loading up a truck to take out to seward thank you ma'am okay you're welcome thank you very much okay thanks anybody else who'd like to speak to us on this matter hearing and seeing no one public hearing is closed is there an s version i'm still a little confused we can't hear you miss johnson ao201159 and is that the one you're moving right um it has as far as the am uh you did get a different am tonight with a couple of the typos changed okay and mr hall was the second would you like to go ahead and speak to it yes i have spent some i just spent some time down there with miss laurent and i actually had one question from the administration currently if there is a complaint and somebody is in a residential area and there are say four or five lots in that residential area in other words so they're not boarding they're not receiving at the property line would there would it have to be 60 as far as the noise so okay so through the chair ms johnston i believe that what we would do is go to the complainants property and measure there and then we would go to the residential property that abutted the emitting property and the receiving property that abutted the emitting property and measure there as well okay and and at the comp if the complaining party was as i say four or five deep in it would have to be in other words if they weren't adjoining the industrial land would it it'd have to be at 60 decimals i miss johnston after the chair mr johnson we believe the answer to that would be yes okay thank you i've i um came to this sort of sideways and sometimes somewhat reluctantly but also i spent some time with the assembly's attorney and as we were looking at the noise ordinance we both felt that there was it wasn't completely clear between the different between industrial commercial and residential and how it's measured and so we can't we decided she helped me write up this ordinance where we would clarify it and we did clarify it where it would be measured at the property line of the receiving and the trans transmitting lots and it would be the mean difference of those lots it would not change as i say like if miss laurent's property would still have to be at the residential level um i would urge your support well thank you madam chair i don't want to make any assumptions but i would hazard a guess i've spent more timeline noise issues than anybody on this body and i appreciate what miss johnson is trying to do here and in fact i think the interpretation of the arithmetic mean that this would create is in fact what the intent was when the assembly established the noise ordinance twenty to five thirty years ago that said the middleton decision to which i referred earlier applies a more stringent standard in many cases and you've heard from a small subsection of the population is affected by noise in this community there is not a willingness among residents in this community to relax noise standards in the hopes the department will step up their enforcement efforts i i mean i can't tell you how much time i spend on this and i've spent a lot of time on other issues related to noise so if we're going to do something like this i would suggest that we not change the definition of noise emission standards we do ratchet up the penalties schedule and we see if in fact that that does improve the situation and if it does and if it cleans up the problem then maybe we can addre then i think the general populace would be comfortable with addressing the noise emission standards i mean this is the standard the industry likes this is the one that everyone would like to see it doesn't have the support of residents affected by noise and i would caution everybody on this body if you vote for this you will be getting phone calls lots of phone calls lots of emails and everyone i get i'm referring to you [Music] mr trainee this administration i'm looking on page 11 of 16 talks about measuring sound levels so let's say you get a complaint how many people do you have that handles complaints on sound how many go out and measure sound complaints because we're telling the public we're going to go out and measure it how many people do you have doing that we have we have one person who's primarily assigned to noise but we have seven trained staff who can go out and take noise noise readings one for a town of three hundred thousand people that's correct how long does it take depends on the situation here's my fear is we're telling these people we'll respond to you when reality we're not responding to anybody through the chair mr trainee i i would i would suggest that if you look at the spreadsheet that you were sent that it will tell you which times we made site visits and which times we didn't make site visits we redacted the names from the complainants but it does tell you whether we visited the site i would say that a good deal of the time we do visit the site not every single time do we visit the site especially if we get multiple complaints on an issue that we're already working now the one person is also the ones can respond to chicken noise you don't have to answer that thank you madam chair yeah that that would be an animal control issue no actually you guys will be they said you guys reviewed animal control thank you madam chair mr drummond thank you madam chair for ten dollars you can buy a sound studio quality noise decibel meter for your iphones which most the people in this room own i wish we could find a way and and furthermore that decibel meter will take a screenshot of the reading date and time stamp it and you can send it to the health department and say here's your noise meter you don't have to send anybody out here here is the noise down the street from my house at my property line at this hour and it didn't cost you anything i spent ten dollars on that decibel meter for my iphone that's what i'd like to see happen in this community because right now we have an enforcement problem we are not we are not solving any problems by passing this ordinance we are not making it uh easier for people to co-exist in this town unless we have a way to enforce these noise issues noise is unhealthy it it stresses people unnecessarily and we really need to be more respectful of one another and if we can find a way for people to police themselves and help the city record these noise issues i think that would be much more helpful than anything else we're doing here with that there's no one else in queue did you want to make a comment in the single i'm sorry i you were in queue and then you were out no comment on this ordinance all right please vote mr hall we need you i guess so and that one passes six to five well i don't administration yeah all right would would there be objection to asking the gentleman who's been sitting here to come forward sir on you're not a burden you've been sitting here all evening we'd like to hear from you madam chairman assembly members mayor appreciate appreciate y'all taking the time to hear from me um at this late time my name is mark openguard last name spelled p p e g a a r d i was here on the 26th of october sorry yeah october last year at that time i addressed a few of my concerns i was given to john rada at the time mr radha did some work he told me and has yet to come up with any satisfactory conclusions or any conclusions at all i have some concerns regarding the closures and reduced hours at kincaid motorsports park i started this process in the year 2007 i'm just going to summarize quickly over my footnotes here in 2007 anchoring parks and wrecks shortened hours of access to our motorsports park during the park directors meeting i was told this is due to road construction on raspberry road on the king cage ally side they couldn't make it to the motorsports park to unlock the gate on time after the road concession was complete two hours were returned still leaving four hours unreturned to our local public park uh i had contacted miss oceander to acquire about how to get the loss of hours rescinded and was advised to follow proper procedure so again as i mentioned i first went to advisory parks meetings with my concerns and four months later i received a response from advisory board member eric mccallum who told me to contact scott o'brien with parks and rec with my concerns after several meetings with parks and rec directors arl that's the anchorage racing lions people who race out there on sunday uh and local users of kincaid motorsports who get motorsports park i again as john q public approach parks and rec and ask them for the return of monday tuesday and the winter closure hours for for all to be returned to normal operating hours for your information there is a permanent camper host on location that can provide the gate service since the construction and so no one from parks and rec has to manage the motorsports gate which of course means no cost at all the parks and recs again i cannot stress enough as as john q public i'm requesting the return of normal operating hours or input from from the public i'm sorry for normal and i also like to stress that no public opinion or input from the public regarding this park's use was obtained by parks and recs before making these closures to public lands i stand before you this evening to ask for the return of normal kincaid motorsports park hours of use has been available to the public for more than 40 years and should continue to provide an available place for motorsports enthusiasts returning the loss of available riding hours could assist in stopping the abuse of cross country trails the trails up and down hillside and other private areas when the park gates are closed and locked in the winter i personally i have walked back there and seen damage from vandals and thieves including fires seven fire pits vandalized signs broken light poles and fences laws are being broken behind these locked gates in the winter there's no police patrol during this time the way to keep our parks usable safe and secure is to keep these areas open for all user groups this includes apd patrols and winter motor sports enthusiasts i look forward to the anchorage assembly's formal response to this four year ongoing loss of use thank you to the administration this this gentleman has been remarkably persistent he has gone to the park advisory board and he's contacted mr rada to try to get a some clarification he's also as he's talked to me several times he's also as i understand it you've got noise levels on your machines now and there's somebody on site could could he get a response at some point mr michaelis or mr mayor yes we'll provide a response what i did was i i summarized uh sir uh this to it's getting late but i have contacted uh eric mccallum on the advisory board victor malasi scott o'brien the list goes on and on i've got all their responses here with me and i look forward to leaving my contact information with you i actually have a copy of the letter i just wrote if i can hand it to you yes sir all right thank you would you like to at this point the motion was to go until 11 madam chair make a motion to try to finish the rest of the agenda items i think mr thompson's been waiting patiently and they seem fairly simple appropriation of torah money and things like that is there a second is there objection seeing no objection but right okay the first item on the agenda is 14 a and the hearing is already closed and we've dealt with this matter in another way is there a motion is there a second is there objection herring is seeing none um that matter 14a is postponed indefinitely we've already dealt with 14b 14 c i i will it's this is an ordinance amending the personnel rules i'll open the public hearing is there anyone here who wants to speak to personnel rules with the understanding that the administration is going to give us another version hearing and seeing and we've got a work session coming thank you thank you so hearing and seeing no one um i'd like to a motion to continue move to continue madam chair thank you and to june 14th is that all right okay seeing no objection we're continuing that one to june 14. um let's see we already dealt with d we already dealt with e you know we need an e and the i'd like to open the public hearing on 14e with the understanding that this issue will probably die immediately it's on property line noise emission standards anybody like to come forward on this matter and seeing no one the public hearing is closed exactly is there objection hearing saying no objection that matter is postponed indefinitely we've already dealt with f the next item is 14 g this is ar134 resolution appropriating 112 221 um for amax update anybody like to come forward and speak to us on this matter hearing and seeing no one public hearing is closed second is there a discussion is there objection hearing and seeing none that matter is approved unanimously we're now at 14 h this is ar 140 it's a resolution appropriating 290 192 dollars from state breeding this is also for amends yep they were publicly i'm sorry thank you anybody like to speak to us on this matter please come forward hearing and seeing no one public hearing is closed second is there discussion is there objection hearing and seeing none that matter is approved unanimously we're now at 14 i this is ar 135 a resolution appropriating two and a half million dollars of revenue basically for alaska pollution discharge elimination system permit services anybody who'd like to speak to us on this matter please come forward hearing and seeing no one public hearing is closed is there discussion is there objection hearing and seeing none that matter is approved unanimously which concludes our agenda i'm impressed madam chair yes i'd like to make a motion for reconsideration on ao number uh 2011 24 s and i urge a no vote this um this is on title 31-32 all right it's the beginning 13a 1382 correct yes i think but i don't have my agenda on here um there's not been a second yet though miss johnson all right the motion for reconsideration of 1382 um is before us and no vote has been urged please vote is abstain verbally he voted no all right reconsideration fails um at this point the we are through the agenda we've gone over our limit is there objection hearing seeing none word you